Methods in the Mediterranean: Historical and Archaeological Views on Texts and Archaeology (Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava Supplementum)

This collection of essays treats the fundamental issue of the correlation of archaeology and texts in recreating the ancient Mediterranean world. Contributions from Classical and Near Eastern archaeologists and historians address specific points of correlation, and their potential for future productive research in the Mediterranean. After an introduction to the issue of texts and archaeology, the essays treat concepts such as: site as text, artifactual contingency of meaning, correlating survey with documents, contextual independence of evidence, textual bases for archaeological approaches, and correlating faunal evidence with texts. This book will be of important use to archaeologists and historians of the Mediterranean, and scholars of archaeological research in historical archaeology in general. METHODS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: HISTORICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL VIEWS ON TEXTS AND ARCHAEOLOGY 3 CONTENTS 5 Introduction 7 Setting an Historian—Archaeologist Dialogue 29 Is there a Text in this Site? 31 Thucydides and the Beginnings of Archaeology 51 Specific Mediterranean Features 95 Greek Horoi: Artifactual Texts and the Contigency of Meaning 97 Historical Text and Archaeological Context in Roman North Africa: The Albertini Tablets and Kasserine Survey 130 Monuments, Laws, and Analysis: Combining Archaeology and Text in Ancient Athens 149 Cross-Cultural Views 181 Epistemic Independence between Textual and Material Evidence 183 Husbandry, Dietary Taboos and the Bones of the Ancient Near East: Zooarchaeology in the Post-Processual World 203 Towards Establishing a Conceptual Basis for Animal Categories in Archaeology 239 Bibliography 280 Index 299 SUPPLEMENTS TO MNEMOSYNE 301

This collection of essays treats the fundamental issue of the correlation of archaeology and texts in recreating the ancient Mediterranean world. Contributions from Classical and Near Eastern archaeologists and historians address specific points of correlation, and their potential for future productive research in the Mediterranean.
After an introduction to the issue of texts and archaeology, the essays treat concepts such as: site as text, artifactual contingency of meaning, correlating survey with documents, contextual independence of evidence, textual bases for archaeological approaches, and correlating faunal evidence with texts.
This book will be of important use to archaeologists and historians of the Mediterranean, and scholars of archaeological research in historical archaeology in general.

Archaeologists and historians address particular issues of the correlation of archaeology and texts, treating important issues such as linking survey and ancient documents, the contextual independence of historical and archaeological evidence, and the classical site as text itself.