Greece, Rome and their neighbours in the ground.
9 topics · 16 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
A Handbook of Greek Sculpture
Ernest Arthur Gardner · 1896
Traces Greek sculpture as a sequence of technical solutions to representing the human body, arguing stylistic development is best read through…
+3 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria
George Dennis · 1848
Surveys dozens of Etruscan sites at a time when tomb-robbers were destroying them faster than anyone was recording them, arguing the Etruscans were a…
+5 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Etruscan Researches
Isaac Taylor · 1874
Argues from inscriptions and grammar that Etruscan belongs to the Ugro-Finnic family of languages with origins in inner Asia, against the…
+5 more at this level
12 of 16 works
Ernest Arthur Gardner
Traces Greek sculpture as a sequence of technical solutions to representing the human body, arguing stylistic development is best read through surviving originals rather than through later Roman copies.
Percy Gardner
Sets out the technical vocabulary and developmental stages of Greek sculpture and vase painting as a systematic discipline meant to train students to read style, not merely to admire finished works.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Charles Waldstein & Leonard Shoobridge
Argues that Herculaneum's deep volcanic burial, unlike the shallower ash over Pompeii, preserved organic material and multi-storey buildings intact, and makes the case for a large-scale, modern re-excavation of the site.
Adolf Michaelis
Surveys a century of excavation from Pompeii to Olympia to Crete, arguing that classical archaeology only became a discipline once it moved from collecting statues to recording where and how they were found.
George Dennis
Surveys dozens of Etruscan sites at a time when tomb-robbers were destroying them faster than anyone was recording them, arguing the Etruscans were a distinct civilisation rather than a footnote to Rome.
550 pageslink failing as of 17 Sept 2026Rodolfo Lanciani
Uses the excavation records of Rome's own building boom to argue that the ancient city can be recovered street by street from beneath the modern one, given the chance to look before building over it.
350 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026Christos Tsountas & J. Irving Manatt
Surveys the tombs, palaces and grave goods excavated across mainland Greece since Schliemann, arguing they describe a single Mycenaean civilisation with its own art and burial custom rather than a mere prelude to classical Greece.
August Mau
Reads a buried city's houses, wall paintings and street plan as a continuous record of everyday Roman life rather than as a collection of individual art objects.
500 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026George Francis Hill
Reads a sequence of Greek coin types as direct commemorations of specific historical events and civic claims, arguing coinage is a documentary source in its own right rather than mere currency.
Paul Tyers
Uses the changing typology and distribution of amphora finds across Roman Britain to trace how patterns of long-distance trade in wine, oil and fish sauce shifted over three centuries of occupation.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Isaac Taylor
Argues from inscriptions and grammar that Etruscan belongs to the Ugro-Finnic family of languages with origins in inner Asia, against the then-dominant view that Etruscan was of wholly unknown and unrelated origin.
Barclay V. Head
Organises the entire coinage of the Greek world by mint and city rather than by ruler, treating coins as archaeological evidence for trade and political history rather than as a collector's curiosities.
900 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026