Franco De Angelis

Professor of Greek History and Archaeology | Distinguished University Scholar |
phone work phone 604 822 6749
location_on Buchanan C328
Office Hours
By appointment

About

Degrees

Career

  • 1997-2000: Assistant Professor, University of Lethbridge, Department History.
  • 2000-2003: Assistant Professor (with tenure), University of Calgary, Department of Greek and Roman Studies.
  • 1997-2002: Adjunct Professor, Department of History & Classics, University of Alberta.
  • 2003-2005: Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia, Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies.
  • 2005-2016: Associate Professor (with tenure), University of British Columbia, Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies.
  • 2016-: Professor (with tenure), University of British Columbia, Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies.
Fellowships, Grants, Honours, & Prizes

Teaching


Research

ORCID #: 0000-0001-7411-9328

Research Interests

  • Ancient Greek culture in its broader Mediterranean and Middle Eastern contexts from the Iron Age to Hellenistic period; regional identities (esp. Sicily and pre-Roman Italy)
  • Decolonizing the Classics through postcolonial and postmodern methods and theories; giving voice to the ancient world’s cultural diversity and marginalized peoples
  • Mobilities, migrations and diasporas; interregional and intercultural contact; global antiquity
  • Ancient technology and innovation
  • Multi- and interdisciplinary methods and theories (esp. combining texts and material culture); cross-cultural, comparative, and anthropological methods and theories
  • Ancient and modern historiographies for these research interests (esp. the inappropriate application of modern concepts of settler colonialism, race and racism, centre and margin/periphery, etc. to the ancient world)
  • Reception of the ancient world in the New World, including in British Columbia

Research

For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the history of the ancient Greek world was widely studied on the basis of a few favoured questions and states (most notably Athens and Sparta).   Since I was a graduate student in the 1990s, my research has sought to broaden the study of Greek history by grappling with a greater variety of questions and states beyond the traditional canon. What factors created the canon and how did change come about? What was life like in Greek states other than Athens and Sparta, especially in regions outside Greece, where environmental and ethnic conditions were usually quite different? How, in other words, did Greek mobilities, migrations, and diasporas contribute to the development of the ancient Greek world as a whole?  And, by extension, how culturally diverse was the ancient Greek world? What social and economic factors underpinned the traditional political and military narratives commonly encountered in standard narratives of ancient Greek history? When and under what circumstances did state formation arrive in Greece, the context within which civilization developed in the Greek world? These questions have formed the basis of my research activities.  Answering them requires a broad interdisciplinary approach, in the tradition first developed in Oxford in the 1930s by the Greek historian, Alan Blakeway. It is one which moves freely and fluidly between the disciplines of philology, history, and archaeology in order to combine texts and material culture in an equal and complementary manner in the full realization that no one form of evidence can on its own tell us everything we need to know about the ancient world. To quote the late David Ridgway: “Blakeway’s starting point was new, as was his method: that of the historian who was willing to learn not only the vocabulary of archaeology but the grammar and syntax as well” (in J.-P. Descoeudres [ed.], Greek Colonists and Native Populations [Oxford 1990], p. 61).  My overall aim is to write a new, more comprehensive Greek history, using the just described interdisciplinary approach.  My research has taken four interrelated directions.

The first direction has involved re-evaluating the history of Greek Sicily.  The island of Sicily is attractive for this purpose because of its size (a quasi-continent) and location at the very crossroads of the Mediterranean.  The island also had an impressive mix of cultures (indigenous, Greek, and Phoenician in particular) and geographical features that made it stand out compared to the Greek homeland.  For these reasons, ancient Sicily provides a fertile research environment for the application of decolonizing and postcolonial approaches and opens wider horizons in the history of ancient Greece.  My research on Greek Sicily has resulted in two books and three archaeological monograph reports.  The first book, based on my doctoral thesis at Oxford University, was published in 2003 in the monograph series of the Oxford University School of Archaeology as Megara Hyblaia and Selinous: The Development of Two Greek City-States in Archaic Sicily.   The choice of the Archaic Megarian city-states in Sicily allowed me to focus on their divergent evolution and to show that even within the island of Sicily–a relatively small area (about 25,000 square kilometres) in comparison with the ancient Greek world as a whole–city-states could develop in different ways, and that there was regionalism within regionalism.   My second book on Greek Sicily has extended, both in terms of chronological periods and geographical coverage, the narrower subject-matter of the thesis-book to writing the first ever full-scale social and economic history of Greek Sicily in the Archaic and Classical periods. This book, entitled Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily: A Social and Economic History, was published in 2016 in the series “Greeks Overseas” based in the New York office of Oxford University Press.  The three archaeological monograph reports were commissioned by The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (London) and The British School at Athens and reviewed advances in archaeological and historical research relating to Greek Sicily (including the Byzantine period) for the fifteen years spanning 1996 to 2010.

The second direction has involved pursuing cross-cultural and comparative perspectives to the study of Greek antiquity. The underlying premise here is that one cannot re-evaluate a particular region of the ancient world without re-evaluating the larger whole to which this part of the “puzzle” belongs.  To this end, three projects have recently engaged my energies.  One concerns an international conference that I organized called “Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity” held in Vancouver in March 2007.  Professor Lord Colin Renfrew of Cambridge University delivered the keynote lecture, and fifty-six speakers from all over the world were chosen on a blind peer-review system.  I have edited and contributed an introductory essay to the volume of 14 peer-reviewed essays recently published with Peeters Publishers in Leuven entitled Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity: Exploring their Limits.  The second project is another book that has recently been published called A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World for the series Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World published by Wiley-Blackwell.  This book takes stock of the unprecedented growth and development of knowledge and approaches over the past three decades and fills a gap in scholarship by providing an up-to-date account of the ancient Greeks outside their homelands from the Early Iron Age to the Hellenistic world forged out of Alexander the Great’s conquests.  The third project regards my involvement in Seshat: Global History Databank, for which I co-authored the chapter “The Greco-Roman Mediterranean” for the recently published book The Seshat History of the Axial Age.

The third direction in my research is now attempting to bring together the latter two directions into a single whole.  The basic premise here is to re-evaluate the conjunction of regional trajectories, especially those of the Eastern and Western Mediterranean from the Early Iron Age to the development of Roman control over the entire Mediterranean basin.  One question in particular is guiding this research: Who were the main shakers and movers in the cultural development of pre-Roman Italy?  For over a century modern scholars have envisaged one answer. Immigrants from the East, especially Greeks, and to a lesser degree Phoenicians, were the dominant drivers in this development, bringing cities, metal-working technology, and in general higher culture to passive and inferior native Italian populations in the eighth century BC. But since the 1990s this picture has been dramatically challenged, particularly through the growth and interpretation of prehistoric archaeological data in Etruria and Sardinia. This evidence demonstrates that these two regions were already highly developed as prehistoric powerhouses, not dependent on immigrant stimuli for their initial rise to power. They acted, therefore, as magnets that attracted Greeks and Phoenicians to their regions.  The aim of this project is to produce a book which will rethink the part played by the “Greek Miracle” in the cultural development of pre-Roman Western Mediterranean and to suggest some new solutions to this old problem.  The working title of this book project is “From Backwardness to Leapfrogging?  Rethinking Cultural Transfers in the Pre-Roman Western Mediterranean.”   This book project is under contract with Oxford University Press.

The fourth and most recent direction builds on my work on ancient Greek Sicily and on ancient Greek migrations and diasporas.  New World settler colonialism has often evoked comparisons with Greek, Roman, and Old World antiquity in general.  This new research seeks to move beyond the piecemeal discussion of Old World antiquity in the New World of North America, which is usually restricted to place-names (such as Syracuse, New York), neo-classical aesthetics and architecture, and literature.  Instead, I seek to establish a more comprehensive and systematic intellectual framework which connects Old World Antiquity with Europe’s exploration and settlement of (to them) the New World in the 16th to 20th centuries of our era.  As is well known, this exploration and settlement resulted in a significant expansion of human experiences with which Europeans could understand their past and imagine their futures.  Ancient Greece and Rome served as a major source of inspiration in these respects because of their importance to European education and identity.  Thus a two-way dialogue emerged, one in which Europeans regularly made parallels between their exploration and settlement of the New World with understanding ancient Greek and Roman history and, vice versa, the role ancient Greece and Rome played in providing parallels with imagining how life in the New World might one day become.  This research investigates both these kinds of parallels and the motivations for them, especially those derived from ancient Greece, as well as assessing the distortions and possibilities raised by such parallels.  The working title of this project is “Circular Conquests: The New World and Classical Antiquity” for which a book contract is in preparation for the monograph series “The New Antiquity” published by Palgrave Macmillan.  Some of the preliminary results have been published as a chapter called “Anthropology and the Creation of the Classical Other” in Brill’s Companion to Classics and Early Anthropology and as the “Preface” to the book The Fight for Greek Sicily: Society, Politics, and Landscape, where I compare ancient Greek Sicily to the frontier period of modern British Columbia.

As part of my research, I have always travelled extensively to visit ancient sites and museums and have also taken part in excavations and field surveys in Greece, Italy, and Britain, such as working alongside Stanford University on the acropolis of Monte Polizzo in Western Sicily.  The underlying philosophy is that to be a good historian one must get out of one’s arm-chair and obtain as much hands-on experience as possible to write about the past.


Publications

Recently Published

Publications

1.   BOOKS

(a)  Authored

1)  Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily: A Social and Economic HistoryGreeks Overseas series (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. xxii, 442, 44 figures, 9 tables, 13 maps.  Revised paperback edition published in 2018.

Reviews: C.L. Sulosky Weaver, Classical Journal-Online 2016.08.07; J.M. Williams, Choice (American Library Association), October 2016; M. Dreher, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2016.12.19; P. Oliva, Eirene: Studia Graeca et Latina 52 (2016), pp. 506-507; K. Vlassopoulos, Greece & Rome 64.1 (2017), pp. 78-84 (esp. 78-79); P. Cartledge, American Historical Review 122.4 (October 2017), pp. 1286-1287; L. Donnellan, Journal of Greek Archaeology 2 (2017), pp. 427-433; M. de Wit, L’Antiquité Classique 86 (2017), pp. 501-502; S. Pope, American Journal of Archaeology 122.1 (2018), 2 pp. (https://www.ajaonline.org/book-review/3595); L.-M. Günther, Historische Zeitschrift 306.1 (2018), pp. 159-160; D. Bonanno, Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften Ausgabe 18 (2018), Nr. 4 (http://www.sehepunkte.de/2018/04/29724.html); F. Ferlito, Siculorum Gymnasium: A Journal for the Humanities 71.4 (2018), pp. 521-522; J.R.W. Prag, Classical Review 69 (2019), pp. 189-192; F. Bernstein, Gnomon 91 (2019), pp. 427-434; F. Muscolino, Athenaeum 108 (2020), pp. 602-607.

Nominations:  James R. Wiseman Book Award of the Archaeological Institute of America (March 2017); The London Hellenic (Book) Prize, The Hellenic Centre, London.

2) Megara Hyblaia and Selinous: The Development of Two Greek City-States in Archaic Sicily (Oxford: Oxbow Press for Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2003), pp. xxiii, 264, 51 figures, 34 plates.

Reviews:  F. Lefèvre, Revue des Études Grecques 117 (2004), pp. 785-786; D.G. Smith, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2005.01.28; B.A. Ault, Antiquity 80 (2006), pp. 214-218; R.R. Holloway,  American Journal of Archaeology 110 (2006), pp. 326-327; H. Tréziny, Gnomon 78 (2006), pp. 712-716; A. Robu,L’Antiquité Classique 75 (2006), pp. 205-212; R.J. Evans, Mnemosyne 59 (2006), pp. 614-617; A.J. Domínguez, Ancient West & East 8 (2009), pp. 344-347.

Textbooklet:

3) The Greek and Roman Pottery and Glass Techniques (Montréal: McGill University, 1992), pp. ix, 92, 41 figures.

(b)   Edited

1) A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World (=Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World; Hoboken, NJ and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2020), pp. xxvi, 554, 15 maps, 26 figures, 3 tables.

2) Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity: Exploring Their Limits (Leuven: Peeters Publishing, 2013), pp. xvi, 362, 48 figures, 4 tables.

3) The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation. Essays Dedicated to Professor Sir John Boardman (with G.R. Tsetskhladze) (Oxford: Oxbow Press for Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1994), pp. x, 149, 34 figures.  Revised paperback edition, 2004.

Reviews: W. Schuller, Klio 81 (1999), pp. 500-501; A.J. Graham, Journal of Hellenic Studies 117 (1997), p. 250; G.L. Hoffman, American Journal of Archaeology 101 (1997), pp. 601-602; N. Purcell, Antiquity 71 (1997), pp. 500-502; P. Lévêque, Dialogues d’Histoire Ancienne 22 (1996), pp. 308-309; J.G. de Boer, Talanta 26-27 (1994-95), pp. 225-226; N. Spivey, The Times Higher Educational Supplement (9 Dec. 1994), p. 21.

2.   ARCHAEOLOGICAL REPORT MONOGRAPHS

The Archaeological Reports review scholarly developments in the archaeology and history of the ancient Greeks and are published by The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies and The British School at Athens.

  1. Archaeology in Sicily 2006-2010.  (Journal of Hellenic Studies Archaeological Reports for 2011-2012, no. 58; Cambridge 2012), pp. 123-195, 47 figures.
  2. Archaeology in Sicily, 2001-2005.  (Journal of Hellenic Studies Archaeological Reports for 2006-2007, no. 53; London, 2007), pp. 123-190, 37 figures.
  3. Archaeology in Sicily, 1996-2000.  (Journal of Hellenic Studies Archaeological Reports for 2000-2001, no. 47; London, 2001), pp. 145-201, 56 figures.

3.  REFEREED CHAPTERS & ENTRIES IN BOOKS

  1. “Introduction: Greeks Across the Ancient World,” in F. De Angelis (ed.), A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World (=Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series; Hoboken, NJ and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2020), pp. 1-10.
  2. “Italian Scholarship and the Greeks outside their Homelands,” in F. De Angelis (ed.), A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World (=Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series; Hoboken, NJ and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2020), pp. 85-100.
  3. “Conclusions,” in M. Costanzi and M. Dana (eds.), Une autre façon d’etre Grec: interactions et productions des Grecs en milieu colonial.  Actes du colloque international organisé à Amiens (Université Jules Verne Picardie) et Paris (ANHIMA), 18-19 novembre 2016 (=Colloquia Antiqua, 26; Leuven: Peeters, 2020), pp. 435-447.
  4. “Preface: Word of Welcome,” in M. Jonasch (ed.), The Fight for Sicily: Politics, Society and Landscape (Oxford: Oxbow, 2020), pp. viii-x.
  5. “Energizing the Economy: Present Results and Future Directions,” in M. Jonasch (ed.), The Fight for Sicily: Politics, Society and Landscape (Oxford: Oxbow, 2020), pp. 118-129.
  6. “The Greco-Roman Mediterranean,” in D. Hoyer and J. Redish (eds.), The Seshat History of the Axial Age (Chaplin, CT: Beresta Books, 2019), pp. 67-89 (co-authored with Jenny Redish).
  7. “Greek Sicily: A World Apart?,” in D. Booms and P. Higgs (eds.), Sicily: Heritage of the World Conference, June 24-25, British Museum (London: British Museum, 2019), pp. 18-23.
  8. “Anthropology and the Creation of the Classical Other,” in E. Varto (ed.), The Classics and Early Anthropology: A Companion to Classical Reception (Leiden and Boston: Brill), pp. 349-364.
  9. “Between Localism and Diaspora: The Sicilian Perspective on Megara’s World,” in H. Beck and P.J. Smith (eds.), Megarian Moments.  The Local World of an Ancient Greek City-state (=Teiresias Supplements Online, vol. 1; Montréal, 2018), pp. 1-15.
  10. “Discussion of Luigi Gallo’s ‘Città e territorio: popolazione e popolamento’,”in M. Lombardo and A Siciliano (eds.), Poleis e politeiai nella Magna Grecia arcaica e classica.  Atti del cinquantatreesimo Convegno Internazionale di Studi sulla Magna Grecia, Taranto, 26-29 settembre 2013 (Taranto: Istituto per la Storia e Archeologia della Magna Grecia, 2016), pp. 513-516. 
  11. E pluribus unum: The Multiplicity of Models,” in L. Donnellan, V. Nizzo, and G.-J. Burger (eds.), Conceptualising Early Colonisation (=Contextualising Early Colonisation, vol. 2; Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 97-104.
  12. “Approaches to the Movement of Ancient Phenomena through Time and Space,” in F. De Angelis (ed.), Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity: Exploring Their Limits (Leuven: Peeters Publishing, 2013), pp. 1-20.
  13. “Art and Power in Archaic Greek Sicily: Investigating the Economic Substratum,” in M. Castiglione and A. Poggio (eds.), Arte – Potere: forme artistiche, istituzioni, paradigmi interpretativi. Atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Pisa Scuola Normale Superiore, 25-27 Novembre 2010 (Milan: Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto, 2012), pp. 173-184.
  14. “Teorizzando l’economie arcaiche della Sicilia greca,” in J. Bergemann (ed.), Griechen in Übersee und der historische Raum.  Internationales Kolloquium Universität Göttingen, Archäologisches Institut, 13. – 16. Oktober 2010 (Göttinger Studien zur Mediterranen Archäologie vol. 3; Rahden: Verlag Marie Leidorf, 2012), pp. 27-28.
  15. “Colonies and Colonization, Greek,” in M. Gagarin (editor-in-chief), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), vol. 2, pp. 251-256.
  16. “Ancient Sicily: The Development of a Microregional Tessera in the Mediterranean Mosaic,” in E. Hermon (ed.), Sociéte et climats dans l’empire romain (Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, 2009), pp. 235-250.
  17. “Colonies and Colonization,” in G. Boys-Stones, B. Graziosi, and P. Vasunia (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 48-64.
  18. “Greek and Phoenician Colonization,” in D. Buissert (editor-in-chief), The Oxford Companion to World Exploration (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), vol. 1, pp. 357-360.
  19. “Mediterranean,” in D. Buissert (editor-in-chief), The Oxford Companion to World Exploration(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), vol. 2, pp. 29-33.
  20. “The Agricultural Capacity of Archaic Syracuse,” in F. Krinzinger (ed.), Akten des Symposions «Die Ägäis und das westliche Mittelmeer: Beziehungen und Wechselwirkungen 8. bis 5. Jh. v. Chr., Wien, 24. bis. 27 März 1999» (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichisches Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), pp. 103-109.
  21. “The Foundation of Selinous: Overpopulation or Opportunities?,” in G.R. Tsetskhladze and F. De Angelis (eds.), The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation.  Essays Dedicated to Professor Sir John Boardman (Oxford: Oxbow Press for Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1994), pp. 87-110.  Reprinted with minor corrections in a paperback edition of 2004.
  22. “A Forgotten Inscription from Khlembotsári (Asopía), Boiotia,” in J.M. Fossey and J. Morin (eds.), Boeotia antiqua II. Recent Papers in Boiotian Archaeology and Epigraphy(McGill University Monographs in Classical Archaeology and History no. 11; Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1992), pp. 53-56.

4.   ARTICLES IN REFEREED JOURNALS

  1. “Economia di Selinunte e della Sicilia Occidentale.  Periodo arcaico-classico,” Sicilia Archeologica 111 (2019), pp. 38-49 (Part of a special issue devoted to the UNESCO conference: “Selinunte.  Produzioni ed economia di una colonia greca di frontiera.  Atti del Convegno internazionale del 15-16 aprile 2016”).
  2. “Re-assessing the Earliest Social and Economic Developments in Greek Sicily,”Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 116 (2010), pp. 21-53.
  3. “Euhemerus in Context,” Classical Antiquity 25.2 (October 2006), pp. 211-242 (co-authored equally with Benjamin Garstad).
  4. “Going Against the Grain in Sicilian Greek Economics,” Greece and Rome 53.1 (2006), pp. 29-47.
  5. “Equations of Culture: The Meeting of Natives and Greeks in Sicily (ca. 750-450 BC),”Ancient West and East 2.1 (2003), pp. 19-50.
  6. “Trade and Agriculture at Megara Hyblaia,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 21 (2002), pp. 299-310.
  7. “Ancient Greeks in Sicily,” Bulletin of the Canadian Academic Institute in Athens/Bulletin de l’Institut canadien académique à Athènes 8 (Autumn 2001), pp. 9-10.
  8. “Estimating the Agricultural Base of Greek Sicily,” Papers of the British School at Rome 68 (2000), pp. 111-148.
  9. “Ancient Past, Imperial Present: The British Empire in T.J. Dunbabin’s The Western Greeks,” Antiquity 72 (no. 277) (1998), pp. 539-549.

5.   ONLINE CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

  1. “Greek Colonization: Approaches, Cultural Relationships, and Exchange,”Bollettino di Archeologia.  Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Classical Archaeology, “Meetings between Cultures in the Ancient Mediterranean,” Rome, September 22-26, 2008 (Rome, 2011), p. 1 (panel session introduction).
  2. “Greek Colonization in the 21st Century: Some Suggested Directions,” Bollettino di Archeologia.  Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Classical Archaeology, “Meetings between Cultures in the Ancient Mediterranean,” Rome, September 22-26, 2008 (Rome, 2011), pp. 18-30.

6.  REVIEWS

  1. R. Evans, Ancient Syracuse: From Foundation to Fourth Century Collapse (London, 2016), Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften Ausgabe 19 (2019), Nr. 11 (co-authored with Jayden Lloyd)
  2. A. Ianucci, F. Muccioli, and M. Zaccarini (eds.), La città inquieta: Selinunte tra Lex Sacra e defixiones (Milan, 2015), in Journal of Hellenic Studies 138 (2018), pp. 274-275 (co-authored with Ryan Johnson)

  3. B. Routledge, Archaeology and State Theory: Subjects and Objects of Power (London, 2014), in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.04.37.
  4. J. Rashid, Politisch instrumentalisiert? Heiligtümer und Kultstätten in Syrakus bis zum Ende des 5. Jhs. v. Chr. (Hamburg, 2014), in Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften, Ausgabe 14 (2014), Nr. 12.
  5. H. Hurst and S. Owen (eds.), Ancient Colonization: Analogy, Similarity, Difference (London, 2005), in Ancient West and East 13 (2014), pp. 344-347.
  6. M. Frasca, Leontinoi: archeologia di una colonia greca (Rome, 2009), in American Journal of Archaeology 115.3 (2011), 2 pp.
  7. C. Antonetti and S. De Vido (eds.), Temi selinuntini (Pisa, 2009), in Classical Review 61.2 (2011), pp. 584-586.
  8. K. Korhonen, Le iscrizioni del Museo Civico di Catania: storia delle collezioni, cultura epigrafica, edizione (Helsinki, 2004), in Gnomon 79 (2007), pp. 138-141.
  9. F. Cordano and M. Di Salvatore (eds.), Il Guerriero di Castiglione di Ragusa: greci e siculi nella Sicilia sud-orientale (Rome, 2002), in Ancient West and East 6.1 (2007), pp. 375-378.
  10. V. Karageorghis (ed.), The Greeks beyond the Aegean: From Marseilles to Bactria. Papers Presented at an International Symposium Held at the Onassis Cultural Center, New York, 12th October, 2002 (New York, 2002), in American Journal of Archaeology 110.2 (2006), 3 pp.
  11. C. Morgan, Early Greek States beyond the Polis (London and New York, 2003), in Phoenix 59 (2005), pp. 173-176.
  12. F. Hartog, Memories of Odysseus:Tales from the Ancient Greek Frontier (Edinburgh, 2001), and C. Smith and J. Serrati (eds.), Sicily from Aeneas to Augustus: New Approaches in Archaeology and History (Edinburgh, 2000), in Ancient West and East 3.1 (2004), pp. 172-176.
  13. E. Herring and K. Lomas (eds.), The Emergence of State Identities in Italy in the First Millennium BC (London, 2000), in American Journal of Archaeology 108 (2004), pp. 302-304.
  14. H.R. Goette, Athens, Attica and the Megarid: An Archaeological Guide (London and New York, 2001), in Mouseion 2 (2002), pp. 275-278.
  15. M. Brunet (ed.), Territoires des cités grecques.  Actes de la table ronde internationale organisée par l’École française d’Athènes, 31 octobre-3 novembre 1991 (Athens, 1999), inAmerican Journal of Archaeology 106 (2002), pp. 329-331.
  16. C.A. Morgan, Isthmia VIII: the Late Bronze Age Settlement and Early Iron Age Sanctuary(Princeton, 1999), in Phoenix 54 (2000 [2001]), pp. 362-365.
  17. G. Manganaro, Sikelika: studia di antichità e di epigrafia della Sicilia greca (Urbino: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 1999), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2000.07.13.
  18. A. Muggia, L’area di rispetto nelle colonie magno-greche e siceliote: studio di antropologia della forma urbana (Palermo, 1997), in American Journal of Archaeology 103 (1999), pp. 143-145.
  19. M. Gualtieri (ed.), Fourth Century B.C. Magna Graecia: A Case Study (Jonsered, 1993), inEchos du Monde Classique/Classical Views 42 (ns 17) (1998), pp. 416-420.
  20. T. Fischer-Hansen (ed.), Ancient Sicily (Copenhagen, 1995), in Journal of Hellenic Studies117 (1997), pp. 253-254.

7. SUBMITTED AND IN PROGRESS WORK (ALL PEER-REVIEWED)

  1. Article: “An Introduction to Seshat: Global History Databank,”  Journal of Cognitive Historiography (preprint stage: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/394w2) (co-authored with P. Turchin, H. Whitehouse, P. François, D. Hoyer et al.).  Status: in printing stage.
  2. Book chapter: “Greeks in the West,” in C. Antonaccio and J. Carter (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek Iron Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 7,500 words.  Status: in press and in copy-editing/proof stage.
  3. Book chapter: “Exchange Networks with the West,” in M. Maiuro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Pre-Roman Italy (New York: Oxford University Press), 4,000 words.  Status: in press and in copy-editing/proof stage.
  4. Book chapter: “L’importazione e la distribuzione degli Orientalia nella Sicilia Orientale: il ruolo di Siracusa,” in R. Panvini, S. Alota, and A. Bollomo (eds.), I Convegno interdisciplinare “Migrazioni e commerci in Sicilia.  Modelli del passato come paradigm del presente” (Siracusa), 3,000 words (co-authored with Caterina Minniti).  Status: in press.
  5. Book chapter: “New Data and Old Narratives: Migrants and the Conjoining of the Cultures and Economies in the pre-Roman Western Mediterranean,” in M. Daniels (ed.), Homo Migrans: Modeling Mobility and Migration in Human History (Albany: SUNY Press), 6,000 words.  Status: under revision following peer reviews.
  6. Book chapter: “Syracuse,” in P. Cartledge and P. Christensen (eds.), The Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World: Archaeohistories of 28 Sites, Sanctuaries, and Regions (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 25,000-30,000 words (co-authored with Valentina Mignosa).  Status: under contract and in preparation.
  7. Book chapter: “Mixing Up Mediterranean Innovation: The Case of Viticulture and Wine,” in J. Armstrong and A. Rhodes Schroder (eds.), Adoption, Adaption, and Innovation in Pre-Roman Italy: Paradigms for Cultural Change (Turnhout: Brepols), 7,000 words.  Status: submitted for peer review.
  8. Sole-authored book: “From Backwardness to Leapfrogging?  Rethinking Cultural Transfers in the Pre-Roman Western Mediterranean” for Oxford University Press.  Status: under contract and in preparation.
  9. Sole-authored book proposal: “Circular Conquests: The New World and Classical Antiquity” for the monograph series “The New Antiquity” published by Palgrave Macmillan.  Status: submitted, positively received, and draft chapters in preparation for review.

 


Graduate Supervision

Supervision

I am interested in supervising motivated and well-trained students doing research in my areas of specialization. Over the years, I have supervised and co-supervised both undergraduate and graduate students in writing their B.A. honours theses, M.A. theses and graduating papers, and Ph.D. theses. The topics have included Greek banqueting practices in their Mediterranean context, Archaic and Classical Greek altars, early Greek kinship, the cults of Greek founders, emporia as places of economic and religious interaction, Greek water cults and divinities, Diodorus Siculus, the gerousia at Ephesus, and Etruscan state formation. My students, if wanting to pursue their education, have earned spots in prominent graduate programs (such as those at the University of Michigan, Yale University, Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin, Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the University of Chicago) and have garnered top awards and prizes from university and external sources during and after their studies (such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the German Academic Exchange Service [DAAD], the Trudeau Foundation, and the Etruscan Foundation, as well as being shortlisted for Rhodes Scholarships). On completion, these students have succeeded in finding jobs, such as in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, the Department of Humanities at Grant MacEwan University, the Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. I always look forward to hearing from potential students.


Franco De Angelis

Professor of Greek History and Archaeology | Distinguished University Scholar |
phone work phone 604 822 6749
location_on Buchanan C328
Office Hours
By appointment

About

Degrees

Career

  • 1997-2000: Assistant Professor, University of Lethbridge, Department History.
  • 2000-2003: Assistant Professor (with tenure), University of Calgary, Department of Greek and Roman Studies.
  • 1997-2002: Adjunct Professor, Department of History & Classics, University of Alberta.
  • 2003-2005: Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia, Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies.
  • 2005-2016: Associate Professor (with tenure), University of British Columbia, Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies.
  • 2016-: Professor (with tenure), University of British Columbia, Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies.
Fellowships, Grants, Honours, & Prizes

Teaching


Research

ORCID #: 0000-0001-7411-9328

Research Interests

  • Ancient Greek culture in its broader Mediterranean and Middle Eastern contexts from the Iron Age to Hellenistic period; regional identities (esp. Sicily and pre-Roman Italy)
  • Decolonizing the Classics through postcolonial and postmodern methods and theories; giving voice to the ancient world’s cultural diversity and marginalized peoples
  • Mobilities, migrations and diasporas; interregional and intercultural contact; global antiquity
  • Ancient technology and innovation
  • Multi- and interdisciplinary methods and theories (esp. combining texts and material culture); cross-cultural, comparative, and anthropological methods and theories
  • Ancient and modern historiographies for these research interests (esp. the inappropriate application of modern concepts of settler colonialism, race and racism, centre and margin/periphery, etc. to the ancient world)
  • Reception of the ancient world in the New World, including in British Columbia

Research

For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the history of the ancient Greek world was widely studied on the basis of a few favoured questions and states (most notably Athens and Sparta).   Since I was a graduate student in the 1990s, my research has sought to broaden the study of Greek history by grappling with a greater variety of questions and states beyond the traditional canon. What factors created the canon and how did change come about? What was life like in Greek states other than Athens and Sparta, especially in regions outside Greece, where environmental and ethnic conditions were usually quite different? How, in other words, did Greek mobilities, migrations, and diasporas contribute to the development of the ancient Greek world as a whole?  And, by extension, how culturally diverse was the ancient Greek world? What social and economic factors underpinned the traditional political and military narratives commonly encountered in standard narratives of ancient Greek history? When and under what circumstances did state formation arrive in Greece, the context within which civilization developed in the Greek world? These questions have formed the basis of my research activities.  Answering them requires a broad interdisciplinary approach, in the tradition first developed in Oxford in the 1930s by the Greek historian, Alan Blakeway. It is one which moves freely and fluidly between the disciplines of philology, history, and archaeology in order to combine texts and material culture in an equal and complementary manner in the full realization that no one form of evidence can on its own tell us everything we need to know about the ancient world. To quote the late David Ridgway: “Blakeway’s starting point was new, as was his method: that of the historian who was willing to learn not only the vocabulary of archaeology but the grammar and syntax as well” (in J.-P. Descoeudres [ed.], Greek Colonists and Native Populations [Oxford 1990], p. 61).  My overall aim is to write a new, more comprehensive Greek history, using the just described interdisciplinary approach.  My research has taken four interrelated directions.

The first direction has involved re-evaluating the history of Greek Sicily.  The island of Sicily is attractive for this purpose because of its size (a quasi-continent) and location at the very crossroads of the Mediterranean.  The island also had an impressive mix of cultures (indigenous, Greek, and Phoenician in particular) and geographical features that made it stand out compared to the Greek homeland.  For these reasons, ancient Sicily provides a fertile research environment for the application of decolonizing and postcolonial approaches and opens wider horizons in the history of ancient Greece.  My research on Greek Sicily has resulted in two books and three archaeological monograph reports.  The first book, based on my doctoral thesis at Oxford University, was published in 2003 in the monograph series of the Oxford University School of Archaeology as Megara Hyblaia and Selinous: The Development of Two Greek City-States in Archaic Sicily.   The choice of the Archaic Megarian city-states in Sicily allowed me to focus on their divergent evolution and to show that even within the island of Sicily–a relatively small area (about 25,000 square kilometres) in comparison with the ancient Greek world as a whole–city-states could develop in different ways, and that there was regionalism within regionalism.   My second book on Greek Sicily has extended, both in terms of chronological periods and geographical coverage, the narrower subject-matter of the thesis-book to writing the first ever full-scale social and economic history of Greek Sicily in the Archaic and Classical periods. This book, entitled Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily: A Social and Economic History, was published in 2016 in the series “Greeks Overseas” based in the New York office of Oxford University Press.  The three archaeological monograph reports were commissioned by The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (London) and The British School at Athens and reviewed advances in archaeological and historical research relating to Greek Sicily (including the Byzantine period) for the fifteen years spanning 1996 to 2010.

The second direction has involved pursuing cross-cultural and comparative perspectives to the study of Greek antiquity. The underlying premise here is that one cannot re-evaluate a particular region of the ancient world without re-evaluating the larger whole to which this part of the “puzzle” belongs.  To this end, three projects have recently engaged my energies.  One concerns an international conference that I organized called “Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity” held in Vancouver in March 2007.  Professor Lord Colin Renfrew of Cambridge University delivered the keynote lecture, and fifty-six speakers from all over the world were chosen on a blind peer-review system.  I have edited and contributed an introductory essay to the volume of 14 peer-reviewed essays recently published with Peeters Publishers in Leuven entitled Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity: Exploring their Limits.  The second project is another book that has recently been published called A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World for the series Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World published by Wiley-Blackwell.  This book takes stock of the unprecedented growth and development of knowledge and approaches over the past three decades and fills a gap in scholarship by providing an up-to-date account of the ancient Greeks outside their homelands from the Early Iron Age to the Hellenistic world forged out of Alexander the Great’s conquests.  The third project regards my involvement in Seshat: Global History Databank, for which I co-authored the chapter “The Greco-Roman Mediterranean” for the recently published book The Seshat History of the Axial Age.

The third direction in my research is now attempting to bring together the latter two directions into a single whole.  The basic premise here is to re-evaluate the conjunction of regional trajectories, especially those of the Eastern and Western Mediterranean from the Early Iron Age to the development of Roman control over the entire Mediterranean basin.  One question in particular is guiding this research: Who were the main shakers and movers in the cultural development of pre-Roman Italy?  For over a century modern scholars have envisaged one answer. Immigrants from the East, especially Greeks, and to a lesser degree Phoenicians, were the dominant drivers in this development, bringing cities, metal-working technology, and in general higher culture to passive and inferior native Italian populations in the eighth century BC. But since the 1990s this picture has been dramatically challenged, particularly through the growth and interpretation of prehistoric archaeological data in Etruria and Sardinia. This evidence demonstrates that these two regions were already highly developed as prehistoric powerhouses, not dependent on immigrant stimuli for their initial rise to power. They acted, therefore, as magnets that attracted Greeks and Phoenicians to their regions.  The aim of this project is to produce a book which will rethink the part played by the “Greek Miracle” in the cultural development of pre-Roman Western Mediterranean and to suggest some new solutions to this old problem.  The working title of this book project is “From Backwardness to Leapfrogging?  Rethinking Cultural Transfers in the Pre-Roman Western Mediterranean.”   This book project is under contract with Oxford University Press.

The fourth and most recent direction builds on my work on ancient Greek Sicily and on ancient Greek migrations and diasporas.  New World settler colonialism has often evoked comparisons with Greek, Roman, and Old World antiquity in general.  This new research seeks to move beyond the piecemeal discussion of Old World antiquity in the New World of North America, which is usually restricted to place-names (such as Syracuse, New York), neo-classical aesthetics and architecture, and literature.  Instead, I seek to establish a more comprehensive and systematic intellectual framework which connects Old World Antiquity with Europe’s exploration and settlement of (to them) the New World in the 16th to 20th centuries of our era.  As is well known, this exploration and settlement resulted in a significant expansion of human experiences with which Europeans could understand their past and imagine their futures.  Ancient Greece and Rome served as a major source of inspiration in these respects because of their importance to European education and identity.  Thus a two-way dialogue emerged, one in which Europeans regularly made parallels between their exploration and settlement of the New World with understanding ancient Greek and Roman history and, vice versa, the role ancient Greece and Rome played in providing parallels with imagining how life in the New World might one day become.  This research investigates both these kinds of parallels and the motivations for them, especially those derived from ancient Greece, as well as assessing the distortions and possibilities raised by such parallels.  The working title of this project is “Circular Conquests: The New World and Classical Antiquity” for which a book contract is in preparation for the monograph series “The New Antiquity” published by Palgrave Macmillan.  Some of the preliminary results have been published as a chapter called “Anthropology and the Creation of the Classical Other” in Brill’s Companion to Classics and Early Anthropology and as the “Preface” to the book The Fight for Greek Sicily: Society, Politics, and Landscape, where I compare ancient Greek Sicily to the frontier period of modern British Columbia.

As part of my research, I have always travelled extensively to visit ancient sites and museums and have also taken part in excavations and field surveys in Greece, Italy, and Britain, such as working alongside Stanford University on the acropolis of Monte Polizzo in Western Sicily.  The underlying philosophy is that to be a good historian one must get out of one’s arm-chair and obtain as much hands-on experience as possible to write about the past.


Publications

Recently Published

Publications

1.   BOOKS

(a)  Authored

1)  Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily: A Social and Economic HistoryGreeks Overseas series (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. xxii, 442, 44 figures, 9 tables, 13 maps.  Revised paperback edition published in 2018.

Reviews: C.L. Sulosky Weaver, Classical Journal-Online 2016.08.07; J.M. Williams, Choice (American Library Association), October 2016; M. Dreher, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2016.12.19; P. Oliva, Eirene: Studia Graeca et Latina 52 (2016), pp. 506-507; K. Vlassopoulos, Greece & Rome 64.1 (2017), pp. 78-84 (esp. 78-79); P. Cartledge, American Historical Review 122.4 (October 2017), pp. 1286-1287; L. Donnellan, Journal of Greek Archaeology 2 (2017), pp. 427-433; M. de Wit, L’Antiquité Classique 86 (2017), pp. 501-502; S. Pope, American Journal of Archaeology 122.1 (2018), 2 pp. (https://www.ajaonline.org/book-review/3595); L.-M. Günther, Historische Zeitschrift 306.1 (2018), pp. 159-160; D. Bonanno, Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften Ausgabe 18 (2018), Nr. 4 (http://www.sehepunkte.de/2018/04/29724.html); F. Ferlito, Siculorum Gymnasium: A Journal for the Humanities 71.4 (2018), pp. 521-522; J.R.W. Prag, Classical Review 69 (2019), pp. 189-192; F. Bernstein, Gnomon 91 (2019), pp. 427-434; F. Muscolino, Athenaeum 108 (2020), pp. 602-607.

Nominations:  James R. Wiseman Book Award of the Archaeological Institute of America (March 2017); The London Hellenic (Book) Prize, The Hellenic Centre, London.

2) Megara Hyblaia and Selinous: The Development of Two Greek City-States in Archaic Sicily (Oxford: Oxbow Press for Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2003), pp. xxiii, 264, 51 figures, 34 plates.

Reviews:  F. Lefèvre, Revue des Études Grecques 117 (2004), pp. 785-786; D.G. Smith, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2005.01.28; B.A. Ault, Antiquity 80 (2006), pp. 214-218; R.R. Holloway,  American Journal of Archaeology 110 (2006), pp. 326-327; H. Tréziny, Gnomon 78 (2006), pp. 712-716; A. Robu,L’Antiquité Classique 75 (2006), pp. 205-212; R.J. Evans, Mnemosyne 59 (2006), pp. 614-617; A.J. Domínguez, Ancient West & East 8 (2009), pp. 344-347.

Textbooklet:

3) The Greek and Roman Pottery and Glass Techniques (Montréal: McGill University, 1992), pp. ix, 92, 41 figures.

(b)   Edited

1) A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World (=Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World; Hoboken, NJ and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2020), pp. xxvi, 554, 15 maps, 26 figures, 3 tables.

2) Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity: Exploring Their Limits (Leuven: Peeters Publishing, 2013), pp. xvi, 362, 48 figures, 4 tables.

3) The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation. Essays Dedicated to Professor Sir John Boardman (with G.R. Tsetskhladze) (Oxford: Oxbow Press for Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1994), pp. x, 149, 34 figures.  Revised paperback edition, 2004.

Reviews: W. Schuller, Klio 81 (1999), pp. 500-501; A.J. Graham, Journal of Hellenic Studies 117 (1997), p. 250; G.L. Hoffman, American Journal of Archaeology 101 (1997), pp. 601-602; N. Purcell, Antiquity 71 (1997), pp. 500-502; P. Lévêque, Dialogues d’Histoire Ancienne 22 (1996), pp. 308-309; J.G. de Boer, Talanta 26-27 (1994-95), pp. 225-226; N. Spivey, The Times Higher Educational Supplement (9 Dec. 1994), p. 21.

2.   ARCHAEOLOGICAL REPORT MONOGRAPHS

The Archaeological Reports review scholarly developments in the archaeology and history of the ancient Greeks and are published by The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies and The British School at Athens.

  1. Archaeology in Sicily 2006-2010.  (Journal of Hellenic Studies Archaeological Reports for 2011-2012, no. 58; Cambridge 2012), pp. 123-195, 47 figures.
  2. Archaeology in Sicily, 2001-2005.  (Journal of Hellenic Studies Archaeological Reports for 2006-2007, no. 53; London, 2007), pp. 123-190, 37 figures.
  3. Archaeology in Sicily, 1996-2000.  (Journal of Hellenic Studies Archaeological Reports for 2000-2001, no. 47; London, 2001), pp. 145-201, 56 figures.

3.  REFEREED CHAPTERS & ENTRIES IN BOOKS

  1. “Introduction: Greeks Across the Ancient World,” in F. De Angelis (ed.), A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World (=Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series; Hoboken, NJ and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2020), pp. 1-10.
  2. “Italian Scholarship and the Greeks outside their Homelands,” in F. De Angelis (ed.), A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World (=Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series; Hoboken, NJ and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2020), pp. 85-100.
  3. “Conclusions,” in M. Costanzi and M. Dana (eds.), Une autre façon d’etre Grec: interactions et productions des Grecs en milieu colonial.  Actes du colloque international organisé à Amiens (Université Jules Verne Picardie) et Paris (ANHIMA), 18-19 novembre 2016 (=Colloquia Antiqua, 26; Leuven: Peeters, 2020), pp. 435-447.
  4. “Preface: Word of Welcome,” in M. Jonasch (ed.), The Fight for Sicily: Politics, Society and Landscape (Oxford: Oxbow, 2020), pp. viii-x.
  5. “Energizing the Economy: Present Results and Future Directions,” in M. Jonasch (ed.), The Fight for Sicily: Politics, Society and Landscape (Oxford: Oxbow, 2020), pp. 118-129.
  6. “The Greco-Roman Mediterranean,” in D. Hoyer and J. Redish (eds.), The Seshat History of the Axial Age (Chaplin, CT: Beresta Books, 2019), pp. 67-89 (co-authored with Jenny Redish).
  7. “Greek Sicily: A World Apart?,” in D. Booms and P. Higgs (eds.), Sicily: Heritage of the World Conference, June 24-25, British Museum (London: British Museum, 2019), pp. 18-23.
  8. “Anthropology and the Creation of the Classical Other,” in E. Varto (ed.), The Classics and Early Anthropology: A Companion to Classical Reception (Leiden and Boston: Brill), pp. 349-364.
  9. “Between Localism and Diaspora: The Sicilian Perspective on Megara’s World,” in H. Beck and P.J. Smith (eds.), Megarian Moments.  The Local World of an Ancient Greek City-state (=Teiresias Supplements Online, vol. 1; Montréal, 2018), pp. 1-15.
  10. “Discussion of Luigi Gallo’s ‘Città e territorio: popolazione e popolamento’,”in M. Lombardo and A Siciliano (eds.), Poleis e politeiai nella Magna Grecia arcaica e classica.  Atti del cinquantatreesimo Convegno Internazionale di Studi sulla Magna Grecia, Taranto, 26-29 settembre 2013 (Taranto: Istituto per la Storia e Archeologia della Magna Grecia, 2016), pp. 513-516. 
  11. E pluribus unum: The Multiplicity of Models,” in L. Donnellan, V. Nizzo, and G.-J. Burger (eds.), Conceptualising Early Colonisation (=Contextualising Early Colonisation, vol. 2; Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 97-104.
  12. “Approaches to the Movement of Ancient Phenomena through Time and Space,” in F. De Angelis (ed.), Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity: Exploring Their Limits (Leuven: Peeters Publishing, 2013), pp. 1-20.
  13. “Art and Power in Archaic Greek Sicily: Investigating the Economic Substratum,” in M. Castiglione and A. Poggio (eds.), Arte – Potere: forme artistiche, istituzioni, paradigmi interpretativi. Atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Pisa Scuola Normale Superiore, 25-27 Novembre 2010 (Milan: Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto, 2012), pp. 173-184.
  14. “Teorizzando l’economie arcaiche della Sicilia greca,” in J. Bergemann (ed.), Griechen in Übersee und der historische Raum.  Internationales Kolloquium Universität Göttingen, Archäologisches Institut, 13. – 16. Oktober 2010 (Göttinger Studien zur Mediterranen Archäologie vol. 3; Rahden: Verlag Marie Leidorf, 2012), pp. 27-28.
  15. “Colonies and Colonization, Greek,” in M. Gagarin (editor-in-chief), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), vol. 2, pp. 251-256.
  16. “Ancient Sicily: The Development of a Microregional Tessera in the Mediterranean Mosaic,” in E. Hermon (ed.), Sociéte et climats dans l’empire romain (Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, 2009), pp. 235-250.
  17. “Colonies and Colonization,” in G. Boys-Stones, B. Graziosi, and P. Vasunia (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 48-64.
  18. “Greek and Phoenician Colonization,” in D. Buissert (editor-in-chief), The Oxford Companion to World Exploration (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), vol. 1, pp. 357-360.
  19. “Mediterranean,” in D. Buissert (editor-in-chief), The Oxford Companion to World Exploration(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), vol. 2, pp. 29-33.
  20. “The Agricultural Capacity of Archaic Syracuse,” in F. Krinzinger (ed.), Akten des Symposions «Die Ägäis und das westliche Mittelmeer: Beziehungen und Wechselwirkungen 8. bis 5. Jh. v. Chr., Wien, 24. bis. 27 März 1999» (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichisches Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), pp. 103-109.
  21. “The Foundation of Selinous: Overpopulation or Opportunities?,” in G.R. Tsetskhladze and F. De Angelis (eds.), The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation.  Essays Dedicated to Professor Sir John Boardman (Oxford: Oxbow Press for Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1994), pp. 87-110.  Reprinted with minor corrections in a paperback edition of 2004.
  22. “A Forgotten Inscription from Khlembotsári (Asopía), Boiotia,” in J.M. Fossey and J. Morin (eds.), Boeotia antiqua II. Recent Papers in Boiotian Archaeology and Epigraphy(McGill University Monographs in Classical Archaeology and History no. 11; Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1992), pp. 53-56.

4.   ARTICLES IN REFEREED JOURNALS

  1. “Economia di Selinunte e della Sicilia Occidentale.  Periodo arcaico-classico,” Sicilia Archeologica 111 (2019), pp. 38-49 (Part of a special issue devoted to the UNESCO conference: “Selinunte.  Produzioni ed economia di una colonia greca di frontiera.  Atti del Convegno internazionale del 15-16 aprile 2016”).
  2. “Re-assessing the Earliest Social and Economic Developments in Greek Sicily,”Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 116 (2010), pp. 21-53.
  3. “Euhemerus in Context,” Classical Antiquity 25.2 (October 2006), pp. 211-242 (co-authored equally with Benjamin Garstad).
  4. “Going Against the Grain in Sicilian Greek Economics,” Greece and Rome 53.1 (2006), pp. 29-47.
  5. “Equations of Culture: The Meeting of Natives and Greeks in Sicily (ca. 750-450 BC),”Ancient West and East 2.1 (2003), pp. 19-50.
  6. “Trade and Agriculture at Megara Hyblaia,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 21 (2002), pp. 299-310.
  7. “Ancient Greeks in Sicily,” Bulletin of the Canadian Academic Institute in Athens/Bulletin de l’Institut canadien académique à Athènes 8 (Autumn 2001), pp. 9-10.
  8. “Estimating the Agricultural Base of Greek Sicily,” Papers of the British School at Rome 68 (2000), pp. 111-148.
  9. “Ancient Past, Imperial Present: The British Empire in T.J. Dunbabin’s The Western Greeks,” Antiquity 72 (no. 277) (1998), pp. 539-549.

5.   ONLINE CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

  1. “Greek Colonization: Approaches, Cultural Relationships, and Exchange,”Bollettino di Archeologia.  Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Classical Archaeology, “Meetings between Cultures in the Ancient Mediterranean,” Rome, September 22-26, 2008 (Rome, 2011), p. 1 (panel session introduction).
  2. “Greek Colonization in the 21st Century: Some Suggested Directions,” Bollettino di Archeologia.  Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Classical Archaeology, “Meetings between Cultures in the Ancient Mediterranean,” Rome, September 22-26, 2008 (Rome, 2011), pp. 18-30.

6.  REVIEWS

  1. R. Evans, Ancient Syracuse: From Foundation to Fourth Century Collapse (London, 2016), Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften Ausgabe 19 (2019), Nr. 11 (co-authored with Jayden Lloyd)
  2. A. Ianucci, F. Muccioli, and M. Zaccarini (eds.), La città inquieta: Selinunte tra Lex Sacra e defixiones (Milan, 2015), in Journal of Hellenic Studies 138 (2018), pp. 274-275 (co-authored with Ryan Johnson)

  3. B. Routledge, Archaeology and State Theory: Subjects and Objects of Power (London, 2014), in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.04.37.
  4. J. Rashid, Politisch instrumentalisiert? Heiligtümer und Kultstätten in Syrakus bis zum Ende des 5. Jhs. v. Chr. (Hamburg, 2014), in Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften, Ausgabe 14 (2014), Nr. 12.
  5. H. Hurst and S. Owen (eds.), Ancient Colonization: Analogy, Similarity, Difference (London, 2005), in Ancient West and East 13 (2014), pp. 344-347.
  6. M. Frasca, Leontinoi: archeologia di una colonia greca (Rome, 2009), in American Journal of Archaeology 115.3 (2011), 2 pp.
  7. C. Antonetti and S. De Vido (eds.), Temi selinuntini (Pisa, 2009), in Classical Review 61.2 (2011), pp. 584-586.
  8. K. Korhonen, Le iscrizioni del Museo Civico di Catania: storia delle collezioni, cultura epigrafica, edizione (Helsinki, 2004), in Gnomon 79 (2007), pp. 138-141.
  9. F. Cordano and M. Di Salvatore (eds.), Il Guerriero di Castiglione di Ragusa: greci e siculi nella Sicilia sud-orientale (Rome, 2002), in Ancient West and East 6.1 (2007), pp. 375-378.
  10. V. Karageorghis (ed.), The Greeks beyond the Aegean: From Marseilles to Bactria. Papers Presented at an International Symposium Held at the Onassis Cultural Center, New York, 12th October, 2002 (New York, 2002), in American Journal of Archaeology 110.2 (2006), 3 pp.
  11. C. Morgan, Early Greek States beyond the Polis (London and New York, 2003), in Phoenix 59 (2005), pp. 173-176.
  12. F. Hartog, Memories of Odysseus:Tales from the Ancient Greek Frontier (Edinburgh, 2001), and C. Smith and J. Serrati (eds.), Sicily from Aeneas to Augustus: New Approaches in Archaeology and History (Edinburgh, 2000), in Ancient West and East 3.1 (2004), pp. 172-176.
  13. E. Herring and K. Lomas (eds.), The Emergence of State Identities in Italy in the First Millennium BC (London, 2000), in American Journal of Archaeology 108 (2004), pp. 302-304.
  14. H.R. Goette, Athens, Attica and the Megarid: An Archaeological Guide (London and New York, 2001), in Mouseion 2 (2002), pp. 275-278.
  15. M. Brunet (ed.), Territoires des cités grecques.  Actes de la table ronde internationale organisée par l’École française d’Athènes, 31 octobre-3 novembre 1991 (Athens, 1999), inAmerican Journal of Archaeology 106 (2002), pp. 329-331.
  16. C.A. Morgan, Isthmia VIII: the Late Bronze Age Settlement and Early Iron Age Sanctuary(Princeton, 1999), in Phoenix 54 (2000 [2001]), pp. 362-365.
  17. G. Manganaro, Sikelika: studia di antichità e di epigrafia della Sicilia greca (Urbino: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 1999), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2000.07.13.
  18. A. Muggia, L’area di rispetto nelle colonie magno-greche e siceliote: studio di antropologia della forma urbana (Palermo, 1997), in American Journal of Archaeology 103 (1999), pp. 143-145.
  19. M. Gualtieri (ed.), Fourth Century B.C. Magna Graecia: A Case Study (Jonsered, 1993), inEchos du Monde Classique/Classical Views 42 (ns 17) (1998), pp. 416-420.
  20. T. Fischer-Hansen (ed.), Ancient Sicily (Copenhagen, 1995), in Journal of Hellenic Studies117 (1997), pp. 253-254.

7. SUBMITTED AND IN PROGRESS WORK (ALL PEER-REVIEWED)

  1. Article: “An Introduction to Seshat: Global History Databank,”  Journal of Cognitive Historiography (preprint stage: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/394w2) (co-authored with P. Turchin, H. Whitehouse, P. François, D. Hoyer et al.).  Status: in printing stage.
  2. Book chapter: “Greeks in the West,” in C. Antonaccio and J. Carter (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek Iron Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 7,500 words.  Status: in press and in copy-editing/proof stage.
  3. Book chapter: “Exchange Networks with the West,” in M. Maiuro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Pre-Roman Italy (New York: Oxford University Press), 4,000 words.  Status: in press and in copy-editing/proof stage.
  4. Book chapter: “L’importazione e la distribuzione degli Orientalia nella Sicilia Orientale: il ruolo di Siracusa,” in R. Panvini, S. Alota, and A. Bollomo (eds.), I Convegno interdisciplinare “Migrazioni e commerci in Sicilia.  Modelli del passato come paradigm del presente” (Siracusa), 3,000 words (co-authored with Caterina Minniti).  Status: in press.
  5. Book chapter: “New Data and Old Narratives: Migrants and the Conjoining of the Cultures and Economies in the pre-Roman Western Mediterranean,” in M. Daniels (ed.), Homo Migrans: Modeling Mobility and Migration in Human History (Albany: SUNY Press), 6,000 words.  Status: under revision following peer reviews.
  6. Book chapter: “Syracuse,” in P. Cartledge and P. Christensen (eds.), The Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World: Archaeohistories of 28 Sites, Sanctuaries, and Regions (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 25,000-30,000 words (co-authored with Valentina Mignosa).  Status: under contract and in preparation.
  7. Book chapter: “Mixing Up Mediterranean Innovation: The Case of Viticulture and Wine,” in J. Armstrong and A. Rhodes Schroder (eds.), Adoption, Adaption, and Innovation in Pre-Roman Italy: Paradigms for Cultural Change (Turnhout: Brepols), 7,000 words.  Status: submitted for peer review.
  8. Sole-authored book: “From Backwardness to Leapfrogging?  Rethinking Cultural Transfers in the Pre-Roman Western Mediterranean” for Oxford University Press.  Status: under contract and in preparation.
  9. Sole-authored book proposal: “Circular Conquests: The New World and Classical Antiquity” for the monograph series “The New Antiquity” published by Palgrave Macmillan.  Status: submitted, positively received, and draft chapters in preparation for review.

 


Graduate Supervision

Supervision

I am interested in supervising motivated and well-trained students doing research in my areas of specialization. Over the years, I have supervised and co-supervised both undergraduate and graduate students in writing their B.A. honours theses, M.A. theses and graduating papers, and Ph.D. theses. The topics have included Greek banqueting practices in their Mediterranean context, Archaic and Classical Greek altars, early Greek kinship, the cults of Greek founders, emporia as places of economic and religious interaction, Greek water cults and divinities, Diodorus Siculus, the gerousia at Ephesus, and Etruscan state formation. My students, if wanting to pursue their education, have earned spots in prominent graduate programs (such as those at the University of Michigan, Yale University, Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin, Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the University of Chicago) and have garnered top awards and prizes from university and external sources during and after their studies (such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the German Academic Exchange Service [DAAD], the Trudeau Foundation, and the Etruscan Foundation, as well as being shortlisted for Rhodes Scholarships). On completion, these students have succeeded in finding jobs, such as in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, the Department of Humanities at Grant MacEwan University, the Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. I always look forward to hearing from potential students.


Franco De Angelis

Professor of Greek History and Archaeology | Distinguished University Scholar |
location_on Buchanan C328
Office Hours
By appointment
About keyboard_arrow_down

Degrees

Career

  • 1997-2000: Assistant Professor, University of Lethbridge, Department History.
  • 2000-2003: Assistant Professor (with tenure), University of Calgary, Department of Greek and Roman Studies.
  • 1997-2002: Adjunct Professor, Department of History & Classics, University of Alberta.
  • 2003-2005: Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia, Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies.
  • 2005-2016: Associate Professor (with tenure), University of British Columbia, Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies.
  • 2016-: Professor (with tenure), University of British Columbia, Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies.
Fellowships, Grants, Honours, & Prizes
Teaching keyboard_arrow_down
Research keyboard_arrow_down

ORCID #: 0000-0001-7411-9328

Research Interests

  • Ancient Greek culture in its broader Mediterranean and Middle Eastern contexts from the Iron Age to Hellenistic period; regional identities (esp. Sicily and pre-Roman Italy)
  • Decolonizing the Classics through postcolonial and postmodern methods and theories; giving voice to the ancient world’s cultural diversity and marginalized peoples
  • Mobilities, migrations and diasporas; interregional and intercultural contact; global antiquity
  • Ancient technology and innovation
  • Multi- and interdisciplinary methods and theories (esp. combining texts and material culture); cross-cultural, comparative, and anthropological methods and theories
  • Ancient and modern historiographies for these research interests (esp. the inappropriate application of modern concepts of settler colonialism, race and racism, centre and margin/periphery, etc. to the ancient world)
  • Reception of the ancient world in the New World, including in British Columbia

Research

For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the history of the ancient Greek world was widely studied on the basis of a few favoured questions and states (most notably Athens and Sparta).   Since I was a graduate student in the 1990s, my research has sought to broaden the study of Greek history by grappling with a greater variety of questions and states beyond the traditional canon. What factors created the canon and how did change come about? What was life like in Greek states other than Athens and Sparta, especially in regions outside Greece, where environmental and ethnic conditions were usually quite different? How, in other words, did Greek mobilities, migrations, and diasporas contribute to the development of the ancient Greek world as a whole?  And, by extension, how culturally diverse was the ancient Greek world? What social and economic factors underpinned the traditional political and military narratives commonly encountered in standard narratives of ancient Greek history? When and under what circumstances did state formation arrive in Greece, the context within which civilization developed in the Greek world? These questions have formed the basis of my research activities.  Answering them requires a broad interdisciplinary approach, in the tradition first developed in Oxford in the 1930s by the Greek historian, Alan Blakeway. It is one which moves freely and fluidly between the disciplines of philology, history, and archaeology in order to combine texts and material culture in an equal and complementary manner in the full realization that no one form of evidence can on its own tell us everything we need to know about the ancient world. To quote the late David Ridgway: “Blakeway’s starting point was new, as was his method: that of the historian who was willing to learn not only the vocabulary of archaeology but the grammar and syntax as well” (in J.-P. Descoeudres [ed.], Greek Colonists and Native Populations [Oxford 1990], p. 61).  My overall aim is to write a new, more comprehensive Greek history, using the just described interdisciplinary approach.  My research has taken four interrelated directions.

The first direction has involved re-evaluating the history of Greek Sicily.  The island of Sicily is attractive for this purpose because of its size (a quasi-continent) and location at the very crossroads of the Mediterranean.  The island also had an impressive mix of cultures (indigenous, Greek, and Phoenician in particular) and geographical features that made it stand out compared to the Greek homeland.  For these reasons, ancient Sicily provides a fertile research environment for the application of decolonizing and postcolonial approaches and opens wider horizons in the history of ancient Greece.  My research on Greek Sicily has resulted in two books and three archaeological monograph reports.  The first book, based on my doctoral thesis at Oxford University, was published in 2003 in the monograph series of the Oxford University School of Archaeology as Megara Hyblaia and Selinous: The Development of Two Greek City-States in Archaic Sicily.   The choice of the Archaic Megarian city-states in Sicily allowed me to focus on their divergent evolution and to show that even within the island of Sicily–a relatively small area (about 25,000 square kilometres) in comparison with the ancient Greek world as a whole–city-states could develop in different ways, and that there was regionalism within regionalism.   My second book on Greek Sicily has extended, both in terms of chronological periods and geographical coverage, the narrower subject-matter of the thesis-book to writing the first ever full-scale social and economic history of Greek Sicily in the Archaic and Classical periods. This book, entitled Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily: A Social and Economic History, was published in 2016 in the series “Greeks Overseas” based in the New York office of Oxford University Press.  The three archaeological monograph reports were commissioned by The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (London) and The British School at Athens and reviewed advances in archaeological and historical research relating to Greek Sicily (including the Byzantine period) for the fifteen years spanning 1996 to 2010.

The second direction has involved pursuing cross-cultural and comparative perspectives to the study of Greek antiquity. The underlying premise here is that one cannot re-evaluate a particular region of the ancient world without re-evaluating the larger whole to which this part of the “puzzle” belongs.  To this end, three projects have recently engaged my energies.  One concerns an international conference that I organized called “Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity” held in Vancouver in March 2007.  Professor Lord Colin Renfrew of Cambridge University delivered the keynote lecture, and fifty-six speakers from all over the world were chosen on a blind peer-review system.  I have edited and contributed an introductory essay to the volume of 14 peer-reviewed essays recently published with Peeters Publishers in Leuven entitled Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity: Exploring their Limits.  The second project is another book that has recently been published called A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World for the series Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World published by Wiley-Blackwell.  This book takes stock of the unprecedented growth and development of knowledge and approaches over the past three decades and fills a gap in scholarship by providing an up-to-date account of the ancient Greeks outside their homelands from the Early Iron Age to the Hellenistic world forged out of Alexander the Great’s conquests.  The third project regards my involvement in Seshat: Global History Databank, for which I co-authored the chapter “The Greco-Roman Mediterranean” for the recently published book The Seshat History of the Axial Age.

The third direction in my research is now attempting to bring together the latter two directions into a single whole.  The basic premise here is to re-evaluate the conjunction of regional trajectories, especially those of the Eastern and Western Mediterranean from the Early Iron Age to the development of Roman control over the entire Mediterranean basin.  One question in particular is guiding this research: Who were the main shakers and movers in the cultural development of pre-Roman Italy?  For over a century modern scholars have envisaged one answer. Immigrants from the East, especially Greeks, and to a lesser degree Phoenicians, were the dominant drivers in this development, bringing cities, metal-working technology, and in general higher culture to passive and inferior native Italian populations in the eighth century BC. But since the 1990s this picture has been dramatically challenged, particularly through the growth and interpretation of prehistoric archaeological data in Etruria and Sardinia. This evidence demonstrates that these two regions were already highly developed as prehistoric powerhouses, not dependent on immigrant stimuli for their initial rise to power. They acted, therefore, as magnets that attracted Greeks and Phoenicians to their regions.  The aim of this project is to produce a book which will rethink the part played by the “Greek Miracle” in the cultural development of pre-Roman Western Mediterranean and to suggest some new solutions to this old problem.  The working title of this book project is “From Backwardness to Leapfrogging?  Rethinking Cultural Transfers in the Pre-Roman Western Mediterranean.”   This book project is under contract with Oxford University Press.

The fourth and most recent direction builds on my work on ancient Greek Sicily and on ancient Greek migrations and diasporas.  New World settler colonialism has often evoked comparisons with Greek, Roman, and Old World antiquity in general.  This new research seeks to move beyond the piecemeal discussion of Old World antiquity in the New World of North America, which is usually restricted to place-names (such as Syracuse, New York), neo-classical aesthetics and architecture, and literature.  Instead, I seek to establish a more comprehensive and systematic intellectual framework which connects Old World Antiquity with Europe’s exploration and settlement of (to them) the New World in the 16th to 20th centuries of our era.  As is well known, this exploration and settlement resulted in a significant expansion of human experiences with which Europeans could understand their past and imagine their futures.  Ancient Greece and Rome served as a major source of inspiration in these respects because of their importance to European education and identity.  Thus a two-way dialogue emerged, one in which Europeans regularly made parallels between their exploration and settlement of the New World with understanding ancient Greek and Roman history and, vice versa, the role ancient Greece and Rome played in providing parallels with imagining how life in the New World might one day become.  This research investigates both these kinds of parallels and the motivations for them, especially those derived from ancient Greece, as well as assessing the distortions and possibilities raised by such parallels.  The working title of this project is “Circular Conquests: The New World and Classical Antiquity” for which a book contract is in preparation for the monograph series “The New Antiquity” published by Palgrave Macmillan.  Some of the preliminary results have been published as a chapter called “Anthropology and the Creation of the Classical Other” in Brill’s Companion to Classics and Early Anthropology and as the “Preface” to the book The Fight for Greek Sicily: Society, Politics, and Landscape, where I compare ancient Greek Sicily to the frontier period of modern British Columbia.

As part of my research, I have always travelled extensively to visit ancient sites and museums and have also taken part in excavations and field surveys in Greece, Italy, and Britain, such as working alongside Stanford University on the acropolis of Monte Polizzo in Western Sicily.  The underlying philosophy is that to be a good historian one must get out of one’s arm-chair and obtain as much hands-on experience as possible to write about the past.

Publications keyboard_arrow_down

Recently Published

Publications

1.   BOOKS

(a)  Authored

1)  Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily: A Social and Economic HistoryGreeks Overseas series (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. xxii, 442, 44 figures, 9 tables, 13 maps.  Revised paperback edition published in 2018.

Reviews: C.L. Sulosky Weaver, Classical Journal-Online 2016.08.07; J.M. Williams, Choice (American Library Association), October 2016; M. Dreher, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2016.12.19; P. Oliva, Eirene: Studia Graeca et Latina 52 (2016), pp. 506-507; K. Vlassopoulos, Greece & Rome 64.1 (2017), pp. 78-84 (esp. 78-79); P. Cartledge, American Historical Review 122.4 (October 2017), pp. 1286-1287; L. Donnellan, Journal of Greek Archaeology 2 (2017), pp. 427-433; M. de Wit, L’Antiquité Classique 86 (2017), pp. 501-502; S. Pope, American Journal of Archaeology 122.1 (2018), 2 pp. (https://www.ajaonline.org/book-review/3595); L.-M. Günther, Historische Zeitschrift 306.1 (2018), pp. 159-160; D. Bonanno, Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften Ausgabe 18 (2018), Nr. 4 (http://www.sehepunkte.de/2018/04/29724.html); F. Ferlito, Siculorum Gymnasium: A Journal for the Humanities 71.4 (2018), pp. 521-522; J.R.W. Prag, Classical Review 69 (2019), pp. 189-192; F. Bernstein, Gnomon 91 (2019), pp. 427-434; F. Muscolino, Athenaeum 108 (2020), pp. 602-607.

Nominations:  James R. Wiseman Book Award of the Archaeological Institute of America (March 2017); The London Hellenic (Book) Prize, The Hellenic Centre, London.

2) Megara Hyblaia and Selinous: The Development of Two Greek City-States in Archaic Sicily (Oxford: Oxbow Press for Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2003), pp. xxiii, 264, 51 figures, 34 plates.

Reviews:  F. Lefèvre, Revue des Études Grecques 117 (2004), pp. 785-786; D.G. Smith, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2005.01.28; B.A. Ault, Antiquity 80 (2006), pp. 214-218; R.R. Holloway,  American Journal of Archaeology 110 (2006), pp. 326-327; H. Tréziny, Gnomon 78 (2006), pp. 712-716; A. Robu,L’Antiquité Classique 75 (2006), pp. 205-212; R.J. Evans, Mnemosyne 59 (2006), pp. 614-617; A.J. Domínguez, Ancient West & East 8 (2009), pp. 344-347.

Textbooklet:

3) The Greek and Roman Pottery and Glass Techniques (Montréal: McGill University, 1992), pp. ix, 92, 41 figures.

(b)   Edited

1) A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World (=Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World; Hoboken, NJ and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2020), pp. xxvi, 554, 15 maps, 26 figures, 3 tables.

2) Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity: Exploring Their Limits (Leuven: Peeters Publishing, 2013), pp. xvi, 362, 48 figures, 4 tables.

3) The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation. Essays Dedicated to Professor Sir John Boardman (with G.R. Tsetskhladze) (Oxford: Oxbow Press for Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1994), pp. x, 149, 34 figures.  Revised paperback edition, 2004.

Reviews: W. Schuller, Klio 81 (1999), pp. 500-501; A.J. Graham, Journal of Hellenic Studies 117 (1997), p. 250; G.L. Hoffman, American Journal of Archaeology 101 (1997), pp. 601-602; N. Purcell, Antiquity 71 (1997), pp. 500-502; P. Lévêque, Dialogues d’Histoire Ancienne 22 (1996), pp. 308-309; J.G. de Boer, Talanta 26-27 (1994-95), pp. 225-226; N. Spivey, The Times Higher Educational Supplement (9 Dec. 1994), p. 21.

2.   ARCHAEOLOGICAL REPORT MONOGRAPHS

The Archaeological Reports review scholarly developments in the archaeology and history of the ancient Greeks and are published by The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies and The British School at Athens.

  1. Archaeology in Sicily 2006-2010.  (Journal of Hellenic Studies Archaeological Reports for 2011-2012, no. 58; Cambridge 2012), pp. 123-195, 47 figures.
  2. Archaeology in Sicily, 2001-2005.  (Journal of Hellenic Studies Archaeological Reports for 2006-2007, no. 53; London, 2007), pp. 123-190, 37 figures.
  3. Archaeology in Sicily, 1996-2000.  (Journal of Hellenic Studies Archaeological Reports for 2000-2001, no. 47; London, 2001), pp. 145-201, 56 figures.

3.  REFEREED CHAPTERS & ENTRIES IN BOOKS

  1. “Introduction: Greeks Across the Ancient World,” in F. De Angelis (ed.), A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World (=Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series; Hoboken, NJ and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2020), pp. 1-10.
  2. “Italian Scholarship and the Greeks outside their Homelands,” in F. De Angelis (ed.), A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World (=Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series; Hoboken, NJ and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2020), pp. 85-100.
  3. “Conclusions,” in M. Costanzi and M. Dana (eds.), Une autre façon d’etre Grec: interactions et productions des Grecs en milieu colonial.  Actes du colloque international organisé à Amiens (Université Jules Verne Picardie) et Paris (ANHIMA), 18-19 novembre 2016 (=Colloquia Antiqua, 26; Leuven: Peeters, 2020), pp. 435-447.
  4. “Preface: Word of Welcome,” in M. Jonasch (ed.), The Fight for Sicily: Politics, Society and Landscape (Oxford: Oxbow, 2020), pp. viii-x.
  5. “Energizing the Economy: Present Results and Future Directions,” in M. Jonasch (ed.), The Fight for Sicily: Politics, Society and Landscape (Oxford: Oxbow, 2020), pp. 118-129.
  6. “The Greco-Roman Mediterranean,” in D. Hoyer and J. Redish (eds.), The Seshat History of the Axial Age (Chaplin, CT: Beresta Books, 2019), pp. 67-89 (co-authored with Jenny Redish).
  7. “Greek Sicily: A World Apart?,” in D. Booms and P. Higgs (eds.), Sicily: Heritage of the World Conference, June 24-25, British Museum (London: British Museum, 2019), pp. 18-23.
  8. “Anthropology and the Creation of the Classical Other,” in E. Varto (ed.), The Classics and Early Anthropology: A Companion to Classical Reception (Leiden and Boston: Brill), pp. 349-364.
  9. “Between Localism and Diaspora: The Sicilian Perspective on Megara’s World,” in H. Beck and P.J. Smith (eds.), Megarian Moments.  The Local World of an Ancient Greek City-state (=Teiresias Supplements Online, vol. 1; Montréal, 2018), pp. 1-15.
  10. “Discussion of Luigi Gallo’s ‘Città e territorio: popolazione e popolamento’,”in M. Lombardo and A Siciliano (eds.), Poleis e politeiai nella Magna Grecia arcaica e classica.  Atti del cinquantatreesimo Convegno Internazionale di Studi sulla Magna Grecia, Taranto, 26-29 settembre 2013 (Taranto: Istituto per la Storia e Archeologia della Magna Grecia, 2016), pp. 513-516. 
  11. E pluribus unum: The Multiplicity of Models,” in L. Donnellan, V. Nizzo, and G.-J. Burger (eds.), Conceptualising Early Colonisation (=Contextualising Early Colonisation, vol. 2; Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 97-104.
  12. “Approaches to the Movement of Ancient Phenomena through Time and Space,” in F. De Angelis (ed.), Regionalism and Globalism in Antiquity: Exploring Their Limits (Leuven: Peeters Publishing, 2013), pp. 1-20.
  13. “Art and Power in Archaic Greek Sicily: Investigating the Economic Substratum,” in M. Castiglione and A. Poggio (eds.), Arte – Potere: forme artistiche, istituzioni, paradigmi interpretativi. Atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Pisa Scuola Normale Superiore, 25-27 Novembre 2010 (Milan: Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto, 2012), pp. 173-184.
  14. “Teorizzando l’economie arcaiche della Sicilia greca,” in J. Bergemann (ed.), Griechen in Übersee und der historische Raum.  Internationales Kolloquium Universität Göttingen, Archäologisches Institut, 13. – 16. Oktober 2010 (Göttinger Studien zur Mediterranen Archäologie vol. 3; Rahden: Verlag Marie Leidorf, 2012), pp. 27-28.
  15. “Colonies and Colonization, Greek,” in M. Gagarin (editor-in-chief), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), vol. 2, pp. 251-256.
  16. “Ancient Sicily: The Development of a Microregional Tessera in the Mediterranean Mosaic,” in E. Hermon (ed.), Sociéte et climats dans l’empire romain (Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, 2009), pp. 235-250.
  17. “Colonies and Colonization,” in G. Boys-Stones, B. Graziosi, and P. Vasunia (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 48-64.
  18. “Greek and Phoenician Colonization,” in D. Buissert (editor-in-chief), The Oxford Companion to World Exploration (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), vol. 1, pp. 357-360.
  19. “Mediterranean,” in D. Buissert (editor-in-chief), The Oxford Companion to World Exploration(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), vol. 2, pp. 29-33.
  20. “The Agricultural Capacity of Archaic Syracuse,” in F. Krinzinger (ed.), Akten des Symposions «Die Ägäis und das westliche Mittelmeer: Beziehungen und Wechselwirkungen 8. bis 5. Jh. v. Chr., Wien, 24. bis. 27 März 1999» (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichisches Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), pp. 103-109.
  21. “The Foundation of Selinous: Overpopulation or Opportunities?,” in G.R. Tsetskhladze and F. De Angelis (eds.), The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation.  Essays Dedicated to Professor Sir John Boardman (Oxford: Oxbow Press for Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1994), pp. 87-110.  Reprinted with minor corrections in a paperback edition of 2004.
  22. “A Forgotten Inscription from Khlembotsári (Asopía), Boiotia,” in J.M. Fossey and J. Morin (eds.), Boeotia antiqua II. Recent Papers in Boiotian Archaeology and Epigraphy(McGill University Monographs in Classical Archaeology and History no. 11; Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1992), pp. 53-56.

4.   ARTICLES IN REFEREED JOURNALS

  1. “Economia di Selinunte e della Sicilia Occidentale.  Periodo arcaico-classico,” Sicilia Archeologica 111 (2019), pp. 38-49 (Part of a special issue devoted to the UNESCO conference: “Selinunte.  Produzioni ed economia di una colonia greca di frontiera.  Atti del Convegno internazionale del 15-16 aprile 2016”).
  2. “Re-assessing the Earliest Social and Economic Developments in Greek Sicily,”Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 116 (2010), pp. 21-53.
  3. “Euhemerus in Context,” Classical Antiquity 25.2 (October 2006), pp. 211-242 (co-authored equally with Benjamin Garstad).
  4. “Going Against the Grain in Sicilian Greek Economics,” Greece and Rome 53.1 (2006), pp. 29-47.
  5. “Equations of Culture: The Meeting of Natives and Greeks in Sicily (ca. 750-450 BC),”Ancient West and East 2.1 (2003), pp. 19-50.
  6. “Trade and Agriculture at Megara Hyblaia,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 21 (2002), pp. 299-310.
  7. “Ancient Greeks in Sicily,” Bulletin of the Canadian Academic Institute in Athens/Bulletin de l’Institut canadien académique à Athènes 8 (Autumn 2001), pp. 9-10.
  8. “Estimating the Agricultural Base of Greek Sicily,” Papers of the British School at Rome 68 (2000), pp. 111-148.
  9. “Ancient Past, Imperial Present: The British Empire in T.J. Dunbabin’s The Western Greeks,” Antiquity 72 (no. 277) (1998), pp. 539-549.

5.   ONLINE CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

  1. “Greek Colonization: Approaches, Cultural Relationships, and Exchange,”Bollettino di Archeologia.  Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Classical Archaeology, “Meetings between Cultures in the Ancient Mediterranean,” Rome, September 22-26, 2008 (Rome, 2011), p. 1 (panel session introduction).
  2. “Greek Colonization in the 21st Century: Some Suggested Directions,” Bollettino di Archeologia.  Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Classical Archaeology, “Meetings between Cultures in the Ancient Mediterranean,” Rome, September 22-26, 2008 (Rome, 2011), pp. 18-30.

6.  REVIEWS

  1. R. Evans, Ancient Syracuse: From Foundation to Fourth Century Collapse (London, 2016), Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften Ausgabe 19 (2019), Nr. 11 (co-authored with Jayden Lloyd)
  2. A. Ianucci, F. Muccioli, and M. Zaccarini (eds.), La città inquieta: Selinunte tra Lex Sacra e defixiones (Milan, 2015), in Journal of Hellenic Studies 138 (2018), pp. 274-275 (co-authored with Ryan Johnson)

  3. B. Routledge, Archaeology and State Theory: Subjects and Objects of Power (London, 2014), in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.04.37.
  4. J. Rashid, Politisch instrumentalisiert? Heiligtümer und Kultstätten in Syrakus bis zum Ende des 5. Jhs. v. Chr. (Hamburg, 2014), in Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften, Ausgabe 14 (2014), Nr. 12.
  5. H. Hurst and S. Owen (eds.), Ancient Colonization: Analogy, Similarity, Difference (London, 2005), in Ancient West and East 13 (2014), pp. 344-347.
  6. M. Frasca, Leontinoi: archeologia di una colonia greca (Rome, 2009), in American Journal of Archaeology 115.3 (2011), 2 pp.
  7. C. Antonetti and S. De Vido (eds.), Temi selinuntini (Pisa, 2009), in Classical Review 61.2 (2011), pp. 584-586.
  8. K. Korhonen, Le iscrizioni del Museo Civico di Catania: storia delle collezioni, cultura epigrafica, edizione (Helsinki, 2004), in Gnomon 79 (2007), pp. 138-141.
  9. F. Cordano and M. Di Salvatore (eds.), Il Guerriero di Castiglione di Ragusa: greci e siculi nella Sicilia sud-orientale (Rome, 2002), in Ancient West and East 6.1 (2007), pp. 375-378.
  10. V. Karageorghis (ed.), The Greeks beyond the Aegean: From Marseilles to Bactria. Papers Presented at an International Symposium Held at the Onassis Cultural Center, New York, 12th October, 2002 (New York, 2002), in American Journal of Archaeology 110.2 (2006), 3 pp.
  11. C. Morgan, Early Greek States beyond the Polis (London and New York, 2003), in Phoenix 59 (2005), pp. 173-176.
  12. F. Hartog, Memories of Odysseus:Tales from the Ancient Greek Frontier (Edinburgh, 2001), and C. Smith and J. Serrati (eds.), Sicily from Aeneas to Augustus: New Approaches in Archaeology and History (Edinburgh, 2000), in Ancient West and East 3.1 (2004), pp. 172-176.
  13. E. Herring and K. Lomas (eds.), The Emergence of State Identities in Italy in the First Millennium BC (London, 2000), in American Journal of Archaeology 108 (2004), pp. 302-304.
  14. H.R. Goette, Athens, Attica and the Megarid: An Archaeological Guide (London and New York, 2001), in Mouseion 2 (2002), pp. 275-278.
  15. M. Brunet (ed.), Territoires des cités grecques.  Actes de la table ronde internationale organisée par l’École française d’Athènes, 31 octobre-3 novembre 1991 (Athens, 1999), inAmerican Journal of Archaeology 106 (2002), pp. 329-331.
  16. C.A. Morgan, Isthmia VIII: the Late Bronze Age Settlement and Early Iron Age Sanctuary(Princeton, 1999), in Phoenix 54 (2000 [2001]), pp. 362-365.
  17. G. Manganaro, Sikelika: studia di antichità e di epigrafia della Sicilia greca (Urbino: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 1999), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2000.07.13.
  18. A. Muggia, L’area di rispetto nelle colonie magno-greche e siceliote: studio di antropologia della forma urbana (Palermo, 1997), in American Journal of Archaeology 103 (1999), pp. 143-145.
  19. M. Gualtieri (ed.), Fourth Century B.C. Magna Graecia: A Case Study (Jonsered, 1993), inEchos du Monde Classique/Classical Views 42 (ns 17) (1998), pp. 416-420.
  20. T. Fischer-Hansen (ed.), Ancient Sicily (Copenhagen, 1995), in Journal of Hellenic Studies117 (1997), pp. 253-254.

7. SUBMITTED AND IN PROGRESS WORK (ALL PEER-REVIEWED)

  1. Article: “An Introduction to Seshat: Global History Databank,”  Journal of Cognitive Historiography (preprint stage: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/394w2) (co-authored with P. Turchin, H. Whitehouse, P. François, D. Hoyer et al.).  Status: in printing stage.
  2. Book chapter: “Greeks in the West,” in C. Antonaccio and J. Carter (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek Iron Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 7,500 words.  Status: in press and in copy-editing/proof stage.
  3. Book chapter: “Exchange Networks with the West,” in M. Maiuro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Pre-Roman Italy (New York: Oxford University Press), 4,000 words.  Status: in press and in copy-editing/proof stage.
  4. Book chapter: “L’importazione e la distribuzione degli Orientalia nella Sicilia Orientale: il ruolo di Siracusa,” in R. Panvini, S. Alota, and A. Bollomo (eds.), I Convegno interdisciplinare “Migrazioni e commerci in Sicilia.  Modelli del passato come paradigm del presente” (Siracusa), 3,000 words (co-authored with Caterina Minniti).  Status: in press.
  5. Book chapter: “New Data and Old Narratives: Migrants and the Conjoining of the Cultures and Economies in the pre-Roman Western Mediterranean,” in M. Daniels (ed.), Homo Migrans: Modeling Mobility and Migration in Human History (Albany: SUNY Press), 6,000 words.  Status: under revision following peer reviews.
  6. Book chapter: “Syracuse,” in P. Cartledge and P. Christensen (eds.), The Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World: Archaeohistories of 28 Sites, Sanctuaries, and Regions (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 25,000-30,000 words (co-authored with Valentina Mignosa).  Status: under contract and in preparation.
  7. Book chapter: “Mixing Up Mediterranean Innovation: The Case of Viticulture and Wine,” in J. Armstrong and A. Rhodes Schroder (eds.), Adoption, Adaption, and Innovation in Pre-Roman Italy: Paradigms for Cultural Change (Turnhout: Brepols), 7,000 words.  Status: submitted for peer review.
  8. Sole-authored book: “From Backwardness to Leapfrogging?  Rethinking Cultural Transfers in the Pre-Roman Western Mediterranean” for Oxford University Press.  Status: under contract and in preparation.
  9. Sole-authored book proposal: “Circular Conquests: The New World and Classical Antiquity” for the monograph series “The New Antiquity” published by Palgrave Macmillan.  Status: submitted, positively received, and draft chapters in preparation for review.

 

Graduate Supervision keyboard_arrow_down

Supervision

I am interested in supervising motivated and well-trained students doing research in my areas of specialization. Over the years, I have supervised and co-supervised both undergraduate and graduate students in writing their B.A. honours theses, M.A. theses and graduating papers, and Ph.D. theses. The topics have included Greek banqueting practices in their Mediterranean context, Archaic and Classical Greek altars, early Greek kinship, the cults of Greek founders, emporia as places of economic and religious interaction, Greek water cults and divinities, Diodorus Siculus, the gerousia at Ephesus, and Etruscan state formation. My students, if wanting to pursue their education, have earned spots in prominent graduate programs (such as those at the University of Michigan, Yale University, Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin, Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the University of Chicago) and have garnered top awards and prizes from university and external sources during and after their studies (such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the German Academic Exchange Service [DAAD], the Trudeau Foundation, and the Etruscan Foundation, as well as being shortlisted for Rhodes Scholarships). On completion, these students have succeeded in finding jobs, such as in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, the Department of Humanities at Grant MacEwan University, the Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. I always look forward to hearing from potential students.