History Commons^™

Nobi Ni-Tse’Tse’Ede (House On The Cold One): Northern Great Basin Archaic Hunter-Gatherer Household Archaeology, Harney County, Oregon, Emily Jane Epstein

Theses and Dissertations

Excavation results from four sites on Tse’tse’ede (The Cold One), which is also commonly known as Steens Mountain, produced archaeological evidence for a prehistoric subsistence and settlement system on the western flank of Tse’tse’ede. Material culture recovered in association with one house, domestic surfaces, and from a high elevation hunting locale provides evidence for human use of the mountain spanning the Archaic. Analysis suggests human occupation of the range intensified post Cal 3000 BP.

The archaeological results were compared against an ethnographically derived model for household and community food security, the basis of settlement and subsistence systems. The model failed …

Recognizing Freedom: Manumission In The Roman Republic, Tristan Husby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Roman manumission was at the center of three different groups: the Roman state, Roman slave-owners, and freeborn Romans who did not own slaves. I draw upon G.F.W. Hegel, Orlando Patterson, Judith Butler, and Pierre Bourdieu to describe Roman manumission as a ritualized practice that transforms a slave’s life from unlivable to livable. The term “unlivable” comes from the philosopher Judith Butler, who developed it in conversation with Hegel’s master/slave dialectic and the term “social death,” which sociologist Orlando Patterson used to describe slavery. Hegel and Patterson’s thoughts on the movement and experience of freedom are useful for theorizing Roman slavery …

The Needed Man: The Evolution, Abandonment, And Resurrection Of The Roman Dictatorship, Mark B. Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite being an integral institution of the Roman state, employed frequently and routinely from the Republic’s earliest crises to the last days of the climactic fight with Hannibal, the Roman dictatorship is profoundly misunderstood. Perplexed by the idea of the Roman Republic—a state born out of the rejection of the preeminence of any one man—nonetheless investing the power of the state in a single unelected individual, and reacting to the anomalous first-century BCE dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar, both late-Republic historians and modern scholars have consistently described the office in ominous and fundamentally mythological terms that are largely contradicted by …

Revolution In The Divided City: The Plebeian Social Movement, Secessions, And Anti-Government In The Roman Republic During The 5th Century Struggle Of The Orders, Christopher Schley Saladin

Classics: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

This paper examines the formation of the plebeian movement and government in the Roman Republic during the 5^th Century BC of the Struggle of the Orders. The Struggle of the Orders was a political conflict between the plebeian and patrician classes of Rome that lasted from the 5^th-3^rd Centuries BC of the Republic. Most of this period is shrouded in legend, but later Roman historians provide evidence that suggests a major social and political revolution occurred during the early years of this struggle. Using kernels of evidence from these histories, namely that of the 1^{st …}

Philosophical Self-Presentation In Late Antique Cappadocia, Stefan Vernon Hodges-Kluck

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation offers a new perspective to the development of religious orthodoxy in the second half of the fourth century CE by examining the role of the body in the inter- and intra-religious battles between Christians and “pagans” over the claim to the cultural capital of philosophy. Focusing on Cappadocia (modern-day central Turkey), a particularly vital region of the fourth-century Roman empire, I argue that during this time, Greek-speaking intellectuals created and disputed boundaries between Christianity and “paganism,” as well as between “orthodoxy” and “heresy,” based on longstanding elite notions of how an ideal philosopher should look, think, and act. …

Roman Propaganda In The Age Of Augustus, Alex Pollok

Senior Theses

This paper is an examination of the methods and utilizations of propaganda in the Late Republic/Early Imperial period of Ancient Rome. The focus is on the propaganda of Augustus Caesar whose rulership ushered in the era referred to as the Pax Romana or Roman Peace. Augustus created a mythical image of himself that served as inspiration for future emperors. This image and its influence on future Romans is also examined. Today, we have film and/or television acting as the primary focal point for propaganda. In ancient Rome, the primary methods were literature, statues, monuments, and coins (though these are still …

The Edict Of Milan And The Early Roots Of Christianity In The Roman Empire, Christopher J. Chow

Young Historians Conference

With the Christian religion becoming so widely accepted and dominant today in the Western world, it is easy to forget the journey that the religion went through to reach its current state. It was once a heavily persecuted religion, yet it took the Roman Empire by storm and became the backbone to the Catholic Church. Christianity's spread was no accident. This paper will examine some of the factors regarding Christianity's early roots to identify what led up to its success in a heavily dominated Pagan culture.

The Origins And Identity Of Roman Mithraism, Charles R. Hill

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis is a reassessment of scholarship concerning the origins of the cult mysteries of Mithraism in its Roman form during the Imperial Period. While much has been published in the debate over the cult’s true origins, we are still left without a satisfactory answer. The present work is an attempt to reconcile some of the arguments posed in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries with those of the later 20^th and 21^st centuries, focusing mostly on the cult’s art and iconography in Mithraea, the central spaces of Mithraic worship. First will be a summary of …

Values, The Blueprint Of Our Character And The Road Map Of Life, Theresa Torony

Writing Across the Curriculum

My values dictate how I respond to life, the fruit it bears, and the tests it lays before me, as they did for Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

The Amazons Of Exekias And Eupolis: Demystifying Changes In Gender Roles, Marisa Anne Infante

The Larrie and Bobbi Weil Undergraduate Research Award

In this paper, I will examine the changing gender roles of women as the Athenian government changes from a tyranny in the Archaic period to a democracy in the Classical period by comparing a Black-Figure Amphora, which depicts an image of Achilles Killing Penthesilea, by Exekias and a Red-Figure Column Krater, which depicts an image of an Amazon on Side A and an unidentified figure on Side B, by Eupolis. The creation of democracy was not the universal celebration that it is often praised to be in modern times. I will demonstrate this through a visual analysis of how the …

The Personal And Social Context Of Justinianic Religious Policy Prior To The Three Chapters Controversy, Joshua Mckay Powell

Theses and Dissertations--History

The emperor Justinian's religious policy has sometimes been characterized as haphazard or incoherent. This dissertation examines religious policy in the Roman Empire from the accession of the emperor Justin to the inception of the Three Chapters controversy in the mid 540's AD. It considers the resolution of the Acacian Schism, Justinian's apparent ambivalence with regard to the Theopaschite formula, the attempt to court the anti-Chalcedonians in Constantinople in the period leading up to the Council of 536, and the relationship between the genesis of the Three Chapters and Second Origenist controversies.

Even during these seemingly disparate episodes, this dissertation argues …

The Endless Tragedy: Euripides And Camus, Robert Ian Mcmahon

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.