Landscapes of Greece: monuments and memorable places

March 3, 2009

Susa, Iran - palimpsest landscapes and archaeology

Archaeology questions of memory and its materialized forms of the past

memory from the conceptual toolkitof the archaeologist

“Greece, the captive, took her savage victor captive,and brought the arts into rustic Latium”

Horace, Epistles 2.1.156

Roman Empire and the Mediterranean

The world of the Hellenistic East (Late 4th-2nd c. BC)

Julius Ceasar planning for a condo complex in Gaul (from Asterix)(sites of resistance)

Romanization of the Mediterranean?

Crete

Attica

Boeotia

Thessaly

Epirus

Macedonia

Western Asia

The problem ofRoman Greece

Romanization and the Eastern Mediterranean

- appropriation of existinc economic and socio-culturalframeworks

- establishment of a strong maritime network supportedby a complex networkk of Roman roads- pavedhighways of the time with milestones

- military interventions, resettlement of populations

- creation of Roman provinces and provincial administrationinvolving transformation of landscapes, new practicesof land ownership, new urban foundations, introductionof new cult practices

memory : not a passive engagement with the pastbut something that needs reworking of the pastunder new political conditions, new socialconfigurations

memory : not a consumption of the pastbut a creative production of the past

nostalgia nostos “returning home” algos “pain”

- lit. “painful desire to return”"the pain a person feels because he wishes to return to his native home, and fears never to see it again" (a pathological condition 17th. c.)

- “the contemplation of a preferred pastfrom the standpoint of an altered present” (Alcock 40)

- longing for an idealized past

- a memory practice as political tactic of resistence?

Centuriation: Roman land allotment

West of Dyme, Greece

Landscape transformation in Roman Greece(rural, provincial, civic, cultic)

- relative abandonment of the countryside and the diminishing of rural cult activity

-shifts in land ownership in favor of the wealthy(Roman villas/latifundia?)

-demise of certain small cities as they lacked the economicpower or the glorious history to compete

Isthmia

Sanctuary of Poseidon

Ruins as commemoration: Old Parthenon as a ruin in the 5th century Acropolis

The classical Agora

Agora as memorial space

ephesus surfaces, monuments, public space

Ephesus public space

memory : not a consumption of the pastbut a creative production of the past