Graffiti in Antiquity

Graffiti in Antiquity PDF

Author: Peter Keegan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-10-10

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1317591267

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Ancient graffiti - hundreds of thousands of informal, ephemeral texts spanning millennia - offer a patchwork of fragmentary conversations in a variety of languages spread across the Mediterranean world. Cut, painted, inked or traced in charcoal, the surviving graffiti present a layer of lived experience in the ancient world unavailable from other sources. Graffiti in Antiquity reveals how and why the inhabitants of Greece and Rome - men and women and free and enslaved - formulated written and visual messages about themselves and the world around them as graffiti. The sources - drawn from 800 BCE to 600 CE - are examined both within their individual historical, cultural and archaeological contexts and thematically, allowing for an exploration of social identity in the urban society of the ancient world. An analysis of one of the most lively and engaged forms of personal communication and protest, Graffiti in Antiquity introduces a new way of reading sociocultural relationships among ordinary people living in the ancient world.

Graffiti in Antiquity

Graffiti in Antiquity PDF

Author: Peter Keegan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-10-10

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1317591275

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Ancient graffiti - hundreds of thousands of informal, ephemeral texts spanning millennia - offer a patchwork of fragmentary conversations in a variety of languages spread across the Mediterranean world. Cut, painted, inked or traced in charcoal, the surviving graffiti present a layer of lived experience in the ancient world unavailable from other sources. Graffiti in Antiquity reveals how and why the inhabitants of Greece and Rome - men and women and free and enslaved - formulated written and visual messages about themselves and the world around them as graffiti. The sources - drawn from 800 BCE to 600 CE - are examined both within their individual historical, cultural and archaeological contexts and thematically, allowing for an exploration of social identity in the urban society of the ancient world. An analysis of one of the most lively and engaged forms of personal communication and protest, Graffiti in Antiquity introduces a new way of reading sociocultural relationships among ordinary people living in the ancient world.

Ancient Graffiti in Context

Ancient Graffiti in Context PDF

Author: Jennifer Baird

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-10-18

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1136894640

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'Ancient Graffiti in Context' brings together papers by historians and archaeologists using graffiti as evidence to explore the Greek and Roman worlds. Illuminating such varied topics as ancient emotions, Roman children and military communities, this book demonstrates the importance of this undervalued form of evidence.

Writing on the Wall

Writing on the Wall PDF

Author: Karen B. Stern

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0691210705

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What ancient graffiti reveals about the everyday lives of Jews in the Greek and Roman world Few direct clues exist to the everyday lives and beliefs of ordinary Jews in antiquity. Prevailing perspectives on ancient Jewish life have been shaped largely by the voices of intellectual and social elites, preserved in the writings of Philo and Josephus and the rabbinic texts of the Mishnah and Talmud. Commissioned art, architecture, and formal inscriptions displayed on tombs and synagogues equally reflect the sensibilities of their influential patrons. The perspectives and sentiments of nonelite Jews, by contrast, have mostly disappeared from the historical record. Focusing on these forgotten Jews of antiquity, Writing on the Wall takes an unprecedented look at the vernacular inscriptions and drawings they left behind and sheds new light on the richness of their quotidian lives. Just like their neighbors throughout the eastern and southern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Egypt, ancient Jews scribbled and drew graffiti everyplace--in and around markets, hippodromes, theaters, pagan temples, open cliffs, sanctuaries, and even inside burial caves and synagogues. Karen Stern reveals what these markings tell us about the men and women who made them, people whose lives, beliefs, and behaviors eluded commemoration in grand literary and architectural works. Making compelling analogies with modern graffiti practices, she documents the overlooked connections between Jews and their neighbors, showing how popular Jewish practices of prayer, mortuary commemoration, commerce, and civic engagement regularly crossed ethnic and religious boundaries. Illustrated throughout with examples of ancient graffiti, Writing on the Wall provides a tantalizingly intimate glimpse into the cultural worlds of forgotten populations living at the crossroads of Judaism, Christianity, paganism, and earliest Islam.

Scribbling Through History

Scribbling Through History PDF

Author: Chloé Ragazzoli

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-07-25

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1350122386

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For most people the mention of graffiti conjures up notions of subversion, defacement, and underground culture. Yet, the term was coined by classical archaeologists excavating Pompeii in the 19th century and has been embraced by modern street culture: graffiti have been left on natural sites and public monuments for tens of thousands of years. They mark a position in time, a relation to space, and a territorial claim. They are also material displays of individual identity and social interaction. As an effective, socially accepted medium of self-definition, ancient graffiti may be compared to the modern use of social networks. This book shows that graffiti, a very ancient practice long hidden behind modern disapproval and street culture, have been integral to literacy and self-expression throughout history. Graffiti bear witness to social events and religious practices that are difficult to track in normative and official discourses. This book addresses graffiti practices, in cultures ranging from ancient China and Egypt through early modern Europe to modern Turkey, in illustrated short essays by specialists. It proposes a holistic approach to graffiti as a cultural practice that plays a key role in crucial aspects of human experience and how they can be understood.

Scribbling through History

Scribbling through History PDF

Author: Chloé Ragazzoli

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-05-31

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1474288839

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For most people the mention of graffiti conjures up notions of subversion, defacement, and underground culture. Yet, the term was coined by classical archaeologists excavating Pompeii in the 19th century and has been embraced by modern street culture: graffiti have been left on natural sites and public monuments for tens of thousands of years. They mark a position in time, a relation to space, and a territorial claim. They are also material displays of individual identity and social interaction. As an effective, socially accepted medium of self-definition, ancient graffiti may be compared to the modern use of social networks. This book shows that graffiti, a very ancient practice long hidden behind modern disapproval and street culture, have been integral to literacy and self-expression throughout history. Graffiti bear witness to social events and religious practices that are difficult to track in normative and official discourses. This book addresses graffiti practices, in cultures ranging from ancient China and Egypt through early modern Europe to modern Turkey, in illustrated short essays by specialists. It proposes a holistic approach to graffiti as a cultural practice that plays a key role in crucial aspects of human experience and how they can be understood.

Graffiti from the Basilica in the Agora of Smyrna

Graffiti from the Basilica in the Agora of Smyrna PDF

Author: Roger S. Bagnall

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2016-10-03

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 1479870730

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An in-depth archaeological report featuring graffiti found during a recent excavation at the Ancient Greek city of Smyrna. The graffiti published in this richly-illustrated volume were discovered during an excavation of the Roman basilica in the Ancient Greek city of Smyrna, known today as Izmir, which is situated on the Aegean coast of modern Turkey. The project, which began in 2003, has unearthed a multitude of graffiti and drawings encompassing a wide range of subjects and interests, including local politics, nautical vessels, sex, and wordplay. Each graffito artifact holds the potential for vast historical and cultural data, rescued in this volume from the passage of time and razing ambitions of urban development. Given the city’s history, the potential wealth of knowledge to be gleamed from these discoveries is substantial: Smyrna has an uninterrupted history of settlement since the Neolithic–Copper ages, and remains today a major city and Mediterranean seaport at the crossroads of key trade routes. The present volume provides comprehensive editions of the texts, descriptions of the drawings, and an extensive introduction to the subjects of the graffiti, how they were produced, and who was responsible for them. A complete set of color photographs is included.

Cultic Graffiti in the Late Antique Mediterranean and Beyond

Cultic Graffiti in the Late Antique Mediterranean and Beyond PDF

Author: Antonio E. Felle

Publisher:

Published: 2021-05-29

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9782503593111

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A volume that collects and discusses the graffiti, scratched or drawn on religious shrines in the first centuries of Christianity and Islam, by ordinary men and women, seeking the help of their God and their favoured saints.

The Brothel of Pompeii

The Brothel of Pompeii PDF

Author: Sarah Levin-Richardson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-05-23

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1108496873

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Offers an in-depth exploration of the only assured brothel from the Greco-Roman world, illuminating the lives of both prostitutes and clients.

Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii

Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii PDF

Author: Kristina Milnor

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-01-30

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 0191509337

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In this volume, Milnor considers how the fragments of textual graffiti which survive on the walls of the Roman city of Pompeii reflect and refract the literary world from which they emerged. Focusing in particular on the writings which either refer to or quote canonical authors directly, Milnor uncovers the influence— in diction, style, or structure—of elite Latin literature as the Pompeian graffiti show significant connections with familiar authors such as Ovid, Propertius, and Virgil. While previous scholarship has described these fragments as popular distortions of well-known texts, Milnor argues that they are important cultural products in their own right, since they are able to give us insight into how ordinary Romans responded to and sometimes rewrote works of canonical literature. Additionally, since graffiti are at once textual and material artefacts, they give us the opportunity to see how such writings gave meaning to, and were given meaning by, the ancient urban environment. Ultimately, the volume looks in detail at the role and nature of 'popular' literature in the early Roman Empire and the place of poetry in the Pompeian cityscape.