Athens at the Margins: Pottery and People in the Early Mediterranean World

The Orientalizing period in ancient Greece saw the strong presence of Near Eastern elements in art and culture. Athens at the Margins proposes a new narrative of the origins behind the style and its significance, investigating how material culture shaped the ways people and communities thought of themselves. It highlights the results of new excavations and looks at the interactions of people with material culture, challenging the aesthetic frameworks imposed by classical Greek masterpieces and expanding the canon of Greek art.

Format: Hardback
Length: 344 pages
Publication date: 19 October 2021
Publisher: Princeton University Press

The seventh century BC in ancient Greece is known as the Orientalizing period due to the significant influence of Near Eastern elements in art and culture. Conventional narratives suggest that goods and knowledge flowed from East to West through cosmopolitan elites. However, Athens at the Margins presents a new narrative of the origins behind the style and its significance, investigating how material culture shaped the ways people and communities thought of themselves.

Athens and the region of Attica were part of an interconnected Mediterranean, where people, goods, and ideas moved in unexpected directions. Network thinking provides a framework to understand this mobility, which led to the creation of a diverse and dynamic style of pottery. While the elite held power, they were unable to agree on the norms of conspicuous consumption and status display. A range of social actors, including non-elites, used objects to contribute to cultural change and the socially mediated production of meaning.

Historiography and the analysis of evidence from various contexts, such as cemeteries, sanctuaries, workshops, and symposia, offer the opportunity to expand the canon of Greek art beyond the aesthetic frameworks imposed by classical Greek masterpieces. By highlighting the results of new excavations and examining the interactions of people with material culture, Athens at the Margins provocatively shifts perspectives on Greek art and its relationship to the eastern Mediterranean.

Weight: 1168g
Dimension: 188 x 261 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691175201