From Roman To Early Christian Thessalonik

This volume brings together international scholars of religion, archaeologists, and scholars of art and architectural history to investigate social, political, and religious life in Roman and early Christian Thessalonikē, an important metropolis in the Hellenistic, Roman, and early Christian periods and beyond. This volume is the first broadly interdisciplinary investigation of Roman and early Christian Thessalonikē in English and offers new data and new interpretations by scholars of ancient religion and archaeology. The book covers materials usually treated by a broad range of disciplines: New Testament and early Christian literature, art historical materials, urban planning in antiquity, material culture and daily life, and archaeological artifacts from the Roman to the late antique period.

A detailed examination of the production of glass and glass vessels in the eastern Mediterranean from the Hellenistic Age to the Early Christian period, analysing production techniques and decoration.

Presented through 20 case studies covering Europe and the Near East, Neighbours and Successors of Rome investigates development in the production of glass and the mechanisms of the wider glass economy as part of a wider material culture in Europe and the Near East around the later first millennium AD. Though highlighting and solidifying chronology, patterns of distribution, and typology, the primary aims of the collection are to present a new methodology that emphasises regional workshops, scientific data, and the wider trade culture. This methodology embraces a shift in conceptual approach to the study of glass by explaining typological change through the existence of a thriving supra-national commercial network that responded to market demands and combines the results of a range of new scientific techniques into a framework that stresses co-dependence and similarities between the various sites considered. Such an approach, particularly within Byzantine and Early Islamic glass production, is a pioneering concept that contextualises individual sites within the wider region. By twinning a critique of archaeometric methods with the latest archaeological research, the contributors present a foundation for glass research, seen through the lens of consumption demands and geographical necessity, that analyses production centres and traditional typological knowledge. In so doing the they bridge an important divide by demonstrating the co-habitability of diverse approaches and disciplines, linking, for example, the production of Campanulate bowls from Gallaecia with the burgeoning international late antique style. Equally, the particular details of those pieces allow us to identify a regional style as well as local production. As such this compilation provides a highly valuable resource for archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians.

In this volume Julien M. Ogereau investigates the origins and development of Christianity in the Roman province of Macedonia in the first six centuries CE. Drawing from the oldest literary sources, Ogereau reconstructs the earliest history of the first Christian communities in the region and explores the legacy of the apostle Paul in the cities of Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beroea. Turning to the epigraphic and archaeological evidence, Ogereau then examines Christianity’s dissemination throughout the province and its impact on Macedonian society in late antiquity, especially on its epigraphic habits and material culture.

This volume examines materials produced with the use of fire and mostly by use of the kiln (metals, plasters, glass and glaze, aromatics). The technologies based on fire have been considered high-tech technologies and they have contributed to the evolution of man throughout history. Papers highlight technical innovations of the technician/artist/pyrotechnologist that lived in the Aegean (mainland Greece and the islands) during the Bronze Age, the Classical and the Byzantine periods.

Corinth has been an important site for the study of ancient glass since the pioneering work of Gladys Davidson Weinberg. This volume presents the first attempt at Corinth to analyze the entire corpus of glass found in a single area, that located just east of the Theater, the focus of excavations conducted by the American School of Classical Studies in the 1980s. These excavations revealed a north-south street that flanked the Theater, as well as a series of buildings to its east, part of a residential neighborhood ranging in date from the Early Roman to the Early Byzantine period. In this volume-the first of the final reports from the East of Theater excavations-the author presents the glass finds, including over 450 cataloged examples of glassworking remains, vessel glass, and non-vessel glass. Significantly, these finds reveal shifting patterns in vessel types, manufacturing techniques, and trade, as well as evidence for local glass production throughout these periods. Included among the finds are fragments of two opus sectile panels, evidence of the type of luxurious decoration that once existed in these structures. This groundbreaking study provides a tantalizing glimpse into the lives of everyday Corinthians, advancing glass studies both within Greece and throughout the Mediterranean.

The early Christian period, especially the time between the third and sixth centuries, is one of the most fascinating in church history. The Christianity which developed into a state church in the Roman empire during the fourth century gave new content to traditional Graeco-Roman art and adapted it to changed needs. Different forms of churches, monasteries and baptisms came into being, as did Christian art in paintings, mosaics and sculptures; biblical manuscripts were illustrated and liturgical furnishings and vessels were given new form. Here for the first time in a single volume is an account of architecture sacred and profane, funerary art in catacombs and tombs and especially sarcophagi, the graphic arts and the various forms of art in miniature. The text is illustrated with numerous line drawings and photographs, including ground plans and elevations of churches, actual and conjectural, and there are full descriptions of the art and architecture discussed against its social and historical background. In addition there are full bibliographies and details of the most important collections of Christian art. This will prove not only an invaluable work for art historians but also a guide for those travelling in the Mediterranean area and an indication of the riches of the first centuries of the church. Guntram Koch is Professor of Christian Archaeology and the History of Byzantine Art in the University of Marburg.

The First Urban Churches 7 includes essays focused on the development of early Christianity from the mid-first century through the sixth century CE in the ancient Macedonian city of Thessalonica. An international group of contributors traces the emergence of Thessalonica’s house churches through a close study of the archaeological remains, inscriptions, coins, iconography, and Paul’s two letters to the Thessalonians. After a detailed introduction to the city, including the first comprehensive epigraphic profile of Thessalonica from the Hellenistic age to the Roman Empire, topics discussed include the Roman emperor’s divine honors, coins and inscriptions as sources of imperial propaganda, Thessalonian family bonds, Paul’s apostolic self-image, the role of music at Thessalonica and in early Christianity, and Paul’s response to the Thessalonian Jewish community. Contributors include D. Clint Burnett, Alan H. Cadwallader, Rosemary Canavan, James R. Harrison, Julien M. Ogereau, Isaac T. Soon, Angela Standhartinger, Michael P. Theophilos, and Joel R. White.