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This book explores the challenges and opportunities presented to Classical scholarship by digital practice and resources. Drawing on the expertise of a community of scholars who use innovative methods and technologies, it shows that traditionally rigorous scholarship is as central to digital research as it is to mainstream Classical Studies. The chapters in this edited collection cover many subjects, including text and data markup, data management, network analysis, pedagogical theory and the Social and Semantic Web, illustrating the range of methods that enrich the many facets of the study of the ancient world. This volume exemplifies the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature that is at the heart of Classical Studies.
Personal autonomy is often lauded as a key value in contemporary Western bioethics, and the claim that there is an important relationship between autonomy and rationality is often treated as an uncontroversial claim in this sphere. Yet, there is also considerable disagreement about how we should cash out the relationship between rationality and autonomy. In particular, it is unclear whether a rationalist view of autonomy can be compatible with legal judgments that enshrine a patient's right to refuse medical treatment, regardless of whether ". . . the reasons for making the choice are rational, irrational, unknown or even non-existent". In this book, I bring recent philosophical work on the ...
This book considers the cemetery uncovered outside the north gate of Venta Belgarum, Roman Winchester, and analyses in detail both the graves and their contents. There are detailed studies and important re-assessments of many categories of object, but it is the information about late Roman burial, religion, and society which is of special interest.
It has long been recognized that the landscape of Britain is one of the 'richest historical records we possess', but just how old is it? The Fields of Britannia is the first book to explore how far the countryside of Roman Britain has survived in use through to the present day, shaping the character of our modern countryside. Commencing with a discussion of the differing views of what happened to the landscape at the end of Roman Britain, the volume then brings together the results from hundreds of archaeological excavations and palaeoenvironmental investigations in order to map patterns of land-use across Roman and early medieval Britain. In compiling such extensive data, the volume is able...
This first volume, presenting research carried out through the Exeter: A Place in Time project, provides a synthesis of the development of Exeter within its local, regional, national and international hinterlands. Exeter began life in c. AD 55 as one of the most important legionary bases within early Roman Britain, and for two brief periods in the early and late 60s AD, Exeter was a critical centre of Roman power within the new province. When the legion moved to Wales the fortress was converted into the civitas capital for the Dumnonii. Its development as a town was, however, relatively slow, reflecting the gradual pace at which the region as a whole adapted to being part of the Roman world....
Roman Archaeology for Historians provides students of Roman history with a guide to the contribution of archaeology to the study of their subject. It discusses the issues with the use of material and textual evidence to explain the Roman past, and the importance of viewing this evidence in context. It also surveys the different approaches to the archaeological material of the period and examines key themes that have shaped Roman archaeology. At the heart of the book lies the question of how archaeological material can be interpreted and its relevance for the study of ancient history. It includes discussion of the study of landscape change, urban topography, the economy, the nature of cities,...
Propelled to power by the age of 17 by an ambitious mother, self-indulgent to the point of criminality, inadequate, paranoid and the perpetrator of heinous crimes including matricide and fratricide, and deposed and killed by 31, Nero is one of Rome’s most infamous Emperors. But has history treated him fairly? Or is the popular view of Nero as a capricious and depraved individual a travesty of the truth and a gross injustice to Rome's fifth emperor? This new biography will look at Nero’s life with fresh eyes. While showing the man 'warts and all', it also caste a critical eye on the 'libels' which were perpetrated on him, such as claiming he was a madman, many of which were most probably made up to suit the needs of the Flavians, who had overthrown his dynasty.
How do archaeologists make effective use of physical traces and material culture as repositories of evidence? Material Evidence takes a resolutely case-based approach to this question, exploring instances of exemplary practice, key challenges, instructive failures, and innovative developments in the use of archaeological data as evidence. The goal is to bring to the surface the wisdom of practice, teasing out norms of archaeological reasoning from evidence. Archaeologists make compelling use of an enormously diverse range of material evidence, from garbage dumps to monuments, from finely crafted artifacts rich with cultural significance to the detritus of everyday life and the inadvertent tr...
Examines the contentious relationship between archaeology and metal detecting, revealing historical tensions and evolving practices. This book offers a no-holds-barred insight into the often passionate, sometimes controversial, subject of tension and mistrust between the worlds of archaeology and metal detecting with the intent of shedding new light upon and bringing into the open some of the working practices, procedures and thoughts which have fuelled an ill-wind that flurries through levels of archaeological academia. Beginning in the mists of history, the author explores the birth of archaeological investigation from a Kings search, the grave robbers, through the antiquarian collectors, ...
This is the changing story of Britain as it has been preserved in our fields, roads, buildings, towns and villages, mountains, forests and islands. From our suburban streets that still trace out the boundaries of long vanished farms to the Norfolk Broads, formed when medieval peat pits flooded, from the ceremonial landscapes of Stonehenge to the spread of the railways - evidence of how man's effect on Britain is everywhere. In The Making of the British Landscape, eminent historian, archaeologist and farmer, Francis Pryor explains how to read these clues to understand the fascinating history of our land and of how people have lived on it throughout time. Covering both the urban and rural and packed with pictures, maps and drawings showing everything from how we can still pick out Bronze Age fields on Bodmin Moor to how the Industrial Revolution really changed our landscape, this book makes us look afresh at our surroundings and really see them for the first time.