Archaeology and the Emergence of Greece

Classical archaeology has changed beyond recognition in the past generation, in its aims, its choice of subject-matter and the methods it uses. This book brings together twenty-five papers by A. M. Snodgrass, some of them previously published only in rather inaccessible places, which have contributed to this change. They cover four decades of work on pre-Classical and Classical Greece and some adjacent fields of scholarship, beginning in the 1960s when Classical archaeology was not widely seen as a free-standing subject. They chart the progress of a movement for the intellectual independence of Greek archaeology and art, from history and textual studies and for recognition among other branches of archaeology.The key theme of the papers is the importance of the Iron Age as the formative period in the making of Classical Greece and the author varies this with comment on literature, history, anthropology, Aegean and European prehistory and Roman provincial archaeology. This book will be an important one for all archaeology and ancient history collections.