Christopher Ratté – författare

From the sixth to the fourth century B.C., the western Anatolian region of Lydia was home to a distinctive local tradition of ashlar masonry construction. The earliest datable example of fine stone masonry in the environs of Sardis, the capital of the Lydian empire, is the tomb of King Alyattes, who died in ca. 560 B.C. Contemporary monuments include a city gate and monumental terraces. Alyattes’ son Croesus was overthrown by the Persians in 547 B.C., but the Lydian building tradition survived in chamber tombs at Sardis and throughout Lydia.This richly illustrated volume examines the monuments of Sardis and environs in the context of contemporary developments in Lydia and throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. The study of Lydian architecture illuminates traditions of Anatolian kingship, technological exchange between Lydia and Greece and the Near East, and the origins of Persian imperial architecture.

The city was the fundamental social institution of Greek and Roman culture. More than the sack of Rome, the abandonment of provincial towns throughout the Mediterranean world in late antiquity (fourth-seventh centuries A.D.) marks the beginning of the Middle Ages. This volume examines archaeological evidence for this last phase of urban life in Asia Minor, one of the Roman empire's most prosperous regions. Based on the proceedings of a symposium co-sponsored by the University of Michigan and the German Archaeological Institute, it brings together studies by an international group of scholars on topics ranging from the public sculpture of Constantinople to the depopulation of the Anatolian countryside in early Byzantine times.

This catalogue documents an exhibition at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology of watercolor paintings by American artist Wendy Artin and selected objects from the Museum's permanent collections. Wendy Artin has been working for over a decade on a series of watercolors of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures and related subjects. She is thus a fresh presence in a long line of artists who draw inspiration from antiquity. Indeed, this tradition has very ancient precedents. The exhibition and catalogue place a selection of 47 of Artin's paintings--including landscapes and figure paintings as well as images of ancient sculptures--in dialogue with 14 objects drawn from the Kelsey's collections, among them works of Greek art inspired by Egyptian precedents, examples of Roman imperial portraits that were copied in numerous media for circulation around the empire, and reproductions of the same figure types featured in some of Artin's paintings (such as Aphrodite Rising from the Sea). Wendy Artin's masterful watercolors offer new and arresting ways of looking at ancient sculptures and buildings--and of remembering the classical past. Includes 81 colour illustrations.