1) Sources, Geography & Chronology, Sport & Spectacle

What are the three sources and hisorical sources of information

1) Images from the past

2) Written records from the past

3) Archaeological evidence

Three pre-historical Sources of Information

1) ‘remembered’ past

2) Images from the past

3) Archaeological evidence

Remembered past example

• Mythology and stories

Remembered past was at one point

Written down, at some point, in a form what we can understand

When does remembered past date back to

Mostly 8th century BCE onward

Remembered past from the Bronze Age example

Stories of Homer (Iliad and the Odyssey)

Stories from Homer were maybe originally

Sung, but put into written form

When were the stories from Homer put into writing

Between 8th and 6th centuries BCE

Greek and Roman poets

• Hesiod

• Pindar

• Hyginus

• Ovid

• ps

Greek and Roman playwrights

• Apollodorus

• Aeschylus

• Sophocles

• Euripides

3 categories of Archaeological Evidence

• Sites and features

• Burial sites and grave goods

• Artefacts

Types of images from the past

• Wall paintings and frescos

• Decorated ceramics

• Sculpture

• Coins, gems, precious-ware

Written records from the past

• Public Inscriptions

• Administration records

• Coins, ceramics & personal items

• Literary writings

Literary writings of a remembered past are

Copies of copies of copies

What is the Philostratus on Gymnastics

• Only treatise dedicated entirely to sport to survive from antiquity

Some other examples of literary writers

• Historians and biographers

• Politicians, public speakers, and jurists

• Philosophers

• Travel writers and geographers

• Medican, scientific, and technical writers

• Prose writers

Absence of evidence does not equal

Evidence of absence

Geography of sport and society in Ancient Greece

• Mainland, small islands, large island of Crete

• Mountainous

• Lots of coastal areas (bays and harbours)

• Rivers fairly insubstantial

• Some volcanic and seismic activity

• Predominantly limestone

Bronze Age had what two civilizations

• Minoan

• Mycenaean

Where was the core area of the Minoan Civilization

Island of Kaiti

When was the Minoan Civilization

16th Century BCE

Mycenaean Kingdom’s probable extent of location

• Island of Crete

• Mycenae

• Tiryns

• Miletos

Main area for the Iron Age Greece Classical Period

• Athens

• Crete

• Corinth

• Miletus

• Thebes

• Megara

When was the Greek Bronze Age

c. 3000-1000 BCE

What period has been traditionally called the Dark Ages

c. 1150-800 BCE

What are the Dark Ages

Period where we have very little evidence available to us

The dark age is more correctly now called the

Early Iron Age period

When was the Greek Iron Age

c. 1000 BCE and onward

Onward of theGreek Iron Age was what following periods (in order)

Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Modern Greece

The Greek year ran from

Spring to spring

• their dates cover two of ours