About
Greg Woolf, Director of the NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
February 20,2025, 7pm
Carrick Theater
2025 Collis Lecture
"The Environmental Sustainability of Ancient Cities."
Readings
- WOOLF, GREG. “BECOMING ROMAN, STAYING GREEK: CULTURE, IDENTITY AND THE CIVILIZING PROCESS IN THE ROMAN EAST.”Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, no. 40 (1994): 116–43.
- Woolf, Greg. “Beyond Romans and Natives.”World Archaeology 28, no. 3 (1997): 339–50.
Revisionist studies of Roman imperialism and Romanization continue to show the traces of modern debates on imperialism and colonialism, in particular a tendency to analyse cultural change in terms of the interaction of two ethnic cultures. An analysis of the changing unities and diversities of cultures in Gaul (modern France), and of the transformation of Roman culture during and as a result of imperial expansion, suggests a new view of the nature and genesis of Roman imperial culture. - Woolf, Greg. “Cruptorix and His Kind.: Talking Ethnicity on the Middle Ground.”In Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity: The Role of Power and Tradition, edited by Ton Derks and Nico Roymans, 207–18. Amsterdam University Press, 2009.
- Woolf, Greg. “Food, Poverty and Patronage: The Significance of the Epigraphy of the Roman Alimentary Schemes in Early Imperial Italy.”Papers of the British School at Rome 58 (1990): 197–228.
- Woolf, Greg. “FOUND IN TRANSLATION.: THE RELIGION OF THE ROMAN DIASPORA.”In Ritual Dynamics and Religious Change in the Roman Empire: Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Heidelberg, July 5-7, 2007), edited by Olivier Hekster, Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner, and Christian Witschel, 239–52. Brill, 2009.
- Woolf, Greg. “Imperialism, Empire and the Integration of the Roman Economy.”World Archaeology 23, no. 3 (1992): 283–93.
While the political economy of the Roman empire is well understood, the nature of the economy as a whole is a matter of fierce debate. A range of competing hypotheses about the nature of the Roman economy are presented, and then distributions of amphorae and certain other artefact categories are used to suggest some broad patterns which successful theories of the Roman economy will have to address. In particular, it is argued that regional distributions of material usually constituted the highest level of integration achieved in the Roman world, and that larger-scale patterning was only created during the period of imperial expansion during the last two centuries BC. - Woolf, Greg. “Monumental Writing and the Expansion of Roman Society in the Early Empire.”The Journal of Roman Studies 86 (1996): 22–39.
- Woolf, Greg. “Moving Peoples in the Early Roman Empire.”In The Impact of Mobility and Migration in the Roman Empire: Proceedings of the Twelfth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Rome, June 17-19, 2015), edited by Elio Lo Cascio, Laurens E. Tacoma, and Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga, 25–41. Brill, 2017.
- Woolf, Greg. “Pliny/Trajan and the Poetics of Empire.”Classical Philology 110, no. 2 (2015): 132–51.
- Woolf, Greg. “The Present State and Future Scope of Roman Archaeology: A Comment.”American Journal of Archaeology 108, no. 3 (2004): 417–28.
Roman archaeology is in good shape, institutionally, financially, and in terms of the high quality of current research. Both fieldwork and publication have increased in quality in the last few decades and the discipline is better at disseminating information widely, albeit through fairly traditional media. The discipline is fortunate in the quality and commitment of its academic leaders and the energy and creativity of many other researchers, in universities, museums, and archaeological companies and units. The increase of activity has, however, led to a marked degree of specialization. The effects are more obvious in some national traditions than others. Anglophone scholars in particular have not produced the same works of analytical synthesis as have either their Hellenist colleagues or some of their European counterparts. The pressures leading to this situation are discussed. The prospect for Roman archaeology in the next few decades nevertheless looks very promising indeed.
Ancient Libraries by Publication Date: 2013The circulation of books was the motor of classical civilization. However, books were both expensive and rare, and so libraries - private and public, royal and civic - played key roles in articulating intellectual life. This collection, written by an international team of scholars, presents a fundamental reassessment of how ancient libraries came into being, how they were organized and how they were used. Drawing on papyrology and archaeology, and on accounts written by those who read and wrote in them, it presents new research on reading cultures, on book collecting and on the origins of monumental library buildings. Many of the traditional stories told about ancient libraries are challenged. Few were really enormous, none were designed as research centres, and occasional conflagrations do not explain the loss of most ancient texts. But the central place of libraries in Greco-Roman culture emerges more clearly than ever.
Tales of the Barbarians by Publication Date: 2011Tales of the Barbarians traces the creation of new mythologies in the wake of Roman expansion westward to the Atlantic, and offers the first application of modern ethnographic theory to ancient material. Investigates the connections between empire and knowledge at the turn of the millennia, and the creation of new histories in the Roman West Explores how ancient geography, local histories and the stories of wandering heroes were woven together by Greek scholars and local experts Offers a fresh perspective by examining passages from ancient writers in a new light
Women and the Roman City in the Latin West by Publication Date: 2013Roman Cities, as conventionally studied, seem to be dominated by men. Yet as the contributions to this volume--which deals with the Roman cities of Italy and the western provinces in the late Republic and early Empire--show, women occupied a wide range of civic roles. Women had key roles to play in urban economies, and a few were prominent public figures, celebrated for their generosity and for their priestly eminence, and commemorated with public statues and grand inscriptions. Drawing on archaeology and epigraphy, on law and art as well as on ancient texts, this multidisciplinary study offers a new and more nuanced view of the gendering of civic life. It asks how far the experience of women of the smaller Italian and provincial cities resembled that of women in the capital, how women were represented in sculptural art as well as in inscriptions, and what kinds of power or influence they exercised in the societies of the Latin West.
