Identities in Antiquity is multi-disciplinary platform for the synthetic study of ancient identities, set in a more rounded and inclusive notion of Antiquity, spanning the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond from the third millennium BCE until the early Middle Ages.
Identities in Antiquity is multi-disciplinary platform for the synthetic study of ancient identities, set in a more rounded and inclusive notion of Antiquity.
The volume showcases methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of ancient identities by scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and career stages. In doing so, it promotes a more holistic approach to the study of ancient identities, facilitating comparisons between different periods and disciplines and generating new knowledge in the process. Chapters illustrating the intersecting, multifaceted, and mutable (or else highly immutable) nature of ancient identities address themes such as ethnicity, race, gender, mobility, religion, and elite and sub-elite identities most notably that of the enslaved in case studies spanning the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond, from the third millennium BCE until the early Middle Ages.
The volume is suitable for students and scholars working on the Ancient Near East, the Graeco-Roman Worlds, Late Antiquity, and Byzantium, offering a valuable contribution to the study of past identities and the internal workings of ancient societies.
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Notes on contributors
Introduction
Joseph Skinner, Vicky Manolopoulou, and Christina Tsouparopoulou
PART I Approaching ancient identities
1 Challenging essentialism: disentangling ancient and modern notions of
ethnicity
Johannes Siapkas
2 Elite identities: Greece and Egypt in comparative perspective
Matthew Haysom
3 The identities of enslaved persons
Kostas Vlassopoulos
4 Personal names and identity: a socio-onomastic approach to naming practices
in the ancient world
Andreas Gavrielatos
5 Religious identities in ancient cities
Jörg Rüpke
6 Open dynamic stewardship: alternatives to understanding diversity and
transformation
Elena Isayev
PART II The ancient Near East
7 Construction of gender identities in Mesopotamia
Agnčs Garcia-Ventura and Saana Svärd
8 Mercantile and religious identities in Anatolia in the Middle Bronze Age
Yamur Heffron and Nancy Highcock
9 The identities of enslaved persons in ancient Mesopotamia
J. Nicholas Reid
10 Exilic communities in Babylonia
Laurie Pearce
11 Ancient Judaism: nation, ethnicity, or religion?
Erich S. Gruen
PART III The Mediterranean world until the age of the successors
12 A community of practice perspective on craft production and culture change
in the Bronze Age Cyclades
Natalie Abell
13 Reconstructing Phoenician identities: a glass half-full
Carolina López-Ruiz
14 Transcultural tokens of identity: the mechanics of crossing borders in the
ancient Mediterranean
Denise Demetriou
15 Classical Greek racism 294
Thomas Harrison
16 Race and the Athenian metic
Rebecca Futo Kennedy
17 Greek local identity and Greek local history
Daniel Tober
PART IV The Roman world: from early republic to late empire
18 Roman aristocratic family identity in the Late Republic and Early Empire
Gary D. Farney
19 Identities of enslaved persons in the Roman world
Christer Bruun
20 Identity construction in Alexandria: Greeks, Jews and Romans
Kimberley Czajkowski
21 Roman military identities
Andrew Gardner
PART V From Late Antiquity until the Early Middle Ages: Rome, Byzantium and
others
22 Peripheral identities: ethnicity, Anglo-Saxons and the Stützarmfibeln
James Gerrard
23 The identity of the Huns
Hyun Jin Kim
24 Sacrifice, banquets, and drunken elephants: the problem of Christian
identity in Libaniuss Oration 30
Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos
25 The open secret of Byzantiums national identity
Anthony Kaldellis
26 Demarcating Rome: the papal strategy of Othering and the re-invention of
Greeks
Clemens Gantner
27 The case of Manuel I Komnenos: articulating identity through gender,
sexuality, and racialization
Roland Betancourt
Index
Joseph Skinner is Senior Lecturer in Ancient Greek History at Newcastle University. His publications include The Invention of Greek Ethnography: From Homer to Herodotus (New York, 2012), and (as co-editor) Ancient Ethnography: New Approaches (London, 2013) and Herodotus and the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2020).
Vicky Manolopoulou is Research Fellow in Environmental History at CaFoscari University, Venice. Her work centres on the intersection of landscape studies, environmental humanities, and the history of emotions, focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean during the first millennium. Key research interests include human environment interactions, emotions, ritual, and mnemonic landscapes.
Christina Tsouparopoulou is Assistant Professor in Near Eastern Archaeology and History at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, Honorary Research Fellow at Durham University and Editor of Near Eastern Archaeology. Her work bridges the material, visual, and textual culture of the ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean.
More info about Taylor & Francis e-books