Resources > Walls and Boundaries
Professor Michael Scott visited the The Baron Thyssen Centre for the Study of Ancient Material Religion on 23rd May 2019, to give a paper entitled “Walls and the Ancient Greek Experience”. After the seminar, Jessica Hughes and Michael Scott were joined by Dr Christine Plastow and Dr Emma-Jayne Graham to record an audio discussion about ‘walls and boundaries” in ancient Greece and Italy. The discussion also featured the voice of Professor Kristin Hass, who spoke about a contemporary wall: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC.
You can listen to this recording via Soundcloud.
Programme structure and timecodes
0.00 Intro; 0.40 Michael Scott on boundaries in Greek sanctuaries, Eleusis and the Mysteries; 4.42 Christine Plastow on boundaries and the spaces of Athenian homicide trials; 9.57 Emma-Jayne Graham on walls and boundaries in Roman Republican sanctuaries; 15.56 Kristin Hass on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; 20.38 Studio responses to Kristin Hass; 29.02 Michael Scott on the temple of Zeus at Olympia; 31.12 Emma-Jayne Graham on the sanctuary of Juno Gabina at Gabii; 33.02 Christine Plastow on the Areopagus in Athens.
Further reading
On Greek sanctuaries
Cosmopoulos, M. (ed.) (2005) Greek mysteries: the archaeology and ritual of ancient Greek secret cults. Oxford.
Mylonas, G. (1961) Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Princeton.
Mylonopoulos, J. (2008) ‘The Dynamics of Ritual Space in the Hellenistic and Roman East’, Kernos, 21, pp. 49-79.
Wescoat, B and Ousterhout, R. (eds.) (2012) Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium, Cambridge.
On the spaces of Athenian law (and pollution)
Blanshard, Alastair (2014) ‘The Permeable Spaces of the Athenian Law-Court’ in K. Gilhuly and N. Worman (eds.) Space, Place, and Landscape in Ancient Greek Literature and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 240-275.
Boegehold, Alan L. et al. (1995) The Athenian Agora Vol. xxviii. The Lawcourts at Athens: Sites, Buildings, Equipment, Procedure, and Testimonia. Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Parker, Robert (1983) Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plastow, Christine (2020 - forthcoming) Homicide in the Attic Orators: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Context. London: Routledge.
On sanctuaries in Republican Italy
Almagro-Gorbea, M., ed. (1982) El santuario de Juno en Gabii. Rome: Bibliotheca Italica 17.
Attenni, L. (2013) The Pantanacci votive deposit: new archaeological discoveries. Etruscan News, 15, pp. 1 and 6. Available at: https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/ancient/documents/EtruscanNews_Winter%202013.pdf
Attenni, L. and Ghini, G. (2014) ‘La stipe votiva in località Pantanacci (Genzano di Roma- Lanuvio, Roma)’, in E. Calandra, G. Ghini, and Z. Mari (eds.) Lazio e Sabina 10. (Atti del Convegno ‘Decimo incontro di Studi sul Lazio e la Sabina’, Roma, 4–6 giugno 2013). Rome: Lavori e Studi della Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Lazio, pp. 153–61. Available at: http://archeologialazio.beniculturali.it/getFile.php?id=782
Coarelli, F. (1987) I santuari del Lazio in età Repubblicana. Rome: La Nuova Italia Scientifica.
Rous, B. D. (2010) Triumphs of compromise: an analysis of the monumentalisation of sanctuaries in Latium in the late republican period (second and first centuries BC). Unpublished thesis. Universiteit van Amsterdam. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.327031
Fasolo, F. and Gullini, G. (1953) Il santuario della Fortuna primigenia a Palestrina. Rome: Istituto di archeologia, Università di Roma.
On the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Hass, Kristin Ann (1998) Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, University of California Press.
Image gallery
Additional extract from conversation with Professor Kristin Ann Hass.
