1 - 10 of 70 results for: CLASSART

Preference to freshmen. Archaeology is a maturing science and interdisciplinary field. Nations often focus on archaeological sites and finds, material remains of pasts valued for what they signify to the present. The early years of archaeological projects, from the 16th-18th century: art, historical interest in the ancient world, and the classical tradition are connected to the development of the topographical and field survey in northern Europe, and aristocratic collections with the emergence of the experimental method in the natural sciences. The excavations of Pompeii, a revival of interest in ancient Greece, Napoleon¿s expedition to Egypt, and Jefferson¿s archaeological theories against a background of revolutionary enlightenment Europe. (Shanks)

Imperial Rome was the largest city in the ancient world with a population of ca one million people. The Severan Marble Plan of Rome, a map carved in the early 3rd century depicting every street, temple, bathing complex, alleyway, building, courtyard, room in the city, is the research focus of Stanford¿s Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project, http://formaurbis.stanford.edu. Students work with the Marble Plan to analyze its fragments to understand the urban fabric and organization of space in imperial Rome.

The materials and practices of classical Archaeology, from the Bronze Age Aegean through classical Greece and the Roman Empire. Huts and palaces, tombs and temples, and the structuring roles of the environment, demography, religion, and power. Sites include: Troy, Thera, Athens, Rome, Pompeii. Techniques include stratigraphic excavation, art historical analysis, carbon dating, and osteoarchaeology.

Preference to sophomores. Focus is on excavation, features and finds, arguments over interpretation, and the place of each site in understanding the archaeological history of Europe. Goal is to introduce the latest archaeological and anthropological thought, and raise key questions about ancient society. The archaeological perspective foregrounds interdisciplinary study: geophysics articulated with art history, source criticism with analytic modeling, statistics interpretation. A web site with resources about each site, including plans, photographs, video, and publications, is the basis for exploring.

Given the importance of art to all aspects of their lives the Greeks had reason to respect their artists. Yet potters, painters and even sculptors possessed little social standing. Why did the Greeks value the work of craftsmen but not the men themselves? Why did Herodotus dismiss those who worked with their hands as "mechanics?" What prompted Homer to claim that, "there is no greater glory for a man¿ than what he achieves with his own hands," provided that he was throwing a discus and not a vase on a wheel? Painted pottery was essential to the religious and secular lives of the Greeks. Libations to the gods and to the dead required vases from which to pour them. Economic prosperity depended on the export of wine and oil in durable clay containers. At home, vases depicting gods and heroes reinforced Greek values and helped parents to educate their children. Ceramic sets with scenes of Dionysian excess were reserved for elite symposia from which craftsmen were excluded. Sculptors were less lowly but even those who carved the Parthenon's pediments and frieze were still "mechanics," with soft bodies and soft minds (Xenophon), "indifferent to higher things" (Plutarch). The seminar addresses these issues. Students will read and discuss texts, write response papers and present slide lectures on aspects of the artist's profession.

The idea of landscape, a genre of painting or photography, experiences of the countryside, notions of place at the hearth of national identity. Landscape is about people¿s relationship with environment, land, place, and history. The classical tradition: how a range of disciplines and media since the 18th century have approached this idea. Topics: landscape in painting, modes of visiting in European romanticism, contemporary land and environmental art, new human geographies of place, landscape architectural and garden designs, anthropological perspectives on people¿s relationship with land and landscape archaeology. Interdisciplinary links, locating this continuous ideological field in its historical and intellectual context.

Capstone course for Archaeology majors, focusing on the contemporary practices and impact of archaeology. Issues of archaeology and globalization, cultural heritage and patrimony, tourism, and the international trade in antiquities. The interactions of nationalism, religion, and archaeology, and what ethical archeological practices mean in highly charged political situations. Museums and archaeology, and archaeology in popular culture. Topics: NAGPRA, Kennewick Man, the recent repatriation of the Teotihuacan murals, the smuggling and sale of Yaxchilan Mayan glyphs, the vicissitudes of Priam¿s Treasures, the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan, and the 1997 massacre of foreign tourists at Luxor, Egypt. (Trimble, Hunt)

The Roman town of Pompeii, buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E., provides information about the art and archaeology of ancient social life, urban technology and production, and ancient spatial patterns and experience. Its fame illustrates modern relationships to the ancient past, from Pompeii's importance on the Grand Tour, to plaster casts of vaporized bodies, to debates about reconstruction, preservation, and archaeological methods.

The material remains of Greek civilization, including architecture, art, and written sources, and how to interpret them; what they reveal about the world of the Greeks and about current western civilization. How has reception of the classical past influenced modern political and social development? Topics include: the palace societies of the Bronze Age, the archaic age of colonization and the rise of the polis; the beginnings of classical Athenian democracy; and the conquests of Alexander the Great.