A History of the Archaic Greek World, ca. 1200-479 BCE 2nd Edition by Jonathan M. Hall (PDF)

Description

A History of the Archaic Greek World offers a theme-based approach to the development of the Greek world in the years 1200-479 BCE.Updated and extended in this edition to include two new sections, expanded geographical coverage, a guide to electronic resources, and more illustrationsTakes a critical and analytical look at evidence about the history of the archaic Greek WorldInvolves the reader in the practice of history by questioning and reevaluating conventional beliefsCasts new light on traditional themes such as the rise of the city-state, citizen militias, and the origins of egalitarianismProvides a wealth of archaeological evidence, in a number of different specialties, including ceramics, architecture, and mortuary studies

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Breaking news – the Archaic period of ancient Greece is not archaic! The updated and augmented second edition of this thematically inflected history does full justice to an experimental and brilliantly innovative era.” – Paul Cartledge, University of Cambridge“Informative and clear for the student and the interested non-specialist, this book is full of stimulating observations and questions, from which also the specialist may profit. With its second edition, Jonathan Hall offers a reliable and up-to-date survey of the major developments in society, institutions, and culture in the Greek World and its periphery from the end of the Mycenaean palace administration to the Persian Wars. By operating with a ‘long Archaic Age’, that has its roots in the Late Bronze Age, Jonathan Hall fruitfully challenges the traditional periodization of Greek history.” – Angelos Chaniotis, Institute for Advanced Study“Further enriched in its second edition, this book offers a balanced, superbly informed, critical, and lucid discussion of all the major issues that contributed to shaping Greek society and culture in its formative period. Engaging closely with the archaeological evidence, textual sources, and modern scholarship, the author challenges many well-established views and introduces the reader to the evidence as well as the tools, approaches, and methods on which a meaningful reconstruction of the crucial developments in early Greek history can be based. Hall does not present final truths but takes us along on his exciting and sometimes frustrating road to discovery; he stimulates our thinking and helps us penetrate to a deeper level of understanding.” – Kurt Raaflaub, Brown University From the Inside Flap A History of the Archaic Greek World provides theme-based coverage of the years 1200–479 BCE. By revisiting the evidence from the period with a critical and analytical eye, Jonathan M. Hall gives the reader the opportunity to investigate at first hand this crucial formative period of Greek history. In doing so, this book casts new light on traditional themes such as the rise of the city-state, colonization, citizen militias, the origins of egalitarianism, and the emergence of a self-conscious Greek identity.Taking into consideration feedback from the first edition, the author has updated the text and added further material, including two new sections entitled Archaeological Gaps: Attica and Crete and ‘Greek’ Culture: Unity and Diversity; he has increased illustrative material, and included a new guide to electronic resources. In addition, Hall has expanded the geographical coverage of all material considered within the book. The text continues to provide an exceptionally wide range of archaeological evidence across a number of different specialties. The author brings a willingness to question existing notions, which allows the reader to become involved in the practice of history by probing and reevaluating conventional beliefs. From the Back Cover A History of the Archaic Greek World provides theme-based coverage of the years 1200–479 BCE. By revisiting the evidence from the period with a critical and analytical eye, Jonathan M. Hall gives the reader the opportunity to investigate at first hand this crucial formative period of Greek history. In doing so, this book casts new light on traditional themes such as the rise of the city-state, colonization, citizen militias, the origins of egalitarianism, and the emergence of a self-conscious Greek identity.Taking into consideration feedback from the first edition, the author has updated the text and added further material, including two new sections entitled Archaeological Gaps: Attica and Crete and ‘Greek’ Culture: Unity and Diversity; he has increased illustrative material, and included a new guide to electronic resources. In addition, Hall has expanded the geographical coverage of all material considered within the book. The text continues to provide an exceptionally wide range of archaeological evidence across a number of different specialties. The author brings a willingness to question existing notions, which allows the reader to become involved in the practice of history by probing and reevaluating conventional beliefs. About the Author Jonathan M. Hall is the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities and Professor in the Departments of History and Classics and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (1997), Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (2002), and Artifact and Artifice: Classical Archaeology and the Ancient Historian (2013). Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐We all learnt history at school and the history of Ancient Greece is an integral part of the curriculum in Europe and perhaps in some other parts of the world too. You meet it in primary school and then at secondary school because you have to understand the roots of democracy and of European civilisation to make sense of our era. You might have a feeling that you already know enough. But do you? No. If you take this book into your hands and start reading it turns out that you do not know too much about either the archaic Greek world or, what is more, history: in Chapter 1 the key question “What is History?” pops up after the author shows you an obvious pitfall when someone tries to assemble the pieces from different literary sources ranging from Hesiod to Plutarch. I asked a few of my acquaintances but no one had a well-informed or well-thought-over answer, obviously, we do not spend too much thought on it and therefore are not prepared to answer this seemingly simple question. However, this is the fundamental question in history as your relationship to history depends on your answer and on the answer the historian who writes a book gives to it.As it turns out, what a nine or fourteen years old student is usually taught under the title “History” is mostly a bunch of anecdotal stories from the pens of authors who lived centuries after the actual events. On the other hand, archeology is not that reliable source either, partly because not everything leaves material traces behind and, secondly, only a small fraction of those which do is uncovered or matched with the appropriate historical context.This book is great in showing the reader how the data available to the historian is insufficient to support certainties in most aspects of archaic Greek life and events and sometimes the careful analysis suggests a different most probable interpretation from the widely accepted one. The further back we look into the murky waters of time, the more common it is to be left with probabilities and trends, and uncertainties and doubts, than with facts and truths. The author does more than teaching history, he helps you learn to think in the historian way.

⭐I am currently writing a dissertation that requires my constantly referring to the primary and secondary sources of Greek political history. Over and over again, I have returned to this book, because of both its comprehensiveness, presentation of primary source texts in “windows” or tables that contribute much to the author’s arguments in each section and lastly, the author’s unsurpassed excellence in presenting all the sides to each issue in highly readable form. Until today, I had been using my university’s library copy…but, decided today that this is a book well worth having in my own possession, as I will likely be referring to it several more times in the years to come.

⭐Since I’m interested in the Greeks of Sicily and Magna Graecia I was not disappointed in the coverage Jonathan Hall gave this book. Many histories in the past failed to give the ‘Western Greeks’ their proper due. Otherwise, the book is a great compilation of the history, archaeology, laws, civil wars, politics, and culture of a people that were to become arguably the greatest civilization of the ancient world. The work is wonderfully researched and documented.

⭐Great condition

⭐Hall establishes and completes a specific task: presenting contemporary developments in the discipline of history and their relevance to his niche of expertise, archaic Greece. The book is not only an introduction to the period; it is also an introduction to historical research. This approach has its uses. Readers get to witness the Chicago style, come to understand the importance of historical sources and the variety of evidence present in ancient history, and get a feel for the presence of dispute and uncertainty that is critical to history. This is a book about evidence, not facts.The method also creates a few problems. First, it doesn’t present a chronological view of the period, though with archaic Greece this can’t be done anyways. Second, Hall loves to reference secondary sources in the text, which are really useless to his target audience. College freshmen aren’t going to bother reading these. I would recommend is reading Hall in conjunction with another history, one centered on a timeline.

⭐For those interested in the development of the classic Greek age, well worth your time. We had the opportunity to tour part of the ancient Greek world with the author which only underscored the quality of his work in combining archaeology and history to provide better insight into what lead to the classical Greek period.

⭐Jonathan Hall has not written a traditional history of the Archaic Greek world. It challenges narrative historical approaches in favour of a thematic approach to the important elements of Archaic Greece – “colonization”, the emergence of the polis, warfare* – in fact, he challenges several narrative or “historical” events. Particularly prominent is the Lelantine War, deconstructed completely in the first seven pages of the book so that one can hardly understand how certain scholars maintain their belief in it; in the final chapter of the book he turns to the First Sacred War, in which he has perhaps more faith, but certainly not as it is described in later texts. One must wonder, however, how he can deconstruct these wars, but not apply the same methodological considerations to the Messenian Wars – clearly, to me, a construction of the Messenians after their independence from Sparta in the fourth century, the original war invented to explain how they came to be subjugated in the first place.It is certainly a Greek history, too. This book is not for those looking for Etruscan or Phoenician interactions with Greece, for local responses to “colonization”**. Hall would argue that this is because it is a history, rather than an archaeology, and that it is only the Greeks for whom we have (semi-)reliable historical accounts in the Archaic period; indeed, in the last pages of the book he does so. If an archaeological account of such developments is what you are after, The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World is perhaps a better bet.The chronological bounds of this book might seem a bit long; Hall argues well and I agree that there is no significant break between the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces and the Archaic period as it is usually defined. As an archaeologist specializing in the Early Iron Age I do feel that he neglects to discuss very much of this period, but that is probably just my own prejudices getting in the way.This book is certainly recommended to historians; as a general read it may not be what the layperson expects. But I do think that it would be good for non-academics to see this side of history, highly readable, largely sceptical, but still history, as it should be written.* Personally, I disagree quite strongly with a lot of what Hall has to say about warfare. I think it’s a shame that his sceptical approach to certain elements of the Greek world does not permeate every aspect. Perhaps it is the fault of the editors?** “Colonization” should always be in inverted commas when discussing the Greeks or the Phoenicians, to distinguish the process from Roman colonia or the British Empire; but this is not the place to discuss the intricate details of the so-called colonial period of early Greek history.

⭐This book is chronologically the first of a series of monographs planned eventually to tackle classical and byzaninte history from the collapse of Mycenaean civilisation to the fall fo Consrnatinople in 1453c.e.As a monograph rather than a multi-authored book it has a pleasing internal consistency. This first volume has to rely quite heavily on archaeological evidence, which means a straightforward narrative through the centuries is virtually impossible. Like many such books, its most likely audience is undergraduates, but it also a useful book to have to hand for more experienced scholars who may need to seek information outside their specialist field. This book serves both purposes admirably. Bibliographies are offered for each chapter- though so much work is coming out these days that only on-line bibliographieis can hope to be comprehensive.

⭐Superb, however not for the casual reader it is certainly not popular history rather a much more academic textbook aimed at individuals wanting to study the overview of the Archaic period of Greek history in more depth.

⭐good quality

⭐thank you

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