Current Book Project 2009-11: Space and Society in the Greek and Roman worlds This project, to be published by Cambridge University Press within their Key Themes in Ancient History series, is based on the idea that spaces and spatial structures both construct and are constructed by their users as part of a continuous process. The book seeks to demonstrate that the analysis of such spatial interaction is a usable, useful and indeed important way for ancient historians to approach a well-rounded study of the ancient world. The book will undertake this task through a series of case studies, which will use different types of spatial analysis to investigate different spaces in different parts and time periods of the ancient world. The case studies will not be limited to single sites, nor indeed to settlements at all, but will also investigate the construction of space within literary texts and through epigraphic as well as archaeological evidence. The conclusions reached will thus not only be of interest to the particular places and texts discussed, but also help to demonstrate how spatial analysis can offer greater texture and depth to our historical understanding of places and events, cultural phenomena, human interaction, as well as the plurality of ways in which the ancient world could be, and should be, seen and understood. Current Research 2010-5 “Material Culture and Greek Religion” Research on the politics of Greek religious sanctuaries has brought to light a problem with the historical scholarship of Greek religion. While archaeological scholarship on the material culture within Greek sanctuaries has itself been fragmented, it has, more seriously, been entirely cut off from the study of Greek religious practice. Religious practice has become the preserve of historians working from literary texts and religious material culture the preserve of archaeologists. Such a dichotomy prevents any really integrated and realistic understanding of the experience of Greek religion from being formulated as religious practice is studied in isolation from its physical context. A better, more comprehensive understanding can only be constructed through the study of all the types of evidence available - literary and inscriptional as a well as archaeological - coupled with a more sensitive approach to the particular contexts of the archaeological material. This research project thus seeks to ask four main questions of different chronologically and geographically varied case studies of different types of religious practice (I envisage Athens, Delos and Kos being major sites of enquiry). First, how did the use of material culture facilitate, respond to, and influence the functioning and experience of particular religious practices? Second, to what extent and in what ways did the actual literary and inscriptional evidence refer to, and interact with, the material culture of these practices? Third, to what extent does a consideration of the role of material culture highlight a trajectory of change in religious practices, in contrast to our current, static, literary based, understanding? Fourth, to what extent did other economic, social, political and physical influences have an effect on the relationship between material culture and religious practice and to what extent did the material culture mediate this influence? As a result of these case studies, this research will draw together conclusions on how the changing relationship of material culture and religious practice influenced the development, variety, perception and experience of Greek religion, which will go some way to filling the present gap in our scholarship and act as a springboard for future research. Ph.D: 2004 - 2007 “The Spatial Politics of a Greek sanctuary: Delphi 650-300BC” Ph.D. Research Project Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, UK Past archaeological scholarship on religious sanctuaries has focused either on individual structures within these spaces (the micro level) or on the sanctuary’s place in the wider landscape (the macro level). Such a bi-polar approach has ignored the fundamental importance of the intermediary layer between these two extremes: the sanctuary site itself. As such, past scholarship has prevented the development of a well rounded and integrated understanding of the physical sanctuary space, despite recent theoretical scholarship in archaeology and anthropology having emphasised more generally the importance of this ‘middle level’ and developing useful investigative approaches with which to analyse it. The sanctuary site of Delphi, which formed the case study for the project, has suffered greatly from this disregard for the middle level. It has been defined as a sanctuary in which exceptionally energetic interactions took place between cities, states and individuals from all corners of the Greek world through their consultation of the oracle and their competitive material offerings to the Gods within the sanctuary. It was a panhellenic site of “peer-polity interaction”. Yet past scholarship has failed to investigate thoroughly this interaction because of its disregard for the middle level and its focus instead either on isolated individual structures or on the wider landscape. Such a disregard for the middle level has also meant that the sanctuary’s development over time has rarely been studied, except in its barest form. Recent research has sort to address this balance by analysing the earliest phases of the sanctuary, but scholarship has yet to engage fully with a proper spatial and chronological investigation of the sanctuary during its busiest time: the archaic and classical periods. My Ph.D. re-investigates Delphi, exploiting and developing the new theoretical tools available, to produce a more detailed and realistic understanding of that interaction and thus of Delphi’s changing place in the ancient world during the archaic and classical periods. It draws three main conclusions. First, that the site was exceptionally well set up to encourage such interaction. Second, that this interaction was incredibly varied both geographically and chronologically, but also in its fervour, its tone and its purpose. Third, that Delphi was not destined, as past scholarship has argued, for continual international acclaim. Its history was actually one of recurring absenteeism. Yet its developing importance came from its ability to act as a long term material record of the history of the Greek world, and thus as a unique place in which the Greeks could engage with and negotiate their own perceptions of the past. As such, the nature and extent of Delphic panhellenism, as well as panhellenism in general, is called into question. 2005 - Museums in the 21st Century Museums increasingly have to fight for, and justify, their existence in the 21st century. Government money is becoming scarcer. Government guidelines on how museums should reach out to a wider public are becoming more demanding. Corporate sponsorship for special exhibitions, both in the US and the UK, is on the decline. The demands of private sponsors, and a new breed of ‘exhibition companies’, who run exhibitions exclusively for profit, batter at the doors of museum independence and integrity. At the same time, museums themselves have to fight for audiences, who have a myriad of alternative entertainments to choose from, and who often claim that museum exhibitions are uninspiring and unengaging. This summer, I have been working with 15 museums across the US, Canada and the UK to analyse these challenges, the pressures they create, and the potential ways forward for museums in the 21st century. Covering 20,000 miles from the British Museum in London, to New York’s Metropolitan Museum on the East Coast and LA’s Getty Museum on the West Coast, I met and debated these issues, in over 30 hours of interviews, with the directors of 15 major museums, whose direction in the next decade will be critical for establishing the roles that museums play in 21st century society. At each institution I met with the Director and an exhibition designer, as well as often with a curator and educator. At each institution, I was interested in how the museums understood their role in society, the factors that affected the role they could play (sources of finance, organisational structure etc) and how that perception of their role, the internal tensions of the institution, as well as their perception of potential audiences, influenced the way they choose to design the museum layouts and collections. That is to say, how did all these important factors which have been under the microscope in different arenas contribute to create the museum experience: the point at which the audience interacted with the museum on the museum floor. In my report, I outline three of the major problems currently faced by museums in the UK and North America and show how they have the potential to affect the museum experience. Those three problems are: first, the acquisition and control of sufficient private and public funding; second, the way in which museums create and design their exhibitions and permanent collections; third, the way in which museums conceive of, and interact with, the audience. I look at each of these problems in detail, analysing some of the different experiences of, and perspectives on, these issues in different museums before highlighting possible solutions to the problems. In conclusion, I sum up and develop some of the ideas presented for tackling these three areas. Please review a copy of my paper Museums in the 21st Century in Word format. |
