The Ancient City

We work on the topography, archaeology, architecture and cultures of cities such as Sparta, Athens and other Greek city states, Rome, Constantinople, the cities of ancient Egypt, the towns of Britannia and the urban centres of North Africa. We are also interested in the interplay between urban centres and their rural hinterland, whether in Egypt, Greece, Italy or Britain.

Researchers

• Andrew Bayliss is an expert on ancient Sparta and is interested in the rural hinterland of Greek poleis.
• Henriette van der Blom works on the political culture of urban Rome and its spatial setting.
• Leslie Brubaker researches the power of processions through urban centres.
• Hannah Cornwell is a specialist on the topography and space of the City of Rome in the interplay with politics, diplomacy and discourses of power.
• Maeve McHugh focuses on the rural contexts of ancient Greece and is particularly interested in the interplay between urban centres and their rural hinterland.
• Will Mack works on guest-friendship and citizenship across the Greek city states.
• Leire Olabarria excavates the Middle Egyptian site of Dayr el-Barsha to better understand the role of the cemetery within its urban setting.
• Dan Reynolds is working on peasant communities in Byzantine-period provincial contexts, especially in the Levant and Southern Italy.
• Gareth Sears specialises in the archaeology, city life and religious change in Roman cities, especially in North Africa of the late antiquity.
• Diana Spencer is an expert of the ways in which the Romans conceptualised and experienced the urban space.
• Ken Wardle’s research focuses on the Prehistoric Greek cities and settlements of Mycenae, Knossos, Assiros and Servia and Thermon.
• Honorary Professor Larmour has worked on Rome as a site of memory with Diana Spencer and they are working on a study of Ovidian topography.

Major publications

• Bayliss, A 2020, The Spartans. Oxford University Press.
• Bayliss, A 2017, Good to slaughter the lives of young men? The role of Tyrtaeus’ poetry in Spartan Society. in LF Bantim (ed.), Esparta: Politica e sociedade. Prismas.
• Bayliss, A 2017, Once an ally, always an ally: Sparta’s approach to policing the oaths of her allies in the late fifth and early fourth centuries. in E Moloney & MS Williams (eds), Peace and Reconciliation in the Classical World. Routledge.
• van der Blom, H, Gray, C & Steel, C (eds) 2018, Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome: Speech, Audience and Decision. Cambridge University Press.
• van der Blom, H 2016, Oratory and Political Career in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge University Press.
• Brubaker, L & Wickham, C 2019, Processions, power, and community identity: East and West. Empires and communities. Pohl, W. & Kramer, R. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Cornwell, H 2020, The Production of Diplomatic Space in Ancient Rome. in S Merten & A Haug (eds), Practices in Ancient Public Spaces. vol. Studies in Classical Archaeology, Brepols Publishers, pp. 81-94.
• McHugh, M. 2017. The Ancient Greek Farmstead. Oxbow.
• Mack, W 2022, ''Where are the proxenoi?': social network analysis, connectivity, and the Greek poleis', Past & Present.
• Mack, W 2018, 'Vox Populi, Vox Deorum? The Athenian document reliefs and the theologies of public inscription', Annual of the British School at Athens, vol. 113, pp. 365-398
• Mack, W 2015, Proxeny and Polis: Institutional Networks in the Ancient Greek World. Oxford University Press.
• Mack, W 2015, 'Shepherds beating the bounds? Territorial identity at a dependent community', The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 135, pp. 51-77.
• Reynolds, D 2017, 'Rethinking Palestinian Iconoclasm', Dumbarton Oaks Papers, vol. 71, pp. 1-64.
• Reynolds, D 2015, Monasticism in Early Islamic Palestine: Contours of Debate. in RG Hoyland (ed.), The late antique world of early Islam: Muslims among Christians and Jews in the East Mediterranean. Darwin Press, pp. 339.
• Sears, G 2016, A Catholic stronghold? in N Roy, J Nikolaus & N Mugnai (eds), De Africa Romaque: Merging cultures across North Africa. Society for Libyan Studies, Oxford.
• Spencer, D 2015, Urban flux: Varro’s Rome-in-progress. The Moving City: Processions, Passages and Promenades in Ancient Rome. Östenberg, I., Malmberg, S. & Bjørnebye, J. (eds.). London: Bloomsbury Academic, p. 99-110 12 p.
• Spencer, D 2018, Written Rome: Ancient Literary responses. in A Claridge & C Holleran (eds), A Companion to the City of Rome. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World, vol. 101, Wiley-Blackwell.
• Wardle, K & Wardle, D 2019, The citadel of Mycenae: a landscape of myth and memory. in E Borgna, I Caloi, FM Carinci & R Laffineur (eds), MNHMH / MNEME. Past and Memory in the Aegean Bronze Age: Proceedings of the 17th International Aegean Conference, University of Udine, Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Department of Humanities, 17-21 April 2018. vol. 43, Aegaeum, vol. 43, Peeters Publishers and Booksellers, Leuven, Leuven, pp. 153-164
• Wardle, K 2015, Reshaping the past: Where was the “Cult Centre” at Mycenae? in A-L Schallin & I Tournavitou (eds), Mycenaeans up to date: The archaeology of the north-eastern Peloponnese - current concepts and new directions. vol. 56, Acta Instituti Atheniensis Regni Sueciae, Series in 4, vol. 56, Stockholm, pp. 577-596.

Projects

• Epistolary Visions of Transformational Leadership (co-led by Henriette van der Blom, funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research)
• The Bays of East Attica Regional Survey (Maeve McHugh)
• Crossroads of Empires. The Longobard Church of sant'Ambrogio alla Rienna, Montecorvijno Rovella (Italy) (led by Daniel Reynolds, funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation).