Alan Kaiser – författare

The streets of Roman cities have received surprisingly little attention until recently. Traditionally the main interest archaeologists and classicists had in streets was in tracing the origins and development of the orthogonal layout used in Roman colonial cities. Roman Urban Street Networks is the first volume to sift through the ancient literature to determine how authors used the Latin vocabulary for streets, and determine what that tells us about how the Romans perceived their streets. Author Alan Kaiser offers a methodology for describing the role of a street within the broader urban transportation network in such a way that one can compare both individual streets and street networks from one site to another. This work is more than simply an exploration of Roman urban streets, however. It addresses one of the central problems in current scholarship on Roman urbanism: Kaiser suggests that streets provided the organizing principle for ancient Roman cities, offering an exciting new way of describing and comparing Roman street networks. This book will certainly lead to an expanded discussion of approaches to and understandings of Roman streetscapes and urbanism.

The streets of Roman cities have received surprisingly little attention until recently. Traditionally the main interest archaeologists and classicists had in streets was in tracing the origins and development of the orthogonal layout used in Roman colonial cities. Roman Urban Street Networks is the first volume to sift through the ancient literature to determine how authors used the Latin vocabulary for streets, and determine what that tells us about how the Romans perceived their streets. Author Alan Kaiser offers a methodology for describing the role of a street within the broader urban transportation network in such a way that one can compare both individual streets and street networks from one site to another. This work is more than simply an exploration of Roman urban streets, however. It addresses one of the central problems in current scholarship on Roman urbanism: Kaiser suggests that streets provided the organizing principle for ancient Roman cities, offering an exciting new way of describing and comparing Roman street networks. This book will certainly lead to an expanded discussion of approaches to and understandings of Roman streetscapes and urbanism.

Archaeology, Sexism, and Scandal tells the hidden tale behind one of the great American excavations in Greece. In the 1930s, David Robinson’s project on ancient houses became the first of its kind and fundamentally altered what classical archaeologists’ study. Alan Kaiser documents previously unknown details of the Olynthus project through lively photographs and enthusiastic letters of one of Robinson’s trench supervisors, Mary Ross Ellingson. He also reveals the plagiarism of Ellingson’s work by Robinson, and how others in the field were complicit in the theft.This revised edition narrates the consequences of the first edition’s publication. People who knew Ellingson, Robinson, and others mentioned in the book contacted Kaiser to share with him important details he could never have known. Enough new information has come to light in archives from Canada to Greece to require a retelling of the archaeology, sexism, and scandal associated with the Olynthus excavation. Kaiser also includes never-before published photos that tell the story further in a way words cannot. And in a twist neither Ellingson nor Robinson could ever have seen coming, Kaiser reports on one last extraordinary action the book inspired, a petition to the Library of Congress to add Ellingson’s name to the two Olynthus volumes that her stolen works are in.

Archaeology, Sexism, and Scandal tells the hidden tale behind one of the great American excavations in Greece. In the 1930s, David Robinson’s project on ancient houses became the first of its kind and fundamentally altered what classical archaeologists’ study. Alan Kaiser documents previously unknown details of the Olynthus project through lively photographs and enthusiastic letters of one of Robinson’s trench supervisors, Mary Ross Ellingson. He also reveals the plagiarism of Ellingson’s work by Robinson, and how others in the field were complicit in the theft.This revised edition narrates the consequences of the first edition’s publication. People who knew Ellingson, Robinson, and others mentioned in the book contacted Kaiser to share with him important details he could never have known. Enough new information has come to light in archives from Canada to Greece to require a retelling of the archaeology, sexism, and scandal associated with the Olynthus excavation. Kaiser also includes never-before published photos that tell the story further in a way words cannot. And in a twist neither Ellingson nor Robinson could ever have seen coming, Kaiser reports on one last extraordinary action the book inspired, a petition to the Library of Congress to add Ellingson’s name to the two Olynthus volumes that her stolen works are in.

This book contains 14 stories of archaeological discoveries that changed our understanding of ancient Roman culture, but you’ve likely never heard of any of them. To uncover the secrets of ancient Roman culture, one archaeologist had to dive to the bottom of the Mediterranean in search of lost warships. Another peered through a microscope at pollen spores, while yet another dressed modern athletes in gladiatorial armor, provided them with weapons, and studied what ensued. Great Discoveries in Roman Archaeology tells the story of these and other projects that changed what we know about the Roman world. Each chapter introduces archaeologists whose work took the field in new directions and reveals the developments in archaeological methods that made their research possible. Readers get their chance to try their hand at some of these methodologies, such as identifying causes of trauma in gladiator bones, recognizing the purpose of excavated surgical tools, and reading and translating coded curse tablets.Roman archaeology is not just about the discoveries and methods, however, it is ultimately about the people of the past. Chapters introduce us to real ancient Romans: from a military officer on the eve of war, to a witch fleeing a volcanic eruption, to a family mourning the loss of their daughter, and farmers making a desert bloom. Meet the Romans who are lost to history, but whose stories remain in the artifacts they left behind.