New Books by AIA Members

List and brief description of recent and forthcoming books authored by the AIA membership.

New Perspectives on Etruria and Early Rome: In Honor of Richard Daniel De Puma
by Sinclair Bell and Helen Nagy, eds.
This impressive collection brings to light the works of international scholars, some previously unavailable to an English-language audience. With new information and assessments about the art, architecture, and archaeology of one of the most dynamic periods in the history of the ancient world—the transition between pre-Roman and Roman Italy—these scholars focus on ancient Italy and the wider Mediterranean. Shedding new light on the evidence of well-known and recently excavated sites and the objects they have yielded—their iconography, manufacturing techniques, and afterlives—this collection follows the first archaeological traces of the rise of ancient Italy to its rediscovery in the Renaissance and its reinvention in contemporary fiction, offering a vibrant contribution to classical studies. Paying tribute to Richard Daniel De Puma, a scholar who has made significant and influential contributions to Etruscan and Roman studies, the contributors to this collection echo the ambition and creativity of his work while offering an up-to-date survey of contemporary Etruscan scholarship. In surveying new developments in both fields, the work collected here represents the diverse, interdisciplinary interests of De Puma as well as areas of recent groundbreaking research.
University of Wisconsin Press (May 2009)
Theorizing Cross-Cultural Interaction among the Ancient and Early Medieval Mediterranean, Near East and Asia
by Matthew P. Canepa
Ars Orientalis 38. Washington D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Inst., 2010. SCHOLARSHIP ON THE VISUAL CULTURES of ancient and early medieval Eurasia has recently benefited from art history’s renewed interest in questions that transcend political and cultural boundaries.1 Issues of cross-cultural interaction, however, have not enjoyed from art historians working on the ancient and early medieval worlds a level of critical attention commensurate with the number of problems arising from the material. As a result, many of those who work in the arts and cultures of the Mediterranean, Near East, and Asia have found themselves drawn closer together, but without a common vocabulary or debate with which to engage. The organizing goal of this volume is to highlight these theoretical considerations and provide a forum where art historians of the ancient and medieval worlds can explore these problems of cross-cultural interaction with greater rigor. It does not intend to provide a comprehensive theoretical overview or art historical survey of Eurasian artistic interchange, nor an overarching theory. Rather, it aims to contribute critical perspectives drawn from premodern visual cultures to the wider theoretical conversation. The papers contained herein critically evaluate some of the most important problems encountered in the material: the cross-continental movement and selective appropriation of objects and motifs through trade; the impact of new ways of seeing, being seen, and acting introduced by these objects; the role of art and ritual in negotiations of power among empires; and representations and self-portrayals of ethnicity and gender within and beyond dominant visual cultures. http://www.asia.si.edu/visitor/arsorientalisVolumeOrder.htm
Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Inst. [published as Ars Orientalis 38] (September 2010)
Domestic Space in Classical Antiquity
by Lisa C. Nevett
Housing is shaped by culturally-specific expectations about the kinds of architecture and furnishings that are appropriate; about how and where different activities should be carried out; and by and with whom. It is those expectations, and the wider social and cultural systems of which they are a part, that are explored in this volume. At the same time, the book as a whole argues two larger points: first, that while houses, households and families have in recent years become increasingly important as objects of inquiry in Greek and Roman contexts, their potential as sources of information about broader social-historical issues has yet to be fully realised; and second, that greater weight and independence should be given to material culture as a source for studying ancient history.
Cambridge University Press (September 2010)
Current Issues in State Formation in the Mediterranean
by Nicola Terrenato and Donald Haggis (edd.)
This volume collects 14 papers on the process of state formation in the Aegean and in Italy. Based on a conference held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003, this collection of essays offers an up-to-date and comprehensive sampler of the current discourse concerning state formation in the central Mediterranean. While comparative approaches to the emergence of political complexity have been applied since the 1950s to Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, Peru, Egypt and many other contexts, Classical Archaeology has not played a very active role in this debate. Here for the first time state formation processes in the Bronze Age Aegean and in Iron Age Greece and Italy are explicitly juxtaposed, revealing a complex interplay between similar dynamics and differing local factors. Most of the papers in the volume build upon recent theoretical developments in the origins and functioning of early states. Dual process theory, heterarchy, agency theory and weak state theory figure very prominently in the book and offer a new, context-sensitive kind of comparative framework to deal with different cases. Contributors include eminent experts in Etruscan and early Roman archaeology and history (Stoddart, Smith, Ammerman), Aegean archaeology (Pullen, Haggis) and in the emergence of the Greek polis (van der Vliet, Small). A full analytical index further facilitates the cross-referencing of common themes across the geographic scope of the book.
Oxbow Books (September 2010)
Kavousi IIA: The Late Minoan IIIC Settlement at Vronda. The Buildings on the Summit (Prehistory Monographs 26)
by Leslie Preston Day, Nancy L. Klein, and Lee Ann Turner
This volume is the second in the series of final reports on the work of the Kavousi Project and the first volume on the cleaning (1982–1984) and excavations (1987–1992) at the mountain sites located above the modern village of Kavousi in eastern Crete. These sites, Vronda and the Kastro, shed light on the Early Iron Age, the transitional period in Cretan history known popularly as the Dark Ages, thereby elucidating the way of life of the people who lived in the area of Kavousi during that period and how their culture changed over time. Kavousi IIA is devoted to the excavation of material from the Late Minoan IIIC settlement at Vronda, particulary the houses on the summit of the Vronda ridge (Buildings A-B, C-D, J-K, and Q), along with earlier (Building P) and later (Building R) structures around them. (http://www.instappress.com/catalog/pm26.html)
INSTAP Academic Press (September 2009)