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The Corinthian, Attic, and Lakonian Pottery from Sardis

The Corinthian, Attic, and Lakonian Pottery from Sardis

Judith Snyder Schaeffer, Nancy H. Ramage, Crawford H. Greenewalt, Jr.

ISBN 9780674171602

Publication date: 07/26/1997

Although the treasury of King Croesus held great quantities of gold and silver plate, the Lydians clearly loved fine ceramic wares imported from Greece. This preference was entirely appropriate for the capital of the expansive Lydian Kingdom, which occupied a pivotal position between the city states of the Greeks and the gigantic empire of the Persians. The importation of Greek pottery corresponds to the visits from poets, philosophers, and politicians mentioned by the historian Herodotus.

This collaborative work consists of three generously illustrated sections presenting the ceramic finds excavated at Sardis, but produced in the mainland Greek centers of Corinth, Athens, and Sparta. Judith Snyder Schaeffer analyzes the Corinthian imports, Nancy H. Ramage the Attic, and Crawford H. Greenewalt, Jr., the Lakonian. Their study of this material from the Harvard-Cornell excavations at Sardis offers new evidence of the taste for specific Greek wares and shapes in Anatolia before the time of Alexander the Great.

Praise

  • This volume, the tenth in the monograph series Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, is the first to be devoted exclusively to pottery from the site...[It presents] some of the most easily identified and most prominent classes of Greek pottery of the Archaic period found in Sardis: the Corinthian, Attic and Lakonian...The volume provides as up-to-date an overview of these relevant classes of pottery as possible...The plates, 66 in all, many combining line-drawings with photographs, are of good quality and the volume itself is well edited and handsomely produced. The volume will quickly find its place as an important reference tool in any archaeological library.

    —John K. Papadopoulos, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Authors

  • Judith Snyder Schaeffer has taught Classical Art at Columbia University and the University of California, Riverside.
  • Nancy H. Ramage is Charles H. Dana Professor of the Humanities and Arts Emerita at Ithaca College.
  • Crawford H. Greenewalt, Jr., was Professor of Classical Archaeology, Emeritus, at the University of California, Berkeley.

Book Details

  • 240 pages
  • 8-1/2 x 11 inches
  • Archaeological Exploration of Sardis

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