John Bintliff

University of Edinburgh, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Emeritus

Universiteit Leiden, Classical and Mediterranean Archaeology, Faculty Member

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Books by John Bintliff

The The European Research Council ‘Roman Empire of 2000 Cities’ Project. FiguresAbbildungsnachweise 2023 07 10 Bintliff

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Bintliff, J. (2024). Early Greek Urbanism. . New York, Wiley-Blackwell: 17-37.

A Companion to Cities in the Greco-Roman World., 2024

Continuity or discontinuity? Urban historians of Europe tend to consider a town of 10,000 or more... more Continuity or discontinuity? Urban historians of Europe tend to consider a town of 10,000 or more inhabitants as a city (de Vries 1984). In that case, we cannot see such agglomerations in the Aegean Early Iron Age (ca. 1100-700 BCE). Actually, it is unlikely that cities of that size existed on the Greek Mainland even at the height of the preceding Late Bronze Age Mycenaean civilization, where palaces and their associated towns were in the 30 ha range (perhaps 4,000 inhabitants?) (Bintliff 2020), although some of the earlier Minoan towns on Crete, especially Knossos, might have far exceeded such dimensions. 1 These relatively small cities were typical of most Bronze Age towns in the Mediterranean (Bintliff 2002). 2 However, as we shall discover, Classical Greek cities of the Aegean are, in any case, on a totally different scale. Independent city-states might be as small as 5 ha and possess only 500 citizens (e.g. Khorsiai: Fossey and Morin 1987). They would still possess a functioning citizen assembly, lawcourts, an army, and a dependent nourishing agricultural territory, so who can say their focal settlement was not urban in function? We might object to the limited monumentality of such small cities: i.e. was their appearance truly urban? This was exactly the point Pausanias would make in Early Imperial times when he felt mild outrage that the town of Panopeus in Phokis lacked almost all the expected public amenities of any respectable city (Description of Greece, 10.4). Yet as we have just outlined, it was not size or even monumentality that defined the "polis" center, but its complex functions. For those reasons, Panopeus was still a formal city within the Roman Imperium. Indeed, another school of European urban historians takes the line that it is exactly in the elaborate roles of an agglomeration that we must seek to separate towns from villages (Clark and Slack 1976). Returning then to the Early Iron Age (EIA) of the Aegean with our expectations lowered, can we see "townlike" settlements over these centuries, either surviving on the ruins of the destroyed Minoan-Mycenaean palatial cities or newly founded elsewhere, in the clearly disruptive period that followed that catastrophe? So far, very few EIA settlements appear more than villages in their spatial scale, and those few-perhaps predictably-are former major Bronze Age centers: Knossos, Argos, Thebes, and Athens. Multiple dispersed findspots of structures and ceramics seem to indicate the

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Archaeological approaches to the Archaic era

In J. Bernhardt and M. Canevaro (ed.) From Homer to Solon. Continuity and Change in Archaic Greece, Leiden: Brill, 29-36., 2022

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Journal of Greek Archaeology Volume 2 2017 - Contents and Editorial.pdf

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Boeotia Project, Volume II: The city of Thespiai [contents pages only]

by Emeri Farinetti, John Bintliff, and Lorenzo Gentili

Bintliff, J. L., E. Farinetti, B. Slapsak and A. Snodgrass (2017). Boeotia Project, Volume II: T... more

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New Cities in Late Antiquity: Documents and Archaeology. Bibliothèque de l'Antiquité Tardive 35

by Efthymios Rizos, Jean-Michel Spieser, Carolyn Snively, John Bintliff, Sylvie Bletry, ASSENAT Martine, Elif Keser Kayaalp, Javier Martínez Jiménez, Günder Varinlioğlu, Martin Gussone, Jim Crow, Albrecht Berger, Georgios Deligiannakis, Knut Ødegård, Emanuele E . Intagliata, David Hill, and Håkon Roland

Reviewed by: N. Burkhardt, Historische Zeitschrift, 2019, Vol.309(1), pp.165-168 P. Maranzana, ... more

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Tim Kerig / Andreas Zimmermann (eds.) (2013) Economic Archaeology: From structure to performance in European archaeology 2013, Habelt, 338 pages ISBN: 978-3-7749-3805-2

by Tim Kerig, Pierre Pétrequin, Michel G L Errera, Jutta Lechterbeck, Sandra Pichler, Thomas Doppler, Brigitte Röder, Szmyt Marzena, Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Krause, and John Bintliff

Table of contents Preface Introducing Economic Archaeology: Examples from Neolithic agricu... more Table of contents

Preface

Introducing Economic Archaeology: Examples from Neolithic agriculture and Hallstatt princely tombs
Tim Kerig

Theories of Consumption
Perspectives from economic anthropology
Martin Rössler

The society in the making
The house and the household in the Danubian Neolithic of the Central European lowlands
Arkadiusz Marciniak

The value of things - The production and circulation of Alpine jade axes during the 5th – 4th millenia in a European perspective
Pierre Pétrequin, Serge Cassen, Michel Errera, Lutz Klassen, Anne−Marie Pétrequin, Alison Sheridan

From the Alps to Brittany and Scandinavia: The grand tour in the Neolithic
Magdalena S. Midgley

The economics of Neolithic swidden cultivation: Results of an experimental long−term project in Forchtenberg (Baden−Württemberg, Germany)
Wolfram Schier, Otto Ehrmann, Manfred Rösch, Arno Bogenrieder, Mathias Hall, Ludger Herrmann, Erhard Schulz

Land use and food production in Central Europe from the Neolithic to the medieval period - Change of landscape, soils and agricultural systems according to archaeobotanical data
Manfred Rösch

Evaluation of economic activity through palynological data: Modelling agricultural pressure on landscape (REVEALS and LOVE)
Jutta Lechterbeck

Quantitative approaches to reconstructing prehistoric stock breeding
Renate Ebersbach

Coping with crises I: Subsistence variety and resilience in the Late Neolithic lakeshore settlement Arbon Bleiche 3 (Switzerland)
Thomas Doppler, Sandra Pichler, Brigitte Röder, Jörg Schibler

Coping with crises II: The impact of social aspects on vulnerability and resilience
Brigitte Röder, Sandra Pichler, Thomas Doppler

Dispersed communities and diverse strategies
Late Neolithic economy on the Polish Lowland (3500−2500 BC)
Marzena Szmyt, Janusz Czebreszuk

Short settled Neolithic sites in the mountains − economy or religious practice? Case studies from the Polish Carpathians and German Mid−Mountains
Pawel Valde−Nowak

Prehistoric flint mining and the enigma of early economies
Jacek Lech

Bronze Age copper production in the Alps:
Organisation and social hierarchies in mining communities
Rüdiger Krause

Bohemia as a model territory for research on transport and trade in prehistory
Vladimír Salač

The Hellenistic to Roman Mediterranean: A proto−capitalist Revolution?
John Bintliff

Technology, land use and transformations in Scandinavian landscapes, c. 800–1300 AD 295
Ingvild Øye

Performance in experimental archaeology -
Any possibility for unambiguous statements?
Roeland Paardekooper

Summing it up: What is the intermediate total in European economic archaeology?
Tim Kerig, Andreas Zimmermann

List of contributors

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Bintliff, J. (2016). Early Bronze Age Troy and the Emergence of Complex Societies in the Aegean. Early Bronze Age Troy. Chronology, Cultural Development and Interregional Contacts. E. Pernicka, S. Unlusoy and S. Blum. Tubingen, University of Tubingen: 259-266.

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Bintliff, J.L. & H. Stoger (eds) 2009. Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece. The Corfu Papers. BAR Internatioal Series 2023. Oxford: Archaeopress

by Hanna Stoger and John Bintliff

Bintliff, J. L. (2012). The Complete Archaeology of Greece, from Hunter-Gatherers to the Twentieth Century AD. Oxford-New York, Blackwell-Wiley.

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Bintliff (1977) Natural environment and human settlement in prehistoric Greece: based on original fieldwork volume 2

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Papers by John Bintliff

Agricultural Intensification and the Evidence from Offsite Survey Archaeology

Journal of World Prehistory , 2023

The enhancement of crop yields through manuring has been attested since early farming prehistory ... more The enhancement of crop yields through manuring has been attested since early farming prehistory in many parts of the world. This article reviews the history of research into the potential archaeological evidence for this practice in Europe, the Mediterranean lands and the Near East. The focus is on the interpretation of ceramic data recovered in surface field surveys conducted since 1950 and what sorts of activities may be plausibly inferred from them. The article examines the origins of the model, objections to it, and recent analyses which again strengthen it. A particular case-study analyses the evidence for the protohistoric and early historic periods in Greece. The methodological and empirical arguments tend to strongly reaffirm the importance of artificial manuring in agrarian regimes of all periods, and its significance in furthering understandings of economic and demographic history and prehistory.

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Social theory and the Greek Iron Age

Alternative Iron Ages. Social Theory from Archaeological Analysis. B. X. Curras and I. Sastre. London, Routledge: 309-321., 2019

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City-archaeology in Boeotia: continuity and discontinuity, localism and globalisation.

La Béotie de l’archaïsme à l’époque romaine. Frontières, territoires, paysages. T. Lucas, C. Muller and A. C. Oddon-Panissie. Paris, Editions de Boccard: 121-133., 2019

Isabelle rivoal (CNRS) Pierre rouillard (CNRS) Dominique roux (Université Caen Normandie) Isabell... more Isabelle rivoal (CNRS) Pierre rouillard (CNRS) Dominique roux (Université Caen Normandie) Isabelle Sidéra (CNRS) François villeneuve (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) Secrétariat de rédaction Astrid aScHeHoug, Franck BarBary et Sabine Pétillon (CNRS) Maquettage intérieur et couverture Astrid aScHeHoug et Franck BarBary (CNRS) Maquettage couverture Valentin verardo (CNRS) Illustrations de couverture 1 re de couverture : vue sur le lac Yliki depuis la route menant au sanctuaire d'Apollon Ptoios. Cliché : J. Faguer, août 2019. 4 e de couverture : trophée de Sylla à Orchomène. Cliché : Chr. Müller. Avis aux auteurs Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. La loi du 11 mars 1957 interdit les copies ou reproductions destinées à une utilisation collective. Toute représentation ou reproduction intégrale ou partielle faite par quelque procédé que ce soit sans le consentement de l'auteur ou de ses ayants cause est illicite et constitue une contrefaçon sanctionnée par les articles 425 et suivants du Code Pénal. © Éditions de Boccard, 2019.

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The transformation of Medieval and Post-Medieval archaeology in Greece. . S. Gelichi and L. Olmo-Enciso. Oxford, Archaeopress. 1-6.

Mediterranean Landscapes in Post Antiquity.New frontiers and new perspectives, 2019

Settlement dynamics in the rural Bolognese area between the late middle ages and the modern era��... more Settlement dynamics in the rural Bolognese area between the late middle ages and the modern era��38 Mauro Librenti 'Emptyscapes' and medieval landscapes: is a new wave of research changing content and understanding of the rural archaeological record? ��64

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Report on the Research conducted in 2018 on the Boeotia regional project

Teiresias 48.2: 3-7, 2018

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changing landscapes, natural causes of

Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2017

The classical world witnessed many forms of landscape change in its physical geography, mostly du... more The classical world witnessed many forms of landscape change in its physical geography, mostly due to longer-term geological and climatological processes, whilst only a minority were due purely to human action. The physical environment of Greek and Roman societies saw alterations through earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, sea-level fluctuations, erosion, and alluviation. Timescales Already in Greek antiquity, Plato (Critias iii) observed how the Aegean physical landscape was being worn down over time as erosion from the uplands filled the lowland plains. Indeed, the Mediterranean region is amongst the most highly erodible in the world. However, scientific research in the field known as geoarchaeology has revealed a more complex picture than a continuous degradation of the ancient countryside. To uncover a more realistic picture of Mediterranean landscape change, the element of timescales proves to be central, and here the framework developed by the French historian Fernand Braudel provides the appropriate methodology. Braudel envisaged the Mediterranean past as created through the interaction of dynamic forces operating in parallel but on different "wavelengths" of time: the Short Term (observable within a human lifetime or less), the Medium Term (centuries or more, not clearly cognisant to contemporaries), and the Long Term (up to as much as thousands or millions of years, not at all in the awareness of past human agents). Even the longest operating processes, just as much as the medium-term and short-term ones, will be active nonetheless in an era such as classical antiquity in the Mediterranean region.

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The transformation of Medieval and Post-Medieval archaeology in Greece

Mediterranean Landscapes in Post Antiquity Sauro Gelichi and Lauro Olmo-Enciso , 2019

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Postface. Mapping historical landscapes in transition: An overview

Mapping Landscapes in Transformation Multidisciplinary Methods for Historical Analysis. Coomans et al., 2019

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Social theory and the Greek Iron Age

Alternative Iron Ages. Curras and Sastre., 2019

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The The European Research Council ‘Roman Empire of 2000 Cities’ Project. FiguresAbbildungsnachweise 2023 07 10 Bintliff

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Bintliff, J. (2024). Early Greek Urbanism. . New York, Wiley-Blackwell: 17-37.

A Companion to Cities in the Greco-Roman World., 2024

Download

Archaeological approaches to the Archaic era

In J. Bernhardt and M. Canevaro (ed.) From Homer to Solon. Continuity and Change in Archaic Greece, Leiden: Brill, 29-36., 2022

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Journal of Greek Archaeology Volume 2 2017 - Contents and Editorial.pdf

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Boeotia Project, Volume II: The city of Thespiai [contents pages only]

by Emeri Farinetti, John Bintliff, and Lorenzo Gentili

Bintliff, J. L., E. Farinetti, B. Slapsak and A. Snodgrass (2017). Boeotia Project, Volume II: T... more

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New Cities in Late Antiquity: Documents and Archaeology. Bibliothèque de l'Antiquité Tardive 35

Reviewed by: N. Burkhardt, Historische Zeitschrift, 2019, Vol.309(1), pp.165-168 P. Maranzana, ... more

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Tim Kerig / Andreas Zimmermann (eds.) (2013) Economic Archaeology: From structure to performance in European archaeology 2013, Habelt, 338 pages ISBN: 978-3-7749-3805-2

by Tim Kerig, Pierre Pétrequin, Michel G L Errera, Jutta Lechterbeck, Sandra Pichler, Thomas Doppler, Brigitte Röder, Szmyt Marzena, Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Krause, and John Bintliff

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Bintliff, J.L. & H. Stoger (eds) 2009. Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece. The Corfu Papers. BAR Internatioal Series 2023. Oxford: Archaeopress

by Hanna Stoger and John Bintliff

Bintliff, J. L. (2012). The Complete Archaeology of Greece, from Hunter-Gatherers to the Twentieth Century AD. Oxford-New York, Blackwell-Wiley.

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Bintliff (1977) Natural environment and human settlement in prehistoric Greece: based on original fieldwork volume 2

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Agricultural Intensification and the Evidence from Offsite Survey Archaeology

Journal of World Prehistory , 2023

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Social theory and the Greek Iron Age

Alternative Iron Ages. Social Theory from Archaeological Analysis. B. X. Curras and I. Sastre. London, Routledge: 309-321., 2019

Download

City-archaeology in Boeotia: continuity and discontinuity, localism and globalisation.

La Béotie de l’archaïsme à l’époque romaine. Frontières, territoires, paysages. T. Lucas, C. Muller and A. C. Oddon-Panissie. Paris, Editions de Boccard: 121-133., 2019

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The transformation of Medieval and Post-Medieval archaeology in Greece. . S. Gelichi and L. Olmo-Enciso. Oxford, Archaeopress. 1-6.

Mediterranean Landscapes in Post Antiquity.New frontiers and new perspectives, 2019

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Report on the Research conducted in 2018 on the Boeotia regional project

Teiresias 48.2: 3-7, 2018

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changing landscapes, natural causes of

Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2017

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The transformation of Medieval and Post-Medieval archaeology in Greece

Mediterranean Landscapes in Post Antiquity Sauro Gelichi and Lauro Olmo-Enciso , 2019

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Postface. Mapping historical landscapes in transition: An overview

Mapping Landscapes in Transformation Multidisciplinary Methods for Historical Analysis. Coomans et al., 2019

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Social theory and the Greek Iron Age

Alternative Iron Ages. Curras and Sastre., 2019

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Illustrating Waves of Time

Time and History in Prehistory. S. Souvatzi, A. Baysal and E. L. Baysal, 2019

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City-archaeology in Boeotia: continuity and discontinuity, localism and globalisation.

La Béotie de l’archaïsme à l’époque romaine Frontières, territoires, paysages, 2019

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2500 years of anthropogenic and climatic landscape transformation in the Stymphalia polje, Greece

Quaternary Science Reviews, 2019

Lacustrine sediments generally record landscape development in the lake's catchment area controll... more Lacustrine sediments generally record landscape development in the lake's catchment area controlled by palaeoclimatic and human induced changes. To improve our understanding on the anthropogenic and climatic influences on landscape development in Southern Greece for the last 2500 years, we report a 2 m-long, continuous high-resolution sedimentary record from shallow Lake Stymphalia (Peloponnese, Greece). Our proxies record climatically as well as anthropogenically induced landscape changes, influencing the lake area and lake depth. The Classical-Hellenistic era reflects a moderate, stable Mediterranean climate with low sedimentation rates. The parallel existence of the highly populated, major ancient city of Stymphalos, on the contemporary lake edge, doesn't seem to have caused lasting alterations in the record. The construction of the Hadrianic Aqueduct in the Roman era, ca. 130 AD, however causes an influential transformation in the lake development. It has a lasting effect on the lake hydrology as well as the vulnerability of this ecosystem. During Late Roman times, 5th to 6th century cal AD, the abandonment of the aqueduct combined with cooler climate conditions allows lake levels to recover. A phase of very high climatic instability was identified for the subsequent Early Byzantine (EB) period, during the 7th and 8th century cal AD. For this period, the later phase of the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA), our proxies indicate further cooling and highly fluctuating water availability in a rather small lake area. The Middle Byzantine (MB) Period (9 th-12th century AD) is characterized by an over fivefold increase in sedimentation rates. Since local population was still well below Classical levels, we explain this singular period through an interaction of modest increase in land use but marked by careless management of deforested areas, warm and wet climatic conditions during the Medieval Warm Period and long-term effects of vulnerability caused by the aqueduct construction. Probably during this phase, the lake level rose through unparalleled sedimentary infill to flood and bury a significant part of the Lower Town of the abandoned ancient city. The Late Byzantine Period (13th and 14th century AD) sees core evidence for erosion of established, non-vegetated soils (high magnetic susceptibility), in a period of almost total depopulation. In the subsequent Ottoman era (late 15th e early 19th centuries AD) local settlement made only slight recovery, the climatic conditions seem less stable during the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the lake seasonally and later periodically starts to dry up, cumulating in a longer dry phase at the end of the 19th century AD, Quaternary Science Reviews 213 (2019) 133e154 when agricultural activity on the polje floor was possible. The conclusion conforms with recent modelling of environmental change, critical of mono-causation, rather focussing on complex interactions of human and natural factors in the inception of landscape transformation.

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RomanSeminar Lecture: J. Bintliff. The Roman Impact on Town and Country in Greece: Towards a New Synthesis

by ROMAN SEMINAR, Dimitris Grigoropoulos, Vassilis Evangelidis, and John Bintliff

Dear Colleagues and Friends, Please take note of the upcoming Roman Seminar by Professor John Bi... more Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Please take note of the upcoming Roman Seminar by Professor John Bintliff (Leiden University & University of Edinburgh) to be held on Thursday 25 May 2017 at 7.00 pm.

The lecture will take place at the Italian Archaeological School at Athens (Parthenonos 14).

For further information see poster attached.

The Organizing Committee
Roman Seminar

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Classical farms, hidden prehistoric landscapes and Greek rural survey: a response and an update.

by Kalliope Sarri, John Bintliff, and Emeri Farinetti

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Landscape and Early Farming Settlement Dynamics In Central Greece

by Kalliope Sarri and John Bintliff

Geoarchaeology, Jan 1, 2006

Current hyperintensive surface survey in the Tanagra district of Boeotia, central Greece (J. L. B... more Current hyperintensive surface survey in the Tanagra district of Boeotia, central Greece (J. L. Bintliff et al., 2002), together with a recent reanalysis of survey results from the Thespiae dis- trict (J. L. Bintliff et al., 1999), have led to a radical rethinking of how and where early farm- ers exploited the Greek landscape between earliest Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times.

This new work is described, and its significance for the wider debates about the Greek land- scape in this period is further discussed, to demonstrate that alongside widely spaced villages in earlier Neolithic times there were also small, short-lived farms; both were associated with wetland hand cultivation.

In later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times, these locations remained, but vestigial traces discovered by hyperintensive survey methods have identified an explosion of small, short-lived, and horizontally migrating farms across the newly cleared interfluve zones. A largely lost alluvial terrace provides a major resource for the earlier, wet- land farming foci.

© 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Site formation processes and the Hvar survey project, Yugoslavia

by Vincent Gaffney and John Bintliff

Interpreting artefact scatters. Contributions to …, Jan 1, 1991

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Classical Farms, Hidden Prehistoric Landscapes and Greek Rural Survey: A Response and An Update

by John Bintliff, Emeri Farinetti, and Kalliope Sarri

Journal of …, Jan 1, 2003

... Classical Farms, Hidden Prehistoric Landscapes and Greek Rural Survey: A Response and an upda... more

The Leiden Ancient Cities of Boeotia Project: Preliminary Report on the 2001 Season

by Emeri Farinetti, John Bintliff, and Niki Evelpidou

Pharos, Jan 1, 2001

Bintliff, J. L. (2015). The spaces of dependency in Southern Greece: Landscape and tied labour from the Mycenaean era till the Middle Byzantine period. Los Espacios de la Esclavitud y La Dependencia desde la Antiguedad. Beltran, Sastre,Valdes. Besancon, Universite de Franche-Comte: 255-262.

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Bintliff, J. L. (2014). Mobility and proto-capitalism in the Hellenistic and Early Roman Mediterranean. Mobilitat in den Kulturen der antiken Mittelmeerwelt. E. Olshausen and V. Sauer. Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag: 49-53.

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A guide to good practice in Mediterranean surface survey projects

by John Bintliff, Peter Attema, Philip Bes, Tymon de Haas, Damjan Donev, Gijs Tol, Eva Kaptijn, Steve Rosen, and marinella pasquinucci

The Journal of Greek Archaeology 5: 1-62, 2020

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Making use of Time and Space – using African Red Slip Ware as an Indicator of Economic Activity in Mid- and Late Roman Thespiae and Tanagra

by Philip Bes, Jeroen Poblome, John Bintliff, and Dean Peeters

Island, Mainland, Coastland and Hinterland: Ceramic Perspectives on Connectivity in the Ancient Mediterranean. Proceedings of the Conference held at the University of Amsterdam, 1-3 February 2013

Pottery and Social Dynamics in the Mediterranean and Beyond in Medieval and Post-Medieval Times

by Marta Caroscio and John Bintliff

BAR International Series 2557

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Aspects of the External Mind in the Materiality of Medieval and Renaissance Societies

Der den Kordaz tanzt. Hommage an Johannes Koder. M. S. Popovic, V. Zervan and R. C. Muller. Leipzig, Eudora Verlag, 2024

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THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL 'ROMAN EMPIRE OF 2000 CITIES' PROJECT

Archaeology and Historical Demography: Methods and Case Studies between Mediterranean and Central Europe. Zwei Kolloquien im Rahmen des Suedeuropadialogs des Deutschen Akademischen Austauschdienstes in Goettingen im Juni 2022 und in Palermo im Oktober 2022. J. Bergemann and O. Belvedere. , 2023

Systems (GIS) a complete gazetteer with source information for each town, including size, public ... more Systems (GIS) a complete gazetteer with source information for each town, including size, public buildings, coinage if minting, official status and preceding history. One of the main aims was the most accurate map of cities for the period around 200 AD. There had been partial attempts at such a map, for example Norman Pounds' illustration of official Early Imperial cities for the provinces of the north Mediterranean and Western Europe. 1 Pre-existing dense urbanisation in the Greek world, the Eastern Adriatic, Central Italian and South Iberian regions clearly affect the subsequent Roman network of cities. A far more ambitious project was a single-handed gazetteer by John Hanson, which appeared as recently as 2016. 2 There are now far more cities, but the same image of localized dense zones appears. Hanson's total between 100 and 300 AD came to 1350-1362 official cities. Our European Project is now able to display a map which naturally benefits from using a large team rather than a single researcher (Taf. 11,1). The provisional number of official cities now comes to 2389 (the Project results are still being analysed and updated). Hanson was able to find just 57 % of the official cities we have now documented. This was just one if key result of the ERC project, just how many self-governing cities at the minimum existed in the High Empire. However the Project had far deeper aims. Firstly to examine the distribution of these cities in each province and trace its evolution from Pre-Imperial times. Next to analyse how the Roman urban

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The Mediterranean Valleys Revisited

Geoarchaeology 40: https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.22029., 2024

The publication of The Mediterranean Valleys by Claudio Vita-Finzi in 1969 produced a radical cha... more The publication of The Mediterranean Valleys by Claudio Vita-Finzi in 1969 produced a radical change in research perspectives for our understanding of the timing and causation of erosional and depositional sequences in this macro-region. This article will trace the debates that arose from this book and outline our current understanding of the interaction between human impact, short-and long-term climatic fluctuations and landscape variability in moulding the development of Mediterranean surface landforms during the Holocene era.

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The Survival of Cities after Military Devastation: Comparing the Classical Greek and Roman Experience

The Destruction of Cities in the Ancient Greek World: Integrating the Archaeological and Literary Evidence. S. Fachard and E. Harris. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 340-354., 2021

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A review of soil geochemistry in archaeology

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 43: 103419., 2022

Trace metal analysis of archaeological soils has grown in popularity in recent decades, as an add... more Trace metal analysis of archaeological soils has grown in popularity in recent decades, as an additional means of measuring human impact on and off archaeological sites. Nonetheless there has been a tendency to ascribe such elements too easily to ancient metallurgy, whereas pollution research studies have identified many other causes of heightened trace metals in anthropogenic deposits. This article reviews the published history of research into these phenomena.

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The long-term programme of trace metal analysis at the ancient city of Hyettos

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 43: 103432., 2022

The Boeotia Regional Survey Project in Central Greece, has conducted surface survey on five ancie... more The Boeotia Regional Survey Project in Central Greece, has conducted surface survey on five ancient cities and across their associated landscapes since 1978. During the 1980 ′ s and 1990 ′ s a programme of trace metal soil analysis was begun on two of these cities, Thespiai and Hyettos, and also at a series of rural farmsites as well as over areas of countryside marked by ancient manuring carpets. Further samples were taken at Hyettos in 2015. This article presents the results of the analyses from the small Greek and Roman city of Hyettos in northern Boeotia province, together with their archaeological context derived from surface ceramics, geophysics and historical sources. The integration of these different data sources provides insights into urban transformation and the cumulative effect of long-term habitation in the anthropogenic pollution of associated soils. The various sources of elevated trace elements in urban sediments are also investigated, as well as the contribution of natural elemental levels from underlying geology.

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The long-term programme of trace metal analysis at the ancient city of Hyettos

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 43: 103432.

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A review of soil geochemistry in archaeology

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 43: 103419., 2022

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Journal of Greek Archaeology volume Free Sampler

Journal of Greek Archaeology 5, 2020

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Klavs and the Kephallenia Project

Acta Archaeologica 89. I. Merkyte. Oxford, Wiley: 132-143., 2018

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Journal of Greek Archaeology Volume 5 Sampler

Journal of Greek Archaeology vol. 5, 2020

The journal appears annually and incorporates original articles, research reviews and book reviews.

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A guide to good practice in Mediterranean surface survey projects

by John Bintliff, Peter Attema, Philip Bes, Tymon de Haas, Gijs Tol, Frank Vermeulen, Jesus Garcia Sanchez, and Damjan Donev

Journal of Greek Archaeology, 2020

This article deals with a relatively new form of archaeological research in the Mediterranean reg... more This article deals with a relatively new form of archaeological research in the Mediterranean
region – intensive surface survey, coverage of the landscape by teams walking in close order,
recording patterns of human activity visible on the landsurface as scatters of pottery and lithics,
or building remains. Since 2000, archaeologists from Dutch and Belgian universities working
on Mediterranean survey projects have gathered annually to discuss methodological issues in
workshops that gradually attracted landscape archaeologists from other European countries and
Turkey. On the basis of these discussions, this paper, written by regular workshop contributors
and other invited authors with wider Mediterranean experience, aims to evaluate the potential
of various approaches to the archaeological surface record in the Mediterranean and provide
guidelines for standards of good practice in Mediterranean survey.

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Recent developments in the social and economic archaeology of the Mediterranean region from a long-term perspective

by TMA - Tijdschrift voor Mediterrane Archeologie and John Bintliff

TMA40, 2008

This article will present some of the significant trends in archaeological scholarship focussing ... more This article will present some of the significant trends in archaeological scholarship focussing on the Mediterranean over the Longue Durée. Firstly, Environmental and Physical Science continue to exercise a not to be underestimated impact on our understanding of cultural changes, as well as offering often unexpected evidence causing us to rethink our scenarios of the past. In Prehistory, popular themes such asWorld Systems and the phenomenology of landscape can be balanced against the ongoing insights from anthropological approaches, e.g. in demography and social structure. For Greco-Roman antiquity, the role of regional survey remains central to issues of human impact, population fluctuations, and the political organisation of town and country. Refinements in ceramic studies and aspects of ancient technology have brought challenging evidence against Finley’s long-popular model of ancient stagnation. The study of ancient mentalities through works of art has been given new impetus and is brought into the mainstream of current interest in Hellenisation, Romanisation and Christianisation, through the more sociological and ideological approaches pioneered by Zanker and his school. In Medieval and Post-Medieval archaeology, approaches developed in North-West Europe and the States have been spreading throughout the region, notably in the combination

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