This chapter explores the establishemnt of the local mint and its activities from the days of the Seleucid monarchs to the late Roman Empire.

Chapter 4 fundamentally rethinks the identity of “composite” or “hybrid” creatures as they were embodied and experienced in Crete and the southern Cyclades from the late third to mid-second millennium BCE. I argue that, when pondered closely and in their contexts, many of the creatures to which we apply this label in fact would have been experienced not as counterintuitive compounds of body parts stemming from other species, but, instead, as whole beings that were perceived as being similar to a range of other creatures. These lines of similitude could concern matters of form as well as other aspects of the creatures’ natures (e.g., color, efficacies). With this, the traditional category of the “composite” being is set aside as a larger swath of interconnected creatures comes into view. These remarkable creatures share amongst them the quality of having apparent connections both beyond the Aegean, with thingly embodiments of beasts from overseas, and more locally, with other Aegean fabricated and biological animals. An iconic creature of the Aegean Bronze Age, the griffin, provides a jumping off point for different parts of this discussion, as we reconsider the creativity realized in such beasts.

This chapter explores the role of Antioch as a military base for centuries, from the days of the Seleucid kings to the campaigns against the Persians.

Since the 1930s, archaeologists have excavated over 300 mosaics at Antioch and its environs. This essay explores the developments and historiography on Antioch’s mosaics as well as new methodological approaches.

This chapter explores the rise to prominence of Antioch from a nondescript colony to a royal capital.

The materiality of Hellenistic Antioch is confined to a few highly weathered monuments. Nevertheless, the early city plan and urban décor enable the understanding of the urban topography in the following centuries.

This paper examines a Greek Middle Geometric II pottery assemblage recovered during the Tunisian-Spanish excavations in the ancient city of Utica, Tunisia. The ceramics come from the deposit that sealed Well 200017, which further contained animal bones representing the remains of a ritual collective banquet. The ceramics are mainly of Phoenician, Libyan and Sardinian as well as Greek, Italic and Iberian origin. Most of the sherds come from bowls for consumption of food and drinks; there are also a few vessels for serving food and amphoras, while cooking vessels are very scarce. Based on our radiocarbon evidence, the context dates between 965–903 cal BCE, with a lower interval at 832 cal BCE. Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) was carried out on forty-five samples mainly of Geometric pottery in two campaigns. This paper presents the NAA results of the pottery from Utica’s well that were sampled during the first campaign in 2015.

The fourth century AD historian Ammianus Marcellinus remarked that “no wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as are most of the Christians in their deadly hatred of one another.” More to the point, the discussion of the nature of Christ drove a wedge within Christian communities in Antioch as elsewhere and ignited conflicts on a unprecedented scale. This chapter describes how the playing out of these debates had repercussions at all the levels of Antiochene society.

This chapter explores the essential aspect of water harvesting practices in Antioch, whether designed to tap into the Daphne springs to feed the aqueducts and baths or to impound runoff against floods. More subtly, the analysis documents the efforts of the royal and imperial agencies in controlling the city’s water infrastructure.

This paper examines the Protogeometric neck-handled type I transport amphoras at the sites of Elateia and Kynos in Locris, central Greece. Our NAA showed that these vases were imported to Locris most probably from the northern Aegean together with containers of other types such as belly-handled amphoras, which were all previously thought to have been local. The analytical evidence allows a new understanding of economic relations in the Aegean, especially between its northern and central parts. Finally, the PTAs from these sites represent evidence for their variable use in settlement and mortuary contexts such as those of the port site of Kynos and the cemetery of Elateia, where they were deposited as domestic refuse and burial gifts respectively.

The pattern of pottery consumption at the site of Koprivlen in south-eastern Bulgaria radically changed in the Early Iron Age after the appropriation and mass consumption of a ceramic ware of particular technology and of northern Aegean Geometric style. This ware, which was common in three micro-regions, around the Thermaic and Strymonic gulfs and also in the Nevrokop basin, and which probably originated in coastal Macedonia, was surprisingly more common in the remote inland site of Koprivlen than at any other site. This chapter explores issues of technology transfer and consumption of this conspicuous pottery, which is the most noticeable common cultural feature in the material culture of central, eastern and Pirin Macedonia during the Early Iron Age. Contextual analysis of this pottery demonstrates both copying and demic diffusion in its technology transfer and spatial differentiation in its consumption pattern.

A systematic review of the Classical, Late Antique, and Byzantine sources that underpin the study of Antioch.

This chapter explores intellectual responses to disasters and the creation and use of the disaster-divine wrath discourse as it spread from homilies to histories over time. It argues for centering human responses to disaster as the way forward using critical disaster theory.