City and Empire in the Age of the Successors - Ryan Boehm - Hardcover - University of California Press | Book Library

City and Empire in the Age of the Successors

Urbanization and Social Response in the Making of the Hellenistic Kingdoms

Ryan Boehm (Author)

Hardcover, 320 pages

ISBN: 9780520296923

February 2018

Description:
In the chaotic decades after the death of Alexander the Great, the world of the Greek city-state became deeply embroiled in the political struggles and unremitting violence of his successors’ contest for supremacy. As these presumptive rulers turned to the practical reality of administering the disparate territories under their control, they increasingly developed new cities by merging smaller settlements into large urban agglomerations. This practice of synoikism gave rise to many of the most important cities of the age, initiated major shifts in patterns of settlement, and consolidated numerous previously independent polities. The result was the increasing transformation of the fragmented world of the small Greek polis into an urbanized network of cities. Drawing on a wide array of archaeological, epigraphic, and textual evidence, City and Empire in the Age of the Successors reinterprets the role of urbanization in the creation of the Hellenistic kingdoms and argues for the agency of local actors in the formation of these new imperial cities.

Author Bio:
Ryan Boehm is Assistant Professor of Classics at Tulane University.

Reviews:
"This book is a potential game changer. Ryan Boehm offers a radical reinterpretation of the role of cities in early Hellenistic kingdoms and the challenges posed by synoikism. The range of players and processes documented here is rich and complex; they have been lurking in the epigraphic and archaeological record, which Boehm has clearly mastered. Few other historians of the period show such range.”—Denver Graninger, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Riverside

“A dense and nuanced synthesis of this kind has not been available so far. A special virtue is that Boehm not only treats the 'top down' perspective of the kings but also pays great attention to the 'bottom up' interests and reactions of the communities involved. Thus, he succeeds in constructing a vivid and convincing picture of city foundations embedded in complex interaction between kings and local groups.”—Christof Schuler, Commission for Ancient History and Epigraphy of the German Archaeological Institute, Munich

Labels: Ancient World, Ancient Archaeology

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A Chinese Bestiary - Richard E. Strassberg | Book Library

A Chinese Bestiary

Strange Creatures from the Guideways through Mountains and Seas

Richard E. Strassberg (Editor),Richard E. Strassberg (Translator)

Paperback, 336 pages

ISBN: 9780520298514

March 2018

Description:
A Chinese Bestiary presents a fascinating pageant of mythical creatures from a unique and enduring cosmography written in ancient China. The Guideways through Mountains and Seas, compiled between the fourth and first centuries B.C.E., contains descriptions of hundreds of fantastic denizens of mountains, rivers, islands, and seas, along with minerals, flora, and medicine. The text also represents a wide range of beliefs held by the ancient Chinese. Richard Strassberg brings the Guideways to life for modern readers by weaving together translations from the work itself with information from other texts and recent archaeological finds to create a lavishly illustrated guide to the imaginative world of early China.

Unlike the bestiaries of the late medieval period in Europe, the Guideways was not interpreted allegorically; the strange creatures described in it were regarded as actual entities found throughout the landscape. The work was originally used as a sacred geography, as a guidebook for travelers, and as a book of omens. Today, it is regarded as the richest repository of ancient Chinese mythology and shamanistic wisdom. The Guideways may have been illustrated from the start, but the earliest surviving illustrations are woodblock engravings from a rare 1597 edition. Seventy-six of those plates are reproduced here for the first time, and they provide a fine example of the Chinese engraver's art during the late Ming dynasty.

This beautiful volume, compiled by a well-known specialist in the field, provides a fascinating window on the thoughts and beliefs of an ancient people, and will delight specialists and general readers alike.

Author Bio:
Richard E. Strassberg is Professor Emeritus of Chinese at UCLA.

Reviews:
"At last! Richard Strassberg's stunning new work provides a lively introduction in words and pictures to one of China's best loved and least understood classics, the Shanhai jing or Guideways Through Mountains and Seas. This classic of mythical geography and fantastic ethnography, full of wondrous stories and creatures, contains a treasury of information about the Chinese worldview and has inspired Chinese writers and artists for over two millennia. But until now, its strange vocabulary together with patchy transmission of both text and illustrations, have made it difficult to present to English-speaking audiences. Relying on a rare 1597 edition of the classic, Strassberg has faithfully captured its combination of entertaining whimsy and deep religious intent. His new book, the product of years of study by one of the few people truly qualified to analyze both text and the images, is sure to delight specialist and nonspecialist alike."—Suzanne Cahill, author of Transcendence and Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of the West in Medieval China

Labels: Art, Asian Art

Silk, Slaves, and Stupas - Susan Whitfield | Book Library

Silk, Slaves, and Stupas

Material Culture of the Silk Road

Susan Whitfield (Author)

Paperback, 376 pages

ISBN: 9780520281783

March 2018

Description:
Following her bestselling Life Along the Silk Road, Susan Whitfield widens her exploration of the great cultural highway with a new captivating portrait focusing on material things. Silk, Slaves, and Stupas tells the stories of ten very different objects, considering their interaction with the peoples and cultures of the Silk Road—those who made them, carried them, received them, used them, sold them, worshipped them, and, in more recent times, bought them, conserved them, and curated them. From a delicate pair of earrings from a steppe tomb to a massive stupa deep in Central Asia, a hoard of Kushan coins stored in an Ethiopian monastery to a Hellenistic glass bowl from a southern Chinese tomb, and a fragment of Byzantine silk wrapping the bones of a French saint to a Bactrian ewer depicting episodes from the Trojan War, these objects show us something of the cultural diversity and interaction along these trading routes of Afro-Eurasia.
 
Exploring the labor, tools, materials, and rituals behind these various objects, Whitfield infuses her narrative with delightful details as the objects journey through time, space, and meaning. Silk, Slaves, and Stupas is a lively, visual, and tangible way to understand the Silk Road and the cultural, economic, and technical changes of the late antique and medieval worlds.   
 

Author Bio:
Susan Whitfield, author of Life Along the Silk Road, is a scholar, curator, writer, and traveler who has been exploring the history, art, religions, cultures, objects, exploration, and people of the Silk Road for the past three decades.

Reviews:
"In the tradition of Neil MacGregor's History of the World in 100 Objects, but digging deeper, Susan Whitfield takes us on a tour of Silk Road culture and history via ten exemplary pieces (nine inanimate, one human). Each chapter's discussion spirals out from the object to take in history, technology, trade patterns, ancient and modern provenance, museology and other aspects, linking Silk Road past to globalizing present. Whitfield's micro-to-macro treatment of this handful of key Eurasian things is new to books on the Silk Road. Her expertise in art history, history, archaeology, museology, Dunhuangology, and other specialties is very much in evidence; few if any other scholars could do what she has done here. More than that, however, she manages to write for the student, the museum-goer, and the armchair traveler, as well as for the specialist."—James A. Millward, author of The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction

"No one knows more about the material culture of the Silk Road than Susan Whitfield. With this book it's now clear that no one tells the story of the early world through objects better than she does. Whitfield carries her readers to the far corners of the earth through her deep and vast research on Silk Road artifacts."—Xinru Liu, author of The Silk Road in World History

"The fabled Silk Road springs to life in this engaging and erudite book. The author conjures up its rich history through a series of vignettes that take the form of biographical sketches of some of the fascinating things that moved in and out of many hands and many places across Asia, Europe, and Africa. This is a book of enthralling stories about familiar and unfamiliar objects, peoples, and landscapes in premodern times."—Anand A. Yang, author of Bazaar India: Markets, Society, and the Colonial State in Bihar

Labels: History, World History