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Teaching Delivery: This module is taught in 20 weekly lectures.

Content: The module covers the cultural history of ancient Greece in its formative period (roughly from the time of Homer to the Persian Wars, 800-479 BCE) from a broadly Mediterranean perspective. Thematically focused sessions will cover a variety of problems, including (possibly and depending on the length of the course) the song culture, epic and ‘lyric’, the emergence of philosophy, the social role of myth and memory, warfare, slavery, social class, polis-formation, the growth of literacy, religion and the city, tyranny, aristocracy, the family, the birth of law, coinage, Greek colonization, the status and role of women, the emergence of ‘Greek’ architecture and sculpture, Greek ceramics, the early economy, contacts with the Near East, contacts with Egypt (Naucratis), contacts with Italy (Pithekoussai and Greek settlements on the Bay of Naples; early Latium, the Mezzogiorno and Sicily) and ethnogenesis and the formation of a Hellenic identity. In the spirit of ‘decolonising’, it aims to assemble a comprehensive picture of early Greece and its culture through a series of ‘case studies’, while contextualising this picture as much as possible in terms of the Greeks’ contacts with non-Greek peoples. The students will be expected to read up on particular problems and themes, and to discuss these in seminar-type classes; assessment will be by guided research and coursework with no final exam.

Skills: At the end of the module students should:
1. have engaged with texts, images, and theories that allow them to reflect on questions of social and cultural development and ideology;
2. have a good understanding of how the history and culture of a crucial period in the history of ancient Greece, from a pan-Mediterranean, acculturationist perspective.
3. have a sound knowledge of the relevant primary and secondary bibliography;
4. have developed their understanding of the methodological problems relevant to the field;
5. be able to deploy appropriate evidence and test arguments in oral discussion and written analysis;
6. be able to deploy evidence and argument effectively in written presentation.