Mediterranean Islands in Late Antiquity: A Cultural and Environmental History, c. 300–600 CE

Mediterranean Islands in Late Antiquity: A Cultural and Environmental History, c. 300–600 CE

Kotva, Alyssa

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2025, History

Although they sit at the very center of the late antique world, Mediterranean islands have tended to be part of the scenery more often than they have been major participants in the historiography of Late Antiquity. This dissertation demonstrates that, as material economic zones and as conceptually potent spaces, islands were in fact central to the political and cultural developments that shaped the Mediterranean region between ca. 300 and 600 CE. Late Roman administrative structures, the development of Christian ecclesiastical networks, and the uneven fragmentation of Mediterranean economic systems connected islands and islanders to centers of power. Moreover, it argues that the idea that islands are both ‘other' and ‘universal' spaces with marvelous and transformative connotations and that they form a coherent geographic category, developed in large part during Late Antiquity, and emerged through the textual and educational techniques of knowledge production. This idea was only intensified rather than diminished as Christian thinkers adopted and responded to earlier traditions. Both these material and cultural features of late antique islands, finally, were animated by ancient and late ancient epistemology and phenomenology. Drawing on a wide range of literary, documentary, material and scientific sources, this dissertation reveals how biology, geology, culture, and trade compounded and connected on late antique islands.

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Committee: Kristina Sessa (Advisor); Paolo Squatriti (Committee Member); Christopher Otter (Committee Member); David Brakke (Committee Member) 

 

The Best and Most Serious People: Meritocratic Discourse in Late Antiquity

The Best and Most Serious People: Meritocratic Discourse in Late Antiquity

Lee, Trevor

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2026, Greek and Latin

This dissertation investigates the role of merit as a public ideology in the late Roman bureaucracy and imperial apparatus. I argue that the later empire discursively legitimized itself as a functioning meritocracy in which its high officials and emperors had earned their positions through tangible accomplishments and personal virtues. By analyzing the works of Libanius and Synesius of Cyrene, I first observe from an individual perspective how merit justified power and advancement in the public imagination amidst a reality riddled with nepotism, corruption, and failure. The second half of this project examines merit on a systemic level through the broader genre of panegyric and the discourse on bureaucratic venality. By situating the relevant sources within modern ideological theory, I consider how the late Roman culture of merit ultimately legitimized the system of imperial rule and dampened internal criticisms against it. In conjunction with the positive ideal of supposed meritocrats at the head of the imperial apparatus, the normative values embedded within the numerous critiques of poor rulership in our sources inadvertently reinforced the unconscious assumption that late antique society was ideally meritocratic. In this regard, the late Roman ideology of merit's first and foremost function was the continual reproduction of imperial domination.

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Committee: Alan Ross (Advisor); Megan Nutzman (Committee Member); Gaia Gianni (Committee Member); Anthony Kaldellis (Other) 

 

Communities, Connectivity and Complexity in Roman Britain: New Archaeological Agendas

Communities, Connectivity and Complexity in Roman Britain: New Archaeological Agendas

Martin Pitts, Penny Coombe, Eleri Cousins, Andrew Gardner and Lisa Lodwick†

 

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on the BAR Digital platform.

This volume kick-starts debate on the future of archaeological research on Roman Britain. Focusing on new approaches to socio-economic, cultural, power and material dynamics, it addresses pressing issues facing the field. Since the deconstruction of ‘Romanisation’, a lack of consensus has seen the fragmentation of approaches, theories, methodologies and archaeological specialisms. Contributors propose innovative ways forward that collectively embrace the themes of communities, connectivity, and complexity. ‘Communities’ concerns both professional communities in field archaeology, museums, heritage, and universities and emphasises approaches that address the diverse patchwork of ancient communities that inhabited Britannia. ‘Connectivity’ challenges the perceived parochialism of Romano-British studies, advocating the connection of research communities and the integration of Romano-British data with those from the rest of the Roman world. ‘Complexity’ underlines the generation of specialised knowledge and increasingly complex datasets, and the challenges of producing new, methodologically and theoretically innovative, historical narratives for specialist and public audiences.

 

Citable Link

Published: 2026

Publisher: BAR Publishing

License:

Language: English

ISBN(s)

• 9781407364162 (ebook)
• 9781407364155 (paperback)

BAR Number: B704

Series

• Archaeology of Roman Britain
• BAR British Series

 

Ritual or Refuse? Depositional Practices in Wells, Pits and Tombs at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus

Ritual or Refuse? Depositional Practices in Wells, Pits and Tombs at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus 

Teresa Bürge 

This volume investigates exceptional deposits of complete and broken objects in wells, shafts and a tomb at Hala Sultan Tekke, shedding new light on depositional practices as an important indicator of ritual activities in Late Bronze Age Cyprus. More than 60 ‘pits’ were uncovered during Swedish excavations conducted between 2014 and 2022 in an unbuilt area just outside the densely occupied city centre, including 21 wells, numerous tombs and 16 other pits and shafts whose function remains uncertain. Their fills contain peculiar assemblages of large quantities of pottery, ceramic figurines, seals, textile production tools, bronze and stone objects, animal bones and charred plant remains, which differ markedly from ordinary household or workshop refuse, indicating that they resulted from deliberate acts of deposition rather than incidental accumulation.

Drawing on a wealth of illustrations, the volume analyses how these deposits were formed, the functions and biographies of the objects they contain, their chronology and the regional and long-distance connections reflected in the material. Particular attention is paid to the presence and significance of imports from the Aegean, Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia and Sardinia. The volume also re-evaluates comparable deposits elsewhere on Cyprus in light of the findings from Hala Sultan Tekke and offers an important new perspective on the role of deliberate deposition in 2nd millennium Cyprus, situating these practices within the broader social and ritual landscapes of the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia.

Chapters

• Online Tables

  by Teresa Bürge
  DOI: https://doi.org/10.68546/bqh28s83
• Online Appendix 1: Human remains from Pit GG and faunal remains from pits, wells and Tomb SS in Area A

  by Víctor Barrera Alarcón, Bebelyn Placiente Robedizo, David S. Reese, Anderson L. Carter and Omri Lernau
  DOI: https://doi.org/10.68546/3pe4-anme
• Online Appendix 2: The archaeobotanical remains from pits, wells and Tomb SS in Area A, including charred wood

  by Dominika Kofel
  DOI: https://doi.org/10.68546/rv27-b2yv
• Online Appendix 3: Pottery fabrics and provenance studies

  by Teresa Bürge, Johannes H. Sterba, Paula Waiman-Barak and Eleni Nodarou
  DOI: https://doi.org/10.68546/1w2n-abgc
• Online Appendix 4: Organic residue analysis of Late Bronze Age pottery from Tomb SS at Hala Sultan Tekke

  by Julie Dunne, Teresa Bürge and Richard P. Evershed
  DOI: https://doi.org/10.68546/t87n-y103

Published

October 7, 2026

Series

M Series

Copyright (c) 2026 SIMA Open Access

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Bürge, T. Ritual or Refuse? Depositional Practices in Wells, Pits and Tombs at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus; M Series; Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology: Nicosia, Cyprus, 2026; Vol. M162. https://doi.org/10.68546/0mae-099g.

Published

October 7, 2026

Series

M Series

Copyright (c) 2026 SIMA Open Access

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Bürge, T. Ritual or Refuse? Depositional Practices in Wells, Pits and Tombs at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus; M Series; Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology: Nicosia, Cyprus, 2026; Vol. M162. https://doi.org/10.68546/0mae-099g.

 

 

The Homeric Psychology of Parmenidean Meditation

The Homeric Psychology of Parmenidean Meditation

John, Benjamin

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Greek and Latin

This dissertation interprets the journey of the youth (kouros) in Parmenides' proem as an idealized mythological representation of a meditative practice by analyzing its deployment of Homeric psychological terminology. The first chapter puts forth an interpretation of Homeric psychology in light of what we now call the autonomic nervous system and suggests that thumos corresponds roughly to the “fight or flight” response of the sympathetic arm and psuche to the “rest and digest” response of the parasympathetic arm. At death, I argue, characters pass from the “hot” end of that spectrum to the “cold” end as the psuche exits the body. The second chapter uses this Homeric psychological scheme to argue that the journey of the kouros in Parmenides' proem depicts in mythological terms a process of heating and immortalizing the mind by increasing the thumos. This in turn allows him to meet and understand the unnamed goddess that greets him beyond the gates of Night and Day. I argue that this journey involves an ascent (anabasis) of the thumos towards the light of the sun rather than exclusively a descent to the underworld (katabasis), a common interpretation in recent years. The third chapter builds on the psychological and mythological interpretations developed in the first two chapters and examines one aspect of a meditative practice behind the proem. I argue that the kouros would heat and immortalize his mind by “inhaling” (αμπνυτο) more “wind” (πνοιη) to increase his thumos as an initial purification to prepare for the ascent. This proposal finds support in later Greek representations of meditative breathing practices that involve inhaling hot pneuma in the Chaldean Oracles and the “Mithras Liturgy” as well as comparison with similar ideas about “heat-generating ascetic practices” (tapas) in some Indian sources. I conclude that archaic Greek sages may have used inhalation-emphasized breathing practices to stimulate the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervou (open full item for complete abstract)

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Committee: Thomas Hawkins (Advisor); Sarah Iles Johnston (Committee Co-Chair); Benjamin Folit-Weinberg (Committee Member); Hugh Urban (Committee Member) 

 

Eutrapelia: Humorous texts in Hellenistic poetry

Eutrapelia: Humorous texts in Hellenistic poetry

But, Ekaterina

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

“Eutrapelia: Humorous texts in Hellenistic poetry” provides a study of the literary humor in Hellenistic iambic poetry in the context of rapid political and cultural change in the Ancient Mediterranean of the third century BCE. This project clarifies several questions connected to the nature of humor in Hellenistic iambic poetry: how does humor function in the poetry and performance of the early Hellenistic era? In which contexts does it appear? Does it reflect the multicultural environment of Ptolemaic Egypt? How is humor connected to the recontextualization of generic conventions, both literary and performative? Does humor become an expression of transgression: political, religious, or social? To address these questions, I conduct several case studies focusing on fragments of poems by Greek writers of the third century BCE (Callimachus, Cercidas, Machon, and Herodas) that refer to the tradition of Greek iambic poetry, a poetic invective genre closely connected to comedy and ritual obscenity. In Chapter 1, I focus on the humorous representation of philosophers in Callimachus's Iambus 1 and argue that these representations play an important role in Callimachus's dialogue with Plato and contemporary philosophy, and, at the same time, reflect Callimachus's ideas about the role of intellectual working in Alexandria under the royal patronage. In Chapter 2, I analyze fragments of Cercidas of Megalopolis, politician and Cynic philosopher, and argue that Cercidas employs elements of Cynic teaching to problematize the political and social issues of his community. In Chapter 3, I conduct a study of several anecdotes attributed to the comic writer Machon and argue that the targets of these anecdotes mirror Machon's own professional fate. In Chapter 4, I analyze sexually oriented humor in Herodas's Mimiamb 6 and argue that in this poem, Herodas promotes an idea of the female origin of iambic poetry. For each of these case studies, I address linguistic features of humor by a (open full item for complete abstract)

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Committee: Benjamin Acosta-Hughes Ph.D. (Advisor); Tom Hawkins Ph.D. (Committee Member); Dana Munteanu Ph.D. (Committee Member) 

 

Poetic Health: Literary and Medical Traditions in Apollonius' Argonautica

Poetic Health: Literary and Medical Traditions in Apollonius' Argonautica

Erez, Yelena

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Greek and Latin

This dissertation examines the role of ancient medicine in Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica as a fundamental component of the work's narrative structure. I use the writings of Empedocles, the Hippocratic physicians, Aristotle, and Herophilus to expand upon and develop a more nuanced understanding of the medical references which previous scholarship has identified. The first chapter provides historical context for the interdependence of medicine and poetry in the Hellenistic period. The second chapter explores the intersections of medical and literary traditions in the characterization of the hero, Jason. The third chapter untangles Apollonius' nuanced understanding of contemporary medicine through analysis of Medea's lovesick distress. The fourth chapter explores the invisible threats of medical miasma and spontaneous generation in the final book of the Argonautica. I interpret the use of medical terminology not as a way for the poet to display his erudition in the history of medicine, but as an intentional representation of varying interpretations of health, healing, and the body.

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Committee: Benjamin Acosta-Hughes (Advisor); Jackie Murray (Committee Member); Mark Fullerton (Committee Member); Dana Munteanu (Committee Member)