Classics 300/Art History 300: The Art & Archaeology of Ancient Greece

Understand and evaluate current archaeological methods, the ethics of collecting antiquities, and the legacy of ancient Greek material culture and technologies. In the Art and Archaeology of Ancient Greece we explore the material culture of ancient Greece from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic period. This course uses archaeology to shed light on the civilization of ancient Greece and its peoples understood and explained their universe, deities, religion, gender, warfare, codes of behavior and justice, and attitudes about life and death. The course starts in the Bronze Age (ca. 3000 B.C.E.) and continues into the world of the historical Greeks (the mainstay of the course), with a focus on findings from urban centers and sanctuaries like Athens, Corinth, Delos, Delphi, Olympia, Rhodes, Samothrace, and Troy. Students learn how to recognize, describe, discuss and interpret the art of the ancient Greeks, and they also learn about archaeological methods, current excavations, ethics and archaeology, modern challenges of museums and collections of antiquities; and the legacy of ancient Greek material culture and technologies in the modern era.