Population boom, droughts contributed to collapse of ancient Assyrian Empire
Researchers draw parallels between decline of Assyrian civilization and today’s situation in Syria and Iraq
Some Notes about an Early African Pool of Cultures from which Emerged the Egyptian Civilisation
Until the 1980s, there was alack of archaeological excavation in Egypt’s WesternDesert. Today, the historical genetics of the Nile Valley,which is at one and the same time the ‘crossroad and refugium’, and the ‘Saharan affinities’ of the Predynastic Egyptians, have begun to be clearly identified
The shape of the Roman world
‘ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World’ simulates the time and price costs of travel by land, river and sea across the mature imperial transportation network, notionally approximating conditions around 200 CE. In the version used for this paper, the model links some 750 sites (mostly cities but also some landmarks such as passes and promontories) by means of c.85,000 kilometers of Roman roads selected to represent the principal arterial connections throughout the empire.
Family matters, Economy, culture and biology: fertility and its constraints in Roman Italy
However, the theory concerning fertility behaviour during the Late Roman Republic that has been put forward by Brunt depends largely on such viewpoints as have become controversial in the discipline of demography. Rather than purely economic and rational in scope, decision making processes – such as those concerning marriage and procreation – are embedded in specific cultural and social settings that affect outcomes through the creation or upholding of practical, structural, normative or perceived constraints.
The role of the chantress in ancient Egypt
The goal of this study is to determine what it meant to be a Sm-r, or chantress, in ancient
Egypt. Very little is known about the specifics of the title or the types of people who held it. Surprisingly, there is also a male version of the title, Smr, but the female version is by far the more prevalent. It is the women who held this title that will be the focus of this study.
Slavery in the Roman Empire: Numbers and Origins
Though slavery was a prevailing feature of all Mediterranean countries in antiquity, the Romans had more slaves and depended more on them than any other people.
Burial customs and the pollution of death in ancient Rome: procedures and paradoxes
In this study the traditions relating to the correct preparation of the body and the subsequent funerary procedures leading up to inhumation or incineration are reviewed and the influence of social status is considered.
The bare necessities? a comparative study of the material evidence for Roman medical practice in urban domestic and army spheres
The aim of this thesis is not to reproduce that research but to examine the material evidence for medicine and medical practice used in it, in particular the instruments and buildings where medicine might have been practiced and, through comparison of the data, to see what similarities and differences there were between medicine in the domestic and army spheres.
Greco-Roman sex ratios and femicide in comparative perspective
Is it possible to demonstrate that ancient Greeks or Romans disposed of newborn daughters in ways that skewed sex ratios in favor of males?
Troy and Homer
Troy and Homer Ian Morris Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: November (2005) Abstract This is a review of Joachim Latacz’s book Troy and…