The Archaic Greek Temenos

The ancient Greek world consisted of approximately 1,000 autonomous polities scattered across the Mediterranean basin and was remarkable for both its diversity and its uniformity. As Greeks dispersed throughout the Mediterranean, the different environmental and human ecosystems they encountered created important differences among widely scattered settlements: each Greek community developed its own unique set of socio-political institutions and social practices. Nonetheless, despite their dispersal and diversity, Greek communities were bound together by a network of commercial, cultural, diplomatic, and military ties and shared important commonalities, most notably language and religion. The Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World, a collaborative effort by more than forty eminent scholars, offers twenty-one detailed and comprehensive studies of key sites from across the Greek world in the period between c. 750 and c. 480 BCE. During that period, Greeks confronted a series of demographic, political, social, and economic challenges and generated an array of responses that transformed the ways in which they lived, worked, and interacted. Much of what is now seen as distinctive about Greek culture--such as democracy, stone temples, and nude athletics--first developed during the Archaic period. The series is organized alphabetically by polis. Volume I contains detailed and up-to-date studies of Argos, Chalcis and Eretria, Chios-Lesbos-Samos, and Corcyra. Together with the other volumes in the series, the Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World offers a new and unique resource for the study of ancient Greece that will transform how we understand a crucial era in antiquity.

A synthesis of research on the material culture of Greece in the Archaic and Classical periods.

Examining every aspect of the culture from antiquity to the founding of Constantinople in the early Byzantine era, this thoroughly cross-referenced and fully indexed work is written by an international group of scholars. This Encyclopedia is derived from the more broadly focused Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition, the highly praised two-volume work. Newly edited by Nigel Wilson, this single-volume reference provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the political, cultural, and social life of the people and to the places, ideas, periods, and events that defined ancient Greece.

The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece provides a wide-ranging synthesis of history, society, and culture during the formative period of Ancient Greece, from the Age of Homer in the late eighth century to the Persian Wars of 490–480 BC. In ten clearly written and succinct chapters, leading scholars from around the English-speaking world treat all aspects of the civilization of Archaic Greece, from social, political, and military history to early achievements in poetry, philosophy, and the visual arts. Archaic Greece was an age of experimentation and intellectual ferment that laid the foundations for much of Western thought and culture. Individual Greek city-states rose to great power and wealth, and after a long period of isolation, many cities sent out colonies that spread Hellenism to all corners of the Mediterranean world. This Companion offers a vivid and fully documented account of this critical stage in the history of the West.