Tuesday, October 20, 2026

The Porphyry Ceiling. Ethnicity and Power in the Late Roman Empire

Storti, Gemma

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Greek and Latin

My dissertation investigates how questions of ethnicity affected social mobility in the military and political context of the late Roman empire. In particular, I focus on individuals of the fourth and fifth centuries whose ethnic profiles can be defined as non-Roman, and I illustrate how their ethnic `otherness' could be considered as a liability for advancement in the Roman state. Through the analysis of selected case studies, I show that invisible barriers to recognition and promotion were in place in the late Roman world for individuals with a non-Roman pedigree. The careers of Alaric, Gainas, Stilicho, Aspar, Arbogast, Ricimer, Magnentius, and Zeno testify to the existence of these barriers, which I call the `Porphyry Ceiling' after the modern notion of the Glass Ceiling.

Committee: Anthony Kaldellis (Advisor) 

 

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Bishops and Books: Literary Authenticity and Authority in Early Christianity

Bishops and Books: Literary Authenticity and Authority in Early Christianity
Koperski, Andrew

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, History

This dissertation examines early Christian literary hierarchies and categories, beginning in the pre-Christian context of the Hellenistic world and ending in the early Middle Ages. While scholars have long studied the formation of the biblical canon and the development of ancillary classes of text, such as the so-called “apocrypha,” many accounts of this history struggle to evince how these intellectual and institutional categories changed over time, which tends to obscure early Christian intellectual nuance and circumspection. This project improves our understanding by rooting early Christian evaluation of sacred (or potentially sacred) literature in the literary criticism of the classical world. It finds that, over the course of centuries, early Christianity generally moved away from the question of textual authenticity to the question of theological authority. In many cases, this movement corresponded to the maturation of the institutional episcopacy, particularly in the post-Constantinian era. Consequently, while Hellenistic literary criticism had once provided the chief template for Christians to evaluate books, hierarchies of text became increasingly institutionalized and supposed to have been settled by earlier authorities. By the sixth century, some Christian commentators forgot the meaning of the older categories altogether.

Committee: Kristina Sessa (Advisor) 
 

 

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Coastal Archaeology in Small Islands: Prehistoric Lifeways, Research Perceptions, Biases, Methods and Approaches

Edited by Maaike S. de Waal

The potential of investigating archaeology on small islands has long been underestimated. Non-local archaeologists often regard such islands as offering (too) few opportunities for prehistoric use and habitation due to limited resources and isolation, whereas prehistoric communities saw them as resource-rich and well-connected. Accessibility and logistical challenges further affect research on small or remote islands, reflecting modern biases shaped by reliance on cars and (digital) infrastructure.

This volume brings together research projects on prehistoric coastal archaeology in islands now perceived as ‘small’ or ‘remote’. Divided into five sections, it includes 14 chapters by 23 contributors, covering case studies from the Cyclades (Greece), Adriatic (Croatia), Mediterranean, Galician Atlantic (Spain), Kalmarsund (Sweden), Scotland, Fiji, Japan, and the Caribbean.

The contributions address themes such as insularity, interaction, and connectivity, as well as biases linked to ideas of remoteness and isolation. By examining what islands offered to prehistoric communities and tracing the continuous use of coastal locations, the volume shows that these were not marginal areas but activity hotspots. It also considers coastal erosion, threatened heritage, island ecology, and prehistoric resource use and adaptation.

It is hoped that this volume will inspire local and non-local archaeologists and archaeology enthusiasts to collaborate in documenting, investigating, and protecting coastal heritage in small islands.

Paperback ISBN: 9789464264630 | Hardback ISBN: 9789464264647 | Imprint: Sidestone Press | Format: 182x257mm | 282 pp. | Language: English | 5 illus. (bw) | 71 illus. (fc) | Keywords: small islands; coastal archaeology; prehistory; coastal processes; remoteness; site survival | download cover | DOI: 10.59641/s3v9p0q1r2 | CC-license: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

 

List of Figures and Tables

SECTION ONE. INTRODUCTION

Foreword
Helen Dawson

1. Introduction: Coastal Archaeology in Small Islands
Maaike S. de Waal

2. Island Archaeology: An Integrative Review from a Maritime Perspective
Veronica Walker Vadillo, & Kristin Ilves

SECTION TWO. MOBILITY, CONNECTEDNESS, AND INSULARITY

3. Connecting the Coastline. Visibility and Coastal Navigation in the Southern Coastline of Menorca during the Late Bronze Age
Alejandra Galmés-Alba, & Manuel Calvo Trias

4. Transporting Parian and Naxian Marble in the Cyclades
Judith Muñoz-Sogas

5. The Relevance of ‘Far-Flung’ Island Landscapes in Prehistoric Scotland: Loch Roag and the Complex of Calanais
Gail Higginbottom, Vincent Mom, & Mike Efstathiou

6. Challenging Concepts of Remoteness in the Outer Hebrides
Emily Gal, & Rebecca Rennell

7. Beachware as a Cultural Resource in Prehistoric Small Island Societies: Examples from the Western Isles, Scotland, and the Ryukyu Islands, Japan
Matt Law

SECTION THREE. METHODS

8. Project SENTINELA. Monitoring and Documenting the Erosive Processes on the Cultural Heritage of the Galician Atlantic Islands
Patricia Valle Abad, Alba Antía Rodríguez Novoa, Marta Lago Cerviño, & Adolfo Fernández Fernández

9. Three Eroding Shetland Sites: Community Monitoring and Targeted Investigation
Ellie Graham

10. Pre-colonial Indigenous Settlement in Eroding Coastal Landscapes. The Sites of Little Bay, Boscobelle Bay, and Skeetes Bay Plateau, Barbados
Maaike S. de Waal

SECTION FOUR. LANDSCAPE NARRATIVES

11. From Defense to Display: Bronze Age Hillforts on the Small Adriatic Island of Ist
Pio Domines Peter

12. What a Clam Can Reveal: Understanding Settlement Realignment c. 2500 cal yr BP in Southwestern Viti Levu, Fiji
Roselyn Kumar, Frank R. Thomas, and Amy Prendergast

13. Within the Stories of a Landscape – Archaeology and Folklore on The Blue Maiden, a Pristine Island in the Kalmar Strait
Kenneth Alexandersson & Anna-Karin Karlsson

SECTION FIVE. CONCLUSIONS

14. Epilogue: Looking Back and Looking Forwards
Maaike S. de Waal

Acknowledgements
Author Biographies

 

 

 
 

 

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Unforeseeable Futures: Confronting Crises in the Archaeology of Highland Societies

Edited by Susan Pollock, Reinhard Bernbeck, Gisela Eberhardt, and Martin Kehl 

Despite their apparent ubiquity today, archaeologists have seldom focused explicitly on crises. The authors in this book take up the challenge of doing so, drawing on archaeological cases from a wide temporal and spatial range. In addition to identifying crises, the contributions search for the factors that underlie them. These range from climate to disease, environmental destruction, sudden natural events such as volcanic eruptions, and intra- or intersocietal conflicts.

Factors are often intertwined in complex ways that lead to emergent properties and that can neither be attributable solely to anthropogenic nor to natural causes. Coping with crises include rearrangements of ways of life, such as increasing or decreasing mobility, the use of alternative (‘second-choice’) food sources, recourse to intensified or newly developed rituals, demise of old institutions and/or the building of new ones, and small-scale acts of subversion.

This book is the fifth volume of a series published by the German-Iranian research cooperation “The Iranian Highlands: Resiliences and Integration in Premodern Societies”. The goal of the research project is to shine a new light on communities and societies that populated the Iranian highlands and their more or less successful strategies to cope with the many vagaries, the constant changes and risks of their natural and humanly shaped environments.

 Paperback ISBN: 9789464271713 | Hardback ISBN: 9789464271720 | Imprint: Sidestone Press Academics | Format: 210x280mm | 228 pp. | The Iranian Highlands. Early Societies between Resilience and Integration 5 | Language: English | 19 illus. (bw) | 63 illus. (fc) | Keywords: crisis in archaeology; crisis factors; coping with crisis; highland societies; resilience; climate change; migration | download cover | DOI: 10.59641/y3b9v0w1x2 | CC-license: CC BY 4.0

 

Crises – An Introduction
Reinhard Bernbeck, Susan Pollock, and Martin Kehl

Characterising crises

Crises of Our Own Making: Finding a Way Out of the Resilience Myth for Archaeology
Matthew C. Reilly

Are Archaeologists Crisis-philic? Exploring the Nexus of Climate Change and Migration
Sepideh Maziar

Politics, religion, and crises

How did the Elamites Cope with Crises? Looking at the Gap between the Middle and the Neo-Elamite Period
Rafiei-Alavi

Is This Burning an Eternal Flame? Political Crises and Dynastic Cults in Southwest Asia during Antiquity
Michael Brown

Death at the beginning of life. Medieval and early modern infant burial as response to multiple crises and what we can learn from it today
Barbara Hausmair

Environment and Crises

Climate and Crises: Towards an Eventful and Punctuated Prehistory
Felix Riede

Dehqaed’s Natural Crises and the Challenge of Flooding
Zohreh Zehbari

Fending off Crises with Porosity: Sand, Water and Wind in the Helmand Basin
Moslem Mishmastnehi and Reinhard Bernbeck

Resources, technology, and crisis

Probing Criticality: Sliding Scales of Crisis in Two Highland Societies
Reinhard Bernbeck, Susan Pollock, and Jana Eger

On the Edge of Crisis – A View from Archaeometry
Kristina A Franke

Metal and Crisis: Crisis Phenomena in the Production, Distribution and Utilisation of Copper and Other Metals Between the 4th and the Late 2nd Millennium BCE in West Asia
Thomas Stöllner

No Risk, No Neolithisation
Judith Thomalsky and Akbar Abedi

 

 

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Monday, October 19, 2026

›Se necare‹: Il suicidio in Seneca filosofo

›Se necare‹: Il suicidio in Seneca filosofo
Ivan Spurio Venarucci 
book: ›Se necare‹ 
This book is in the series
Volume 14 | CICERO

 This study examines the theme of suicide in Seneca, analyzing all relevant passages from his prose works. Adopting a rhetorical and pragmatic approach, it treats the texts as communicative acts within a multifaceted debate—both philosophical and historical-political—set against the backdrop of the Julio-Claudian era, when the choice between life and mors voluntaria was a pressing and controversial issue.

eBook published on:
October 5, 2026
eBook ISBN:
9783112241974
Hardcover published on:
October 5, 2026
Hardcover ISBN:
9783112241967
Front matter:
10
Main content:
582
Tables:
1


 

 

 


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Open Access Journal: Heritage of Southwest Asia (Mīrās̠-i junūb-i gharbī-i Asiyā)

ISSN: 3116-028X
Heritage of Southwest Asia 

 

The scientific journal Heritage of Southwest Asia (Mīrās̠-i junūb-i gharbī-i Asiyā), affiliated with the Ancient Research Encyclopedia Institute, is published annually in two issues in Persian and English (with standard articles in the second language). This journal examines topics related to cultural heritage sciences, art, and architecture across the expanse of the lands of Southwest Asia.

  • Access to the Heritage of Southwest Asia journal is completely free for authors and readers.
  • The journal publishes various related and original articles.
  • The journal serves as a platform for progressive achievements in the study of West Asian heritage.
  • It emphasizes all disciplines of archaeological sciences, art, and architecture, with a focus on the heritage identity aspect.

 

See AWOL's full List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

 

 

 

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Das spätrömische Kastell Boiotro zu Passau-Innenstadt

Altjohann, Michael

1974 hatte die Entdeckung von mächtigen Mauerresten der spätantiken Befestigung Boitro in Passau-Innstadt eine berechtigte Aufregung hervorgerufen, zeigt sie doch eine Verbindung zur Tätigkeit des hl. Severin. Jetzt weiß man, daß die Anlage noch im 5. Jahrhundert in Benutzung war und nicht nur die Datierung, sondern auch der prominente Befund eines Speicherbaus sowie die abschließende Zerstörung bestätigen die Beschreibung der im frühen 6. Jahrhundert abgefaßten Vita Severini.

Lizenz

Creative Commons License

Dieses Werk steht unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung - Nicht-kommerziell 4.0 International.

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.11588/propylaeum.1895
ISBN 978-3-96929-569-4 (PDF)

Veröffentlicht

19.10.2026
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Seiten
PDF
Titelei
Inhaltsverzeichnis
5-6
Egon Johannes Greipl, C. Sebastian Sommer
Vorwort der Herausgeber
7
Vorwort
9
Einleitung
11-17
Die Befunde
18-58
Die Funde
59-100
Zusammenfassung
101-102
Katalog
103-124
Literaturverzeichnis
125-141
Tafeln
Beilagen

 

 
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