Search results for " ancient"
showing 10 items of 269 documents
Epicureanism
2019
A brief sketch of the reception of Epicureanism in early modern natural philosophy and metaphysics (15th-18th centuries)
Scrittore epicureo anonimo, Opera incerta (PHerc. 1390/908). Edizione, introduzione e commentario, tavole
2019
Il singolare scritto adespoto e anepigrafo trasmesso da PHerc. 1390/908 e convenzionalmente definito ‘Sulla procreazione’ o ‘Sulla generazione’ rappresenta per il suo soggetto un unicum nella collezione ercolanese – dove, com’è noto, non trovano posto opere di natura medica o paramedica – e insieme alla sezione conclusiva del IV libro del De rerum natura di Lucrezio, l’unica trattazione epicurea di una certa estensione sul tema. Di esso, tradizionalmente assegnato a Epicuro e ora attribuito al filosofo epicureo Demetrio Lacone (II secolo a.C.), si propone in questa sede la prima edizione critica complessiva munita di introduzione e commento. The peculiar anonymous text handed down by PHerc.…
Review of M. Beretta, La rivoluzione culturale di Lucrezio. Filosofia e scienza nell'antica Roma (Rome: Carocci, 2015)
2018
By reviewing Marco Beretta's recent book on Lucretius' "cultural revolution" and its intellectual foundations, the present article re-assesses several key issues of the current debate about the literary, philosophical, and scientific value of De Rerum Natura.
Travestirsi per Dioniso
2020
Starting from the definition of “performativity” and “gender parody” developed by Judith Butler, this paper aims to investigate the performative functions of male cross-dressing within the dynamics of social categorization in classical Athens. For this purpose I have adopted an eclectic hermeneutic toolbox, borrowing elements from Harvey Sacks’ Membership Categorization Analysis to René Girard’s scapegoat theory. Through the philological analysis of some literary representations of transvestism, such as Pentheus’ cross-dressing in Euripides’ "Bacchae", and the anthropological interpretation of the mythical-ritual complex relating to the effeminacy of Dionysus, my work focuses on the polyval…
The diverse genetic origins of a Classical period Greek army.
2022
Trade and colonization caused an unprecedented increase in Mediterranean human mobility in the first millennium BCE. Often seen as a dividing force, warfare is in fact another catalyst of culture contact. We provide insight into the demographic dynamics of ancient warfare by reporting genome-wide data from fifth-century soldiers who fought for the army of the Greek Sicilian colony of Himera, along with representatives of the civilian population, nearby indigenous settlements, and 96 present-day individuals from Italy and Greece. Unlike the rest of the sample, many soldiers had ancestral origins in northern Europe, the Steppe, and the Caucasus. Integrating genetic, archaeological, isotopic, …
The Virtual Reconstruction of the Aesculapius and Hygeia Statues from the Sanctuary of Isis in Lilybaeum: Methods and Tools for Ancient Sculptures’ E…
2022
Thanks to recent technological developments in 3D surveys, computer graphics and virtual reality, new scenarios have been opened for the documentation and enhancement of ancient sculptures. When not totally preserved, sculptures can be digitally reproduced, modified and visualized to simulate their physical or virtual reconstruction in a non-invasive way for specialists or for dissemination aims. The virtual sculptural reconstruction process starts usually from the 3D survey of real fragments, and then continues by integrating missing parts with 3D modelling techniques by means of source evaluation. Along with primary data sources (reality-based model), secondary data sources (photos, drawi…
2000 years of parallel societies in Stone Age Central Europe.
2013
Farming or Fishing Evidence has been mounting that most modern European populations originated from the immigration of farmers who displaced the hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic. Bollongino et al. (p. 479 , published online 10 October) present analyses of palaeogenetic and isotopic data from Neolithic human skeletons from the Blätterhöhle burial site in Germany. The analyses identify a Neolithic freshwater fish–eating hunter-gatherer group, living contemporaneously and in close proximity to a Neolithic farming group. While there is some evidence that hunter-gatherer women may have admixed into the farming population, it appears likely that marriage or cultural boundaries between the group…
The sunset of Gortyn: amphorae in 7th –8th centuries AD
2014
Gortyn (A. Di Vita [ed.] 2000-01), some new contexts, more delimited and reliable, allow us to define better circulation, developments, and local use of amphorae in the last periods of urban life of the Cretan city. Two contexts of the mid-late 7th and late 7th-8th centuries are briefly analysed, coming from different quarters of the town (the Old Agora and the Early Byzantine houses near the “Praetorium”), and resulting from different formative processes, which could represent the circulation trends just before, and in the re-occupation phase after the earthquake that dismembered the Late Roman urban layout at the end of the 7th/early 8th century. They display a variety of imports from tra…
Ancestry and demography and descendants of Iron Age nomads of the Eurasian Steppe
2017
During the 1st millennium before the Common Era (BCE), nomadic tribes associated with the Iron Age Scythian culture spread over the Eurasian Steppe, covering a territory of more than 3,500 km in breadth. To understand the demographic processes behind the spread of the Scythian culture, we analysed genomic data from eight individuals and a mitochondrial dataset of 96 individuals originating in eastern and western parts of the Eurasian Steppe. Genomic inference reveals that Scythians in the east and the west of the steppe zone can best be described as a mixture of Yamnaya-related ancestry and an East Asian component. Demographic modelling suggests independent origins for eastern and western g…
Correction for Frantz et al., Ancient pigs reveal a near-complete genomic turnover following their introduction to Europe
2020
Significance Archaeological evidence indicates that domestic pigs arrived in Europe, alongside farmers from the Near East ∼8,500 y ago, yet mitochondrial genomes of modern European pigs are derived from European wild boars. To address this conundrum, we obtained mitochondrial and nuclear data from modern and ancient Near Eastern and European pigs. Our analyses indicate that, aside from a coat color gene, most Near Eastern ancestry in the genomes of European domestic pigs disappeared over 3,000 y as a result of interbreeding with local wild boars. This implies that pigs were not domesticated independently in Europe, yet the first 2,500 y of human-mediated selection applied by Near Eastern Ne…