Search results for ""Author R. Laffineur""

Beginning his academic career in Classical Studies, John G. Younger rapidly extended his expertise into prehistoric (Bronze Age) Aegean archaeology, art and architecture, with a particular focus on ancient stone-working... and from this interest came his seminal studies on the iconography of Bronze Age Aegean stone seals, a field on which he has made an indelible mark. He also branched out into Jewish Studies, becoming an expert on early synagogues. His lifelong activism for LGBTQI+ and minority rights, and his early embrace of feminism and the crucial role that women have played in the past (not just in archaeology, but in the ancient world itself) have also informed his teaching and studies regarding ancient and modern notions about gender and sexuality, and these studies have greatly enriched our views of the ancient world, while going a long way toward counteracting the persistently male-centric interpretations of the ancient world characteristic of the past few centuries. He has been a pioneer in the establishment of LGBTQI+ academic programs in the U.S., and in the integration of modern technologies (especially computers) into Classics and archaeology. He has established himself as an international authority on Linear A, the undeciphered writing system of the Minoans; his website containing the corpus of that script is second to none in terms of its value to scholars working on Linear A. His recent and continuing investigations into the identification of prehistoric Aegean myths promises to add yet another facet to what is already a brilliant diamond of a career.

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The 16th International Aegean Conference/Rencontre égéenne internationale encompasses all the geographical regions west of the Aegean (Western Mainland Greece, the Ionian islands and the Adriatic, Italy, Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic islands), giving prominence to those focal points and traits of the local civilizations which interact with their Aegean counterparts of the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, not excluding their Neolithic background. Some of the issues for which HESPEROS opens the floor to discussion are the nature of Mycenaean presence in Iberia, the spread of the early technology of bronze across the Mediterranean, the expansion of phenomena connected with the Cetina “culture”, the local productions and the Mediterranean trade network of goods, such as the industry of amber, glass and murex, the distribution of tumuli and their social implications as monuments for the local elites, the lack of local manufacture of Italo-Mycenaean pottery in Sicily, the nodal role of the Balkans in a “connecting cultures” process, the documentation of Cycladic elements as far away as the Ionian islands, and the aspects of the metallurgical koine across the LBA Adriatic and the Aegean, not neglecting the examination of “traditional” questions, such as the nature of Mycenaean imports in Italy, the spread of matt-painted pottery in the SW Balkans and the degree of “Mycenaeanization” of Epirus.

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The 17th International Aegean Conference / Rencontre égéenne internationale MNEME was organised by the University of Udine, Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Humanities, starting from the many suggestions given by several studies which have been recently devoted to the perception of and confrontation with the past in ancient societies as well as to the manifold practices of memory including memorializing and memory keeping. Scholars have focused on the important function of social memory for the construction of collective identities including ethnicity. Construction, re-use and manipulation of the past have been identified in several contexts as ideological strategies favouring cultural continuity. On the one hand, well-defined chronological limits have been reconsidered following the evidence of long-term dynamics based on the reproduction of relevant social practices through space and time. On the other hand, phenomena of cultural discontinuity and innovation have also resulted in being profoundly connected to the approach that ancient communities had towards their past, which they variously expressed in monumental architecture, funerary layout, iconographic and stylistic traditions and social practices in both ceremonial and domestic contexts. Furthermore, fragmentation, sacrifice or storage of material culture and economic resources - phenomena relevant to different systems of political economy - are in turn strongly connected to the practice of memory, with an impact on the cultural landscape including settlement as well as funerary domains.

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This volume proposes the proceedings of the 14e Rencontre égéenne internationale/14th International Aegean Conference, held in Paris, at the Institut National d'Histoire de l'art (INHA), on 11-14 December 2012, on the theme PHYSIS. L'environnement naturel et la relation homme-milieu dans le monde égéen protohistorique. Fifty contributions were presented in seven sections: "Cadre naturel", "Ressources naturelles", "Paysage et climat", "Iconographie", "Agriculture", "Ressources animales", "Peuplement et population". Twenty-three short presentations are included as posters.

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The 18th International Aegean Conference on the subject of Zoia (literally ‘creatures endowed with an anima or life force’) was conceived and organized by Robert Laffineur and Tom Palaima, director of the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (PASP) in the Department of Classics at The University of Texas at Austin, marking 30 years of their collaboration on Aegaeum volumes and conferences. In the event, Covid-19 forced the cancellation of the conference proper. This volume, however, testifies to the dedication of Aegeanist scholars worldwide to accomplish the scholarly objectives of the proposed conference: to examine, from a wide range of specialist research perspectives, how the human societies that developed in the Aegean area in the Middle and Late Bronze Age and the human beings within them interacted with wild, domesticated and semi-domesticated animals of the sea, sky and land socio-politically, economically, religiously, ideologically, imaginatively and artistically. Diamantis Panagiotopoulos stresses in his keynote paper that the 28 papers in Zoia reflect “the dynamic development of Human-Animal Studies” in the last two decades. Papers are grouped under five main topics: identification of the animal environment; human uses of domesticated and wild animals, material economy, diet and society; hybrid and fantastic creatures in animal iconography (seals, frescoes and other forms of representation); animals in beliefs and religion (their contemporary symbolic uses and later uses as relics or heirlooms); and animals in texts (Indo-European and non-Indo-European; Cretan Pictographic, Linear A, Linear B and later Homeric and historical Greek). The results are comprehensive, eclectic, scientifically informative and intellectually provocative. They help us see protohistoric Aegean cultures as the non-human animals inextricably linked to them saw them.

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