This classic study gives the archaeologist's view of one of the most important periods of European history, describing how, out of the Dark Ages, the Greeks set their sails north, south, east and west to plant trading posts and colonies, to reap whatever harvest of materials and expertise they could find, and to disseminate the benefits of their own rapidly developing and brilliant civilization.
The canvas is broad - Greek mercenaries leaving graffiti on the statues of Abel Simbel in southern Egypt; Greek traders braving the Atlantic breakers or introducing wine to Burgundy. The Greeks Overseas vividly demonstrates the value of archaeology to the historical record, and indicates how much the arts and culture of Classical Greece already owed to foreign influences.
For the fourth revised edition of this book, an additional chapter has been added summarizing new finds and exploring the new attitudes that have affected the study of the subject.
Author Biography
Sir John Boardman was born in 1927, and educated at Chigwell School and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He spent several years in Greece, three of them as Assistant Director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, and he has excavated in Smyrna, Crete, Chios and Libya. For four years he was an Assistant Keeper in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and he subsequently became Reader in Classical Archaeology and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He is now Lincoln Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology and Art in Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy, from whom he received the Kenyon Medal in 1995. He was awarded the Onassis Prize for Humanities in 2009. Professor Boardman has written widely on the art and archaeology of Ancient Greece.
