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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#212121">Dear Friends of Classics and Ancient History,</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps:normal;orphans:auto;text-align:start;widows:auto;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:#212121"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps:normal;orphans:auto;text-align:start;widows:auto;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:#212121">We are delighted to invite you to the fifth presentation of Semester 2, 2025 in our Classics and Ancient History research seminar series.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#212121"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#212121">This is a special double session “</span>Contexts of Early Greek Writing”. This session will be of wider interest to classicists, linguists, historians, archaeologists and all those interested in the sociology
and technology of early alphabetic scripts in the ancient Mediterranean.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>***Please note the change from the usual location***</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps:normal;orphans:auto;text-align:start;widows:auto;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:#212121"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps:normal;orphans:auto;text-align:start;widows:auto;word-spacing:0px">
<b><span style="font-size:14.0pt;color:#212121">September 15th (Monday, 12.15pm UTC+10)
</span></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:#212121">School of Humanities Common Room, Rm 822 Mungo MacCallum Building</span></u></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps:normal;orphans:auto;text-align:start;widows:auto;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:#212121"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps:normal;orphans:auto;text-align:start;widows:auto;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:#212121">Zoom link: <a href="https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/83159864939" title="https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/83159864939"><span style="color:#96607D">https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/83159864939</span></a></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps:normal;orphans:auto;text-align:start;widows:auto;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:#212121"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><b><i><span style="font-size:16.0pt">Contexts of Early Greek Writing</span></i></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Nicholas J. Cowell (<span style="color:#1E1E1E">University of Sydney</span>)</b>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Qoraqo emi kylix<i>:</i> <i>What Distinguishes the Epigraphy of the ‘Long Eighth Century’ ?</i></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b> </b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><b>Olivier Mariaud (<span style="color:black;background:white">Universiteì Grenoble Alpes)<br>
</span><i>Writing the Name of the Dead: on the alphabetisation of burial customs in Archaic Greece</i></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#212121"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="color:#212121">Abstracts and Biography</span></i></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><b><span style="font-size:14.0pt"> </span></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><b><span style="font-size:14.0pt">Nicholas J. Cowell</span></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="color:black;background:#FAFAFA">What distinguishes the earliest Greek epigraphy – that of the ‘Long C8’ – from that of the period after the mid-seventh century BCE?
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="color:black;background:#FAFAFA">I submit that we cannot simply adopt the toolkit, skills and mindset of classical epigraphy in dealing with this material. We need to rethink the usual – proven – epigraphic
paradigms in coming to grips with this early, tenuous and sometimes bewildering material.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="color:black;background:#FAFAFA">The study of alphabetic adoption in the Iron Age has become somewhat deadlocked and intractable in recent decades, despite considerable new material.
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="color:black;background:#FAFAFA">Emerging themes in the earliest material – such as the lack of public inscriptions, the centrality of votive inscriptions, the role of ceramic artists, and the extraordinary
spatial distribution of the evidence – suggest the value of a new corpus of inscriptions of the Long C8, established to align with the unique characteristics of the epigraphic material of the ‘Long C8’.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="color:black;background:#FAFAFA"> </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:black;background:#FAFAFA">
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#212121">Nicholas Cowell graduated in Science and Classics at University of Melbourne in 1986 and embarked on part-time post-graduate work in Attic epigraphy and history, unfortunately discontinued in 1990. The pressure
of a hectic career in banking in multiple countries led to a hiatus of over three decades – though with intervening graduate study in investments and finance and in wine – until 2024. Nicholas is now retired and pursuing research at University of Sydney in
archaic Greek epigraphy, concentrating on the nature, process and timing of the adoption of the alphabet by the Greeks.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#212121"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:14.0pt">Olivier Mariaud</span></b><span style="font-size:14.0pt">
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="color:black;background:#FAFAFA">Why did the Greeks take almost 150 years after the adoption of the alphabet to begin to write their names on funerary monuments? This sudden bloom transformed drastically
the <i>funeraryscape</i> and general environment of Greek burial places. To date, the inscriptions, separated from both their material and chronological frames, have been interpreted only in terms of memory, as the fossilised remains of words being said at
the grave. Viewed through the lens of the anthropology of writing, however, it becomes clear that putting names on graves is neither self-sufficient nor necessary to guarantee individual or collective memory. This is the notion of the “alphabetisation of funerary
space”. </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="color:black;background:#FAFAFA">By contextualising both their formula and their chronology, this talk will show that the true place of the inscribed
<i>stelai</i> in this mutation of Archaic Greek societies lies in a political shift towards the stabilisation of rights that correlates with both the link between burial and access to resources, and with the growing use of writing in the political sphere to
publicly stipulate and verify the rules that organised the first <i>poleis</i>.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#212121">Olivier Ma</span>r<span style="color:#212121">iaud is Maître de conférences in Ancient History at the Université Grenoble Alpes. His 2007 doctoral thesis was entitled NECROIONIA: archaeology, space, and society.
Research on necropolises and societies in Ionia during the Archaic period (700-500 BC). Most recently he has edited the 2024 volume of Gaia which looks back at the impact of
<i>NOMIMA</i> (2 vols.) the ground-breaking collection of archaic inscriptions edited by F. Ruzé and Henri Van Effenterre. Olivier's research focuses on three interrelated topics:</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<ol style="margin-top:0cm" start="1" type="1">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="color:#212121;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
Social history of pre-classical Greece: Starting with the Ionian case, but expanding to other regional Aegean or colonial spheres, I attempt to understand the functioning and evolution of the main social groups in the Greek world during the Geometric and Archaic
periods through literary, archaeological, and epigraphic sources. The contextual study of discursive and ritual strategies should, in particular, provide a better understanding of the nature of these social groups that clashed and coexisted within Greek cities
during the high periods. These questions have led me to explore the notion of power within poliades systems, particularly socio-economic powers.<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="color:#212121;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
Funeral practices: The second theme focuses more specifically on the funerary archaeology of ancient Greece. Emphasis is placed not only on the diversity of Greek practices, but also on certain essential phenomena such as the monumentalization, externalization,
and literacy (the appearance of funerary inscriptions in the Archaic period) of burials. He is currently preparing several publication projects (articles, monograph) on the appearance of inscribed funerary monuments in archaic Greece. Why did the Greeks feel
the need to inscribe the names of the dead on steles?<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="color:#212121;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
Ionia-Caria in the Mediterranean context: The third theme focuses on the history and archaeology of western Asia Minor (Ionia, Caria) during the Geometric and Archaic periods. Olivier analysed the unpublished excavation notebooks of archaeologist H. Goldman,
who excavated the site of Colophon (Izmir Province, Turkey) in 1922 and 1925. These notebooks document a series of necropolises from the Late Bronze Age, the early Archaic period, and the Classical period. Currently, based on the study of several series of
unpublished artifacts from the Bodrum Archaeological Museum (ancient Halicarnassus), he is exploring the nature of the social and political organization of the Carians between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Classical period, in relation
to the upheavals and changes that swept across the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean during those periods. This work forms the core of an unpublished HDR thesis currently being written. <o:p></o:p></li></ol>
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<span style="color:#212121"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#212121"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#212121">Best, Ben</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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