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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).nnThe 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 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.

Introduction to the archaeology of the ancient Roman empire. From Rome to Pompeii, Masada to Vindolanda, we look at Roman warfare and imperialism, cities and religion, households and everyday life. Key themes include the interactions of social structure with built space and objects. Students will learn to analyze archaeological evidence, evaluate arguments, explore political uses of the ancient past, and draw on material data to built broader insights.

The development of Greek art and culture from protogeometric beginnings to the Persian Wars, 1000-480 B.C.E. The genesis of a native Greek style; the orientalizing phase during which contact with the Near East and Egypt transformed Greek art; and the synthesis of East and West in the 6th century B.C.E.

The course explores the art and architecture of the Athenian Empire in the age of Pericles, and then considers the effects of civil war and plague on Greek art and society in the later 5th and early 4th centuries.

This introduction to the history of architecture traces domed architecture, sacred and secular, from the 1st century BC to the 20th century AD. Themes include pre-modern cosmology and the dome as microcosm; innovations in engineering and the history of geometry; structural and painted illusionism; the dome as religious symbol, urban landmark, and national or political monument; social, religious, and political history and symbolism. Individual case studies range from Hadrian to Richard Rogers.

Ancient and modern ideas about the body as ideal and site of lived experience. Themes include representation, portrayal, power, metamorphosis, and replication. Works that exemplify Roman ideas of heroism and power versus works portraying nude women, erotic youth, preserved corpses, and suffering enemies. Recommended: background in ancient Mediterranean art, archaeology, history, or literature. May be repeated for credit.

This course and its study trip to the Getty (Los Angeles) to view the new Byzantine exhibition explores the art and architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean: Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Damascus, Thessaloniki, and Palermo, 4th-15th centuries. Applying an innovative approach, we will probe questions of phenomenology and aesthetics, focusing our discussion on the performance and appearance of spaces and objects in the changing diurnal light, in the glitter of mosaics and in the mirror reflection and translucency of marble.