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Landscapes of Greece: monuments and memorable places March 3, 2009. Susa, Iran - palimpsest landscapes and archaeology. Archaeology questions of memory and its materialized forms of the past. memory from the conceptual toolkit of the archaeologist.
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Landscapes of Greece: monuments and memorable places March 3, 2009
Archaeology questions of memory and its materialized forms of the past memory from the conceptual toolkit of the archaeologist
“Greece, the captive, took her savage victor captive, and brought the arts into rustic Latium” Horace, Epistles 2.1.156
Romanization of the Mediterranean? Julius Ceasar planning for a condo complex in Gaul (from Asterix) (sites of resistance)
Macedonia Epirus Thessaly Boeotia Western Asia Attica Crete
The problem of Roman Greece
Romanization and the Eastern Mediterranean - appropriation of existinc economic and socio-cultural frameworks - establishment of a strong maritime network supported by a complex networkk of Roman roads- paved highways of the time with milestones - military interventions, resettlement of populations - creation of Roman provinces and provincial administration involving transformation of landscapes, new practices of land ownership, new urban foundations, introduction of new cult practices
memory : not a passive engagement with the past but something that needs reworking of the past under new political conditions, new social configurations
memory : not a consumption of the past but a creative production of the past nostalgia nostos “returning home” algos “pain” - lit. “painful desire to return” "the pain a person feels because he wishes to return to his native home, and fears never to see it again" (a pathological condition 17th. c.) - “the contemplation of a preferred past from the standpoint of an altered present” (Alcock 40) - longing for an idealized past • a memory practice as • political tactic of resistence?
West of Dyme, Greece Centuriation: Roman land allotment
Landscape transformation in Roman Greece (rural, provincial, civic, cultic) - relative abandonment of the countryside and the diminishing of rural cult activity • shifts in land ownership in favor of the wealthy • (Roman villas/latifundia?) • demise of certain small cities as they lacked the economic • power or the glorious history to compete
Sanctuary of Poseidon Isthmia
Ruins as commemoration: Old Parthenon as a ruin in the 5th century Acropolis
memory : not a consumption of the past but a creative production of the past