Chapter Two: Means of Chronological Dating

The distinction between history and prehistory is elementary -- the presence or absence of contemporary historical texts capable of relating past human experience. This having been said, things quickly grow complicated. The entire process of determining the cultural attributes of past civilizations requires the use of a complex array of tools combining archaeological with historical and literary means of investigation. Three things need to be discussed in this chapter, each related to determining historical chronology -- archaeology, forms of writing, and the value of each to historical analysis.

1. Archaeological Means of Dating

Archaeological investigation relies on the survival of material remains to date phases of past human existence and to identify the attributes of ancient cultures. Since the last mentioned form the building blocks to civilization, and in particular to the chronologies of the materials to be presented in these pages, it is best to achieve some basic understanding of archaeological strategies and vocabulary.

Moving from the remote to the specific the first challenge for archaeologists is to identify the location of past human remains. Ruins of ancient cities in currently populated areas may seem relatively obvious places to start, not to mention cities such as Athens, Rome or Istanbul (Constantinople) that remain inhabited continuously since antiquity (and hence reveal ancient remains whenever one excavates a foundation, a pipeline or a subway). What about abandoned settlements in less well populated regions, particularly those inhabited by past elements of rural or pastoral populations? Archaeological investigation of famous ancient cities such as Athens inevitably reveals examples of exquisite art and ornate monuments that adorn modern museums and attract millions of tourists. These tell us relatively little, however, about the plight of ordinary people living in more mundane places of the ancient world. However large and great a city Athens may have been, its population represented but a fraction of the total population of the Aegean at that time, let alone the Mediterranean or the globe. One can legitimately question how accurate a reflection of wider standards of living excavated material remains at Athens represent. The need to obtain archeological data from other regions seems evident if we are to obtain a more reliable picture of human conditions at that time.

Fortunately, archaeological investigation elsewhere in the Mediterranean and the globe continues at an unprecedented pace, with more than 300 active archaeological projects in modern Turkey alone. As investigators comb the Mediterranean country side for sites, an array of methods is employed. A brief survey of these follows below.

One of the tactics used increasingly to locate archaeological remains, Remote Sensing (analysis of satellite imagery and aerial photography of land surfaces from above), enables researchers in well exposed areas such as deserts and treeless plains to identify archaeological features on the land surface. These include the remains of Roman army camps, ancient road networks, and the seriation of ancient farm land into individual land allotments -- all easily detectable from space under suitable conditions. However, the most reliable way to locate archaeological remains is Pedestrian Field Survey, that is, the mapping of surface remains by teams of walkers using systematic procedures. In general, systematic field walking enables investigators to identify areas of human land use, but it is restricted in its accuracy or completeness by the happenstance character of that which survives on the surface as well as by the "resolution" of the methods used to locate and record surface remains. Field survey holds the advantage of investigating archaeological terrain in spatial terms; it enables archaeologists to reconstruct lines of communication between urban centers and rural hinterland, to identify settlement patterns, and to delineate the process of transition in human occupation over time.

Once investigators have identified a worthy "site" for intensive investigation and preferably have located optimum areas for excavation through use of ground penetrating radar, electrical resistivity, or magnetonomy (all of which employ geophysical analysis of subterranean "anomalies" to identify building remains), they resort to Field Excavation to unearth buried remains. Given the extremely high cost of a properly conducted excavation program and the need to obtain scientifically viable results at all events, a number of preliminary questions are usually raised. For example, why excavate one particular site as opposed to another in the same vicinity? What does one expect to learn from that excavation that cannot be learned elsewhere or by other, less expensive means? An array of models or hypotheses intended to guide any scientific archaeological investigation and to gauge its results become mandatory. Typically, researchers devise a project that combines social theory (high level theory) with suitable methodology (base line theory) to arrive at anticipated results (mid-range theory). Once these overriding questions are satisfied, excavation offers the best means to investigate remains in undisturbed, "closed contexts" and the potential to furnish a more detailed record of past human existence. It needs to be borne in mind that most abandoned ancient settlements were stripped of anything of value by contemporary looters, including wooden door jambs and window frames, leaving behind little more than wall rubble and ceramic debris. Given the pain-staking labor required to remove quantities of heavy earth (carefully recorded centimeter by centimeter), to expose valuable antiquities, and to preserve and/or restore them, excavation procedures are inherently expensive, time consuming, and (by digging down through one context to another) destructive. From a scientific standpoint excavation remains essential to obtain chronologically accurate data for cultural remains.

Archaeological remains whether investigated by means of survey or excavation tend to be organized according to two basic types: artifacts and features. Artifacts are defined as movable objects fashioned by humans. Typically surviving artifacts represent tools and furnishings fashioned from stone, bone, clay, glass, wood, textile, or metal. It is important to note that organic remains such as human tissue, textiles and wood tend to decompose rapidly and rarely survive in the archaeological record, bone and teeth being exceptions. From an organic standpoint, however, laboratory analysis has expanded the range of archaeological investigation to microscopic levels, opening new avenues of investigation such as analysis of food residue that survives on the interior surfaces of ceramic plates and bowls (paleoethnobotany), analysis of microscopic particles of 'petrified' plant tissue of organic materials utilized by humans, including lignin (wood tissue; and phytoliths - biogeoarchaeology, macrobotany, etc.), and most particularly analysis of human and animal DNA obtained from bone and skeletal remains preserved in archaeological contexts. The significant breakthroughs furnished for prehistory by DNA research will be highlighted in the following chapter.

A second type of archaeological remains is referred to as Features, or immovable remains. These include built environments such as monumental public buildings (porticoes, temples, council houses, city walls), domestic or utilitarian architecture (houses and storage facilities), and agricultural and artisanal features such as ceramic production kilns, wine and oil press installations, charcoal production sites, metallurgical workshops, and even threshing floors. Depending on the extent to which these remains survive on the landscape investigators use them to reconstruct some semblance of a culture's pattern of existence. Careful isolation and identification of correlative artifacts and features are said to form an Assemblage of a given human settlement in time. Assemblages need to be carefully identified in controlled contexts to insure that their components are in fact coeval. The most certain way to do this is through carefully observed and recorded excavation (see below).

Individual cultures tend to leave the same characteristic assemblages wherever they settle, particularly in the form of tombs, build environments, and fashioned tools. Similarly as populations expanded, elements of the same culture carried their attributes with them leaving behind patterns of common assemblages across the landscape. The identification of a pattern of assemblages spatially and temporally indicates the existence of a wider culture. Some cultures buried their dead in earthen mounds, for example, others cremated their dead and interred the remains in clay vessels, others still exposed their dead on high platforms to be consumed by scavenger birds. How people worshiped, how they buried their dead, how they organized their settlements, how they prepared their food, even how they fashioned their metal wares and pottery reveal significant aspects of past human cultures, particularly non literate cultures. Some aspects of human culture, such as worship and burial, are slow to change and leave imprints in the archaeological record that can extend over thousands of years. Likewise, attributes such as agricultural techniques and food preparation were slow to change because of the generally slow progress in technological innovation and improvement. Similarly built environments, particularly of monumental structures, tended to get remodeled and rebuilt over time without ever being removed or replaced.

The analysis of assemblages furnishes many insights to past human experience, therefore, but the first question invariably is temporal -- when did a given culture exist, which cultures, if any, did it follow at any particular location, and which did it precede? Chronological records furnish essential datum points to the understanding of past human existence. Archaeological investigators generally recognize two forms of chronology -- absolute and relative. Absolute chronologies are furnished by scientifically calibrated means of analysis that enjoy increasingly high precision. These include methods such as Radiocarbon 14 dating, dendrochronology, and thermoluminescence. Carbon 14 dating measures the amount of C14 that survives in organic materials such as wood, bone, and textile. [Results are viable from approximately 50000 BP to present.] As organisms decompose they retain less Carbon 14. By measuring the amount of Carbon 14 that survives in organic materials, scientists can assign dates for the "moment of death" for these materials which vary in accuracy depending on the remoteness of that moment vis-à-vis present times. AMS calibrations have made Carbon 14 analysis highly accurate even for materials utilized as recently as the past 200 years. For the classical period dates plus or minus 50 years are typical and help to furnish crucial chronological data for archaeological assemblages. For example, a skull fragment found by the author in Roman era surface remains in south coastal Anatolia and tentatively identified by specialists as early human because of its pronounced brow-ridge and low forehead. However radiocarbon analysis revealed a Carbon 14 date of 600 AD +/- 50 years. In this instance, in other words, the Carbon 14 date conforms to the site's Roman era ceramic data and resolved an otherwise inexplicable anomaly.

Human Skull Fragment from Gurcam Kale in Turkey

Dendrochronology, meanwhile, measures the size of tree rings in woody tissue that survives from antiquity. Depending on climatic factors such as excessive rain, cold, heat, or drought, trees adapt by growing more in warm damp years and less in hot (or cold) dry years due to stress. The sequences of thick or thin annual growth rings in trees are synchronous across wide spatial areas. Specialists, such as Peter Kuniholm of Cornell University, have compiled carefully identified sequences of tree rings for Europe and Anatolia that, barring a few breaks in the chronology, extend back to the Bronze Age. This research depends inordinately on the survival of wood fragments recovered from archaeological contexts, including rare finds of woody tissues derived principally from closed contexts such as buried tombs (Gordium), shipwrecks, collapsed rafters of abandoned buildings, and in several cases those of early Christian churches. While the likelihood (short of excavation) of locating intact wood remains is remote, when preserved and analyzed the tree ring sequences are sufficiently well known today to furnish highly accurate dates for the construction of a given feature such as a house, temple, council house, bath, or cargo ship.

Other means of absolute chronology include thermoluminescense and some other examples are discussed in the attached sidebar. The point remains that methodologies capable of furnishing absolute chronology offer a more certain means of dating archaeological assemblages, though invariably they remain dependent on the recovery of organic materials in the same context as the assemblages, something that is inherently rare.

SIDEBAR: NEW METHODS OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL INQUIRY

Thermoluminescense measures the patterns of electrons orbiting atomic nuclei in ceramic remains. These patterns become disturbed when the clay used to form ceramics is subjected to intense heat. Gradually over time the electrons return to their original orbits at a rate that can be measured. Since all classical era pottery was fired, the measurement of the irregularity in the electron pattern holds the potential to enable investigators to date the fabrication of a given ceramic remain. Currently, this method remains highly experimental and yields absolute dates plus or minus several hundred years, thus limiting its usefulness for dating classical era chronologies. In time, this will undoubtedly improve.

potassium to measure fertilized soils?

The author's own archaeological activity in south coastal Turkey utilizes principles of landscape archaeology, that is, that the landscape of the earth's surface has significantly changed over time as it has been worked by various forces, both organic (human, animal) and inorganic (wind, fire, rain). By analyzing aspects of geomorphological alterations such as alluvial deposition at river mouths, it is possible to calibrate the rate of deformation over time. In the ancient region of Rough Cilicia the author's survey team has mapped more than 150 "loci" of past human existence, primarily dating to the Roman era. These loci or "sites" range from small Greco-Roman cities to minimal areas of sherd concentrations. The archaeological evidence indicates that regional urban development in Rough Cilicia coincided with the peace and stability furnished by the Pax Romana in the first and second centuries AD. Since the region was celebrated during antiquity for its pristine forests of cedar, fir, and pine, all of which are severely depleted today, the survey team is attempting to use geoarchaeological methods to calibrate the extent, timing, and effect that regional deforestation ultimately had on the surviving landscape. By relying on methods such as geomorphology, palynology, carbon dating, analysis of woody tissue (lignin) in alluvial deposits, and multispectral satellite imagery the work of the Rough Cilicia Survey Project demonstrate that archaeology neither depends nor necessarily relies exclusively on human remains to determine the archaeological history of a long inhabited region.

As an even more remarkable example of "cutting-edge" technologies being employed to achieve absolute chronologies for remote prehistoric human remains, one can point to the work of Darryl Granger of Purdue University with cosmic rays known as cosmogenic nucleids. Granger's research is based on the principle that as rocks become gradually exposed on the earth's surface become bombarded by cosmic rays they undergo chemical changes at a measurable rate, particularly rocks such as marble and limestone. Granger's analysis of chemical alteration in rocks found in the same closed contexts as prehistoric hominid remain in eastern and southern Africa has enabled Granger to date these assemblages with greater precision, in a few cases recalibrating the assigned date of the remains by hundreds of thousands of years. Given the remote date of early hominid assemblages, this method has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the earliest phases of human development.

Relative Chronology furnishes more traditional archaeological means of dating by comparing archaeological assemblages which bear identifiably sequential relationships to one another. When assemblages contain datable remains, such as inscribed artifacts, the datable materials enable archaeologists to assign dates to otherwise non-datable materials in the same assemblage. Two standard means of relative chronology are furnished by stratigraphy and seriation.

Stratigraphy arises from the tendency of human cultures to occupy the same location over long periods of time, usually because of the availability of essential resources such as food, water, building materials, defensive security, or transportation routes. As buildings collapsed and were rebuilt or remodeled, and over a longer time scale as cultures emerged and declined, a layering effect of settlement remains occurred (typically in the form of a large earthen mound or "tel"). Sites bearing remains of long term human settlement can be excavated layer by layer beginning with the remains of the most recent settlement level, typically lying near the surface to those of more remote levels, typically lying underneath. The most celebrated example of stratigraphical investigation is probably that of the mound of Hisarlik, presumably the Bronze Age Aegean site of Troy. Naturally this site is renowned for its association with Homer's Iliad and the tradition for the Trojan War. The site is situated on the northwest coast of modern Turkey (Anatolia) on a fertile plain at the southern entrance to the Dardanelles (the ancient Hellespont). For millennia the Hellespont served as the chief shipping lane between the ancient urban civilizations of the Aegean and the grain-producing region of the northern Black Sea Coast (modern day Ukraine). The presence of arable land, potable water, and a strategic waterway caused this location to be inhabited repeatedly during the course of the ancient experience. Initially excavated in the 1860s by Heinrich Schliemann and continuing under archaeological investigation by German and American teams to this day, the site, abandoned since antiquity, exhibits 12 identified levels of human habitation. Based on the presence of Mycenaean pottery and inscribed Egyptian scarabs, the level that conforms most to the Trojan War era (c. 1250-1220 BC) is generally recognized to be that of Troy level VIIa. However, the remains of Troy VIIa are not as impressive as those of a preceding level, Troy VI, and neither of these levels offers anything to compare with the fabulous treasures of gold and lapis lazuli that Schliemann unearthed from Troy Level II, dated to the late third millennium BC. This raises interesting questions about the true importance of this settlement centuries before as well as during the time of the Trojan War. Carefully recorded stratigraphy of ancient urban settlements such as Troy continues to furnish the most reliable basis for reconstructing the archaeological record of Classical World Civilizations.

Reconstructed Drawing of the Stratigraphy at Troy

Seriation entails the concept that human tastes change over time and that the sequence of these changes can be reconstructed archaeologically. Through adaptation, innovation, and experimentation tools gradually became better adapted to the ancient user's needs. If it were possible to obtain a complete record of the subtle changes that occurred over time with a given artifact -- say, the addition of a handle to a cup, followed by a handle at each end, followed by the addition of a chalice foot, a folded rim, or some sort of surface decoration or paint -- and if each phase were to be carefully recorded and reconstructed from stratigraphical contexts at a place such as Troy, it would then become possible to reconstruct a reliable chronological sequence for the evolution of this cup over time and with it the sequence of all concerned assemblages. This is the basic principle behind seriation as it is generally applied to pottery sequences. Pottery sequences remain the principal indicators of chronological dating for prehistoric and classical era remains, bearing in mind that pottery did not come into being until ca. 6000 BC. Most ceramic vessels used by a given culture were produced "locally" and did not circulate very far from their production centers. Some pottery, particularly finely painted "finewares" and large containers known as transport amphoras, were carried by ship across the Mediterranean and by the Roman era across the Indian Ocean. These typologies help to link archaeological assemblages hundreds if not thousands of miles apart. Historical data, such as inscribed artifacts, and known destruction levels, such as the textually recorded destruction of Carthage and Corinth in 146 BC, Samaria in 122 BC, and Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD, where the destruction layers are clearly visible in the stratigraphy, help to identify the chronological sequences of various internationally traded forms. By examining the contents of assemblages recovered from stratigraphic layers both above and below such levels of destruction, the excavations of these sites have successfully identified chronological sequences for a wide range of local and internationally circulating ceramic typologies. Comparison of these assemblages with those of other, less well recorded sites enables archaeologists in turn to develop approximate "use chronologies" for dozens of widely circulating ceramic wares. These "relative" chronologies usually have an accuracy of a century or more but sometimes are narrowly conscribed to 25 year intervals. Perhaps the most famous example of ceramic sequences concerns the shift from Black Figure to Red Figure Attic Painted Pottery in Athens, c. 530 BC. The transition, characterized by "translation vases" bearing Black Figure illustrations on one side and Red Figure illustrations on the other, is believed to have occurred during the tyranny of the Athenian ruler Peisistratus (546-527 BC). This dating is based on a combination of stylistic analysis of the painting and stratigraphically recorded sequences of both typologies. Since both Attic Black Figure and Red Figure finewares were exported widely throughout the Mediterranean world, the date of this transition helps to identify Archaic Era (7th-6th century BC) Era assemblages from those of the Classical Era (5th-4th centuries BC) everywhere these particular finewares are found.

Attic Black Figure Panathenaic Amphora; Attic Red Figure Krater

Ceramic seriation remains the most extensively employed means of archaeological dating, particularly for sites of secondary and tertiary importance that lack any associated texts. Its drawbacks are evident, however, given that it is based on observed relationships of stratigraphically recorded materials and is thus highly interpretive, if not speculative in nature. Even the most rigorously ironed-out "use-chronologies" of finewares as exhaustively studied as Attic Black Figure and Red Figure finewares are regularly and repeatedly subjected to revision.

For a brief primer on ancient pottery, click here.

WRITTEN TEXTS

History came into being with written historical texts, the earliest of which emerged in Mesopotamia around 3300 BC. As the discussion above makes evident, the survival of texts more or less contemporary with ancient cultures and civilizations puts investigators on far safer ground when determining the cultural attributes of past human societies. Since writing requires extremely abstract processes of thought, expression, and convention, it represents one of the most cerebral forms of learned human behavior. Written symbols had to be fashioned to represent sound, thought, quantity, person, modality, and/or action. The symbols themselves needed to be recognizable not only between interlocutors who could not speak face to face (and thus could not benefit from physical means of expression) but also between people separated in time, such as readers living long after the writer was deceased. The earliest systems of writing, Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Chinese characters, were extremely complex, entailing hundreds of characters. To learn these writing systems required years of education, thus restricting this "technology” to a limited portion of the population. Nonetheless, once writing systems became accessible, generations of oral lore, recollection and tradition were “downloaded" by existing cultures and preserved to some degree for posterity. What seems clear is that these orally preserved memories -- prayers to the gods, epic tales of mythological heroes, customary legal codes -- were already viewed as "classics" before they were transferred to written form. This raises important questions regarding the means of preservation, the intended audience, and the import of textual content.

Ancient written records survive in at least three forms: literary texts, inscriptions, and coin legends. Literary texts are written records originating from an array of sources such as religious prayers and observances, poetry, oratory, philosophical texts, and narrative historical accounts. Most of these can be legitimately identified as 'literature" because they were deliberately written to be read by a wider audience. Other texts reflect more immediate historical testimony because they were "artless," that is, they were non self-consciously written and many instances preserved by accident. These include records such as correspondence between friends, kings and subjects, annalistic records such as lists of priests at temples or list of kings in Sumeria, legal records such as that of Hammurabi, king of Babylon, and archival records such as financial accounts of small town bankers recovered in Pompeii and elsewhere. Even wall graffiti preserved in ruin cities such as Pompeii and Delos offer distinctly unvarnished glimpses into the perspectives and attitudes of people existing millennia ago.

Documents of various kinds were preserved in a number of ways. Most documents were originally recorded as a temporary measure on perishable materials such as dried tablets of clay, parchment, wood, wax, bone, ivory, and papyrus-reed based paper. The perishable nature of these media required that documents needing to be preserved indefinitely be copied and recopied repeatedly or otherwise transferred to more permanent media. Unless intentionally committed to a non-perishable medium such as stone or metal, it was usually understood by the writer that the document he or she recorded was meant to be temporary. Clay tablets bearing Bronze Age documents, for example, were probably never intended to survive to any great length of time. However, when fire hardened during the cataclysmic destruction of their repositories (in many cases at the end of the Bronze Age), their clay materials underwent chemical and physical transformations that hardened them and enabled them to survive to present times. Similarly, papyrus scrolls when preserved in the extremely dry climates such as the Egyptian desert enjoy a remarkably high rate of survival.

The perishable character of ancient writing materials leads to a further distinction between the function of ancient and modern writing. Other than writing for purposes of correspondence, most materials committed to writing in antiquity were done so merely for mnemonic purposes, such as memorization per se or to enable the reader to recite a text out loud. This contrasts distinctly with modern usages of pleasure reading, reference work, and consultation. To appreciate the full meaning of ancient texts, modern students need to understand how ancient writers thought and expressed themselves. In most cases the written form of a text functioned merely as a preparatory device to some larger purpose such as an oral presentation or recital. Greater importance was placed on active, oral communication during ancient times. Written records, even of commercial contracts, were typically viewed as preserved facsimiles of some instance of oral expression typically performed in some public environment. In legal disputes, for example, far more credence was placed in the oral testimony of eye-witnesses to an agreement at the time of the dispute than to the preserved written contract of the agreement at the time that it was originally arranged. This serves as a useful reminder of the ancillary place of writing in ancient social practice. The distinction between ancient and modern literature likewise reveals itself quite visibly in other ways such as punctuation and the reliance of ancient writers on rhetorical sign posts. Most ancient writing systems lacked punctuation as we know it: a cursory glance at an ancient Greek papyrus scroll or a Latin building dedication (see the image below) reveals long strings of characters (oftentimes capital letters) without separation either with respect to word or sentence. Ancient readers would by necessity "read aloud" by sounding out the words. Rhetorical devices, known as "particles," were embedded at the beginnings and ends of sentences to serve as designators to the length of the expressed thought. Greek rhetorical expressions such as opote (whensoever), kaitoi (and yet), and dozens of other particles remain difficult to translate precisely because their real purpose was to alert the reader to the need to raise the pitch of his or her voice at the beginning of a sentence and to lower it at the end. As a result ancient texts translated into English tend to exhibit a stilted, archaic style that students find unappealing. Add to this the limited vocabulary of ancient languages and the tendency for ancient words, particularly verbs, to possess broad shades of meaning, and the process of rendering texts into modern English in a manner that is both readable and accurate forms a challenging enterprise. Since all of the texts employed with this textbook are translated, the adage, "lost in translation,' need always be borne in mind.

Altar Dedication at Delphi

Some written records were deemed so important that they warranted preservation in a more permanent manner. Building dedications, such as the initial cornerstone of a Sumerian monumental building or the altar dedication by the Greek city of Chios at Delphi shown above, were typically inscribed on blocks of stone by the person(s) responsible for its construction. Bronze Age stone cutters learned that documents preserved on stone, once suitably dressed (that is, given a smooth flat surface capable of displaying written characters and figural relief), tended to withstand the ravages of time. Ancient record keepers quickly recognized the record-preserving quality of dressed stone. Rounded column drums, smoothed wall block, and particularly tall, thin tablet-like blocks known as stelai became media for the preservation of public records as early as the Late Bronze Age (1450-1100 BC). Inscriptions preserved on stone include building dedications, royal and municipal decrees, popular legislation, and religious laws, accounts, and observances. The smoothly dressed wall surfaces of a Greco-Roman council house typically preserved that body’s official correspondence with allied polities, kings, and emperors, ultimately constituting a form of municipal archive. Tens of thousands of inscribed texts have survived to modern times, most after having been unearthed through excavation. Every year hundreds more inscriptions come to light. The science of investigating inscriptions of all kinds, epigraphy (literally the study of things "written upon") includes not only texts preserved on stone but also those painted or stamped on ceramic vessels, engraved on metal objects, painted on plastered walls, and embedded in mosaics.

A more specialized area of epigraphy concerns numismatics, the science of ancient coin studies. Coins purportedly were invented by the kings of Lydia (western Anatolia) in the 7th century BC as a means to pay their mercenary troops. Precious metal bullion had been used since at least Sumerian times as a medium of exchange. The innovation of the Lydian monarchs was their decision to rely on metal die to strike coins at a set weight (ca. 3 grams) and purity, the genuineness of which was then guaranteed by the emblems of the monarchs stamped on the coin's opposite faces (the obverse and reverse respectively). Numerous Greek states soon struck coins bearing the emblems and reliefs of their patron deities, frequently with an abbreviated spelling of the state itself (ATHE(NENAI)). Alexander the Great (336-323 BC) struck coins in his own likeness, as did the rulers of the Macedonian kingdoms that succeeded him. During the Late Republican era at Rome (133-27 BC) politicians such as Julius Caesar learned how to use coin inscriptions as a means of propaganda, publishing symbolism and text that advertised his purported aims during the civil war and especially during his dictatorship. Although the logical purpose of this coinage was to pay the bounties that Caesar had promised to his troops, the fact remains that coins once distributed or otherwise circulated traveled rapidly and potentially over great distances through repeated use in commercial transactions. When his treasury officials in January 44 BC struck a massive amount of coins inscribed with his head and the legend "Dictator in Perpetuo", the meaning of this coin legend was clear and unmistakable to all. A chilling response came on the Ides of March. In short, the use of coins to impart propaganda in this manner offered a relatively inexpensive and semi-autonomous way for central authorities to communicate with a wider population.

The value of inscribed records needs to be kept in perspective. Since many inscribed texts reflect official policy at various levels, the language tends to be redundantly formulaic. Others, such as amphora stamps, served as little more than inventory marks intended to comply with the customs regulations of a given state. In other words, inscriptions rarely furnish anything literarily significant. They are what they are, typically the mundane records of formalistic procedures. However, inscriptions do have the advantage of preserving texts that are directly contemporary to the events and personages they record, as opposed to literature such as ancient biographies which were typically written centuries after the lives they recount and were heavily slanted with bias. Frequently the content of texts inscribed by one generation could prove vexing to later generations, such as the dedications of Queen Hatshepsut of New Kingdom Egypt (dates) whose long rule was resented by her son Tutmosis III. When Hatshepsut died Tutmosis had her name removed from all public monuments (damnatio memoriae) and replaced with his own. Incised deeply into the chiseled surfaces of stone building elements, these rasurae, literally hand cut erasures; render it impossible for Tutmosis to hide his act of jealousy through to this day.

Two further questions need to be addressed with respect to writing; who was literate and how widespread were written texts during antiquity? The question of literacy has received considerable attention in recent years. During the Bronze Age when few below the level of elite scribal classes learned to read and write, literacy remained a privileged advantage of a small percentage of the population, probably less than 5%. The survival of published legal codes and thousands of commercial contracts indicate that some elements of the wider population were at least semi-literate or perhaps functionally literate. But one must avoid exaggerating this assumption. Today in the public squares and tea gardens adjoining government centers in Turkey, typists, literally men adept with manual typewriters, sell their services, typing official forms such as application forms for drivers' and marriage licenses, and residence permits for everyday people. In a pinch the authors have relied on the services of these typists to complete some required government form. To what degree the clientele of these professionals is literate and otherwise capable of completing the forms themselves remains a legitimate question. Similar professionals undoubtedly existed in Bronze Age Mesopotamian cities, creating 'contracts' on clay tablets on request for others who could not read. During the Classical era scholars assume that the free born citizen elements of Mediterranean communities were more or less literate, based in part on advances in writing systems that rendered them more accessible to lower class elements. The overwhelming evidence for the existence of educational facilities and requirements at the foundation of Greco-Roman civilization also argues to this end. The extent of literacy among the wider population remains debatable, nonetheless.

Based on the numerous references to the existence of libraries, not only private, such as that owned by the tragedian Euripides or the dictator L. Cornelius Sulla, but state-owned libraries at cultural centers such as Alexandria, Antioch, Pergamum, Ephesus, Athens, and Rome, it is clear that text documents existed in considerable numbers by the height of Classical antiquity. Allegedly the great Ptolemaic library at Alexandria preserved more than 1 million volumes (literally papyrus scrolled rolled around wooden spindles, each scroll representing a 'book", each separated block of text a "chapter,' each line of text a 'verse'). The holdings of the imperial library at Rome were allegedly as large. Only a small fraction, undoubtedly some miniscule percentage of the extant literature of antiquity has survived to modern times. Copied and recopied for centuries, the surviving literature of the ancient Greco-Roman world now fits comfortably along a couple of aisles in the “stacks” of any major university library. Polymaths such as the Roman era biographer Plutarch (late first century AD) drop the names of literally hundreds of authors whose works are lost today. One of the surest signs of the quantity of literature available during Roman times is offered by the popularity of encyclopedic writings such as the natural histories of Pliny the Elder, the scientific texts of Aristotle, or the medical texts of Galen, not to mention the plethora of 'abridged' versions of Livy and other longer texts that have survived. Obviously there was so much literature available that literate people of the Roman era could no longer complete their “required reading,” thus creating a demand for summaries. The imperfect character of the written record of the Classical era must always be borne in mind.

Classical scholars are fully aware of the impact of these losses over time. Of the 142 books of Roman history written by the great historian, Livy, only 45 survive; numerous tragedies and comedies of the great dramatists of Classical Athens remain lost, and for many eras the written records are so thoroughly lost that our ability to reconstruct them is limited. We would certainly know more about the events and personages of the classical world if only we had the complete works of the authors whose fragmentary writings survive, never mind the writings of other authors completely lost today. However, this deficit needs to be put in perspective. Ancient writers, especially literary writers, were by and large aristocrats who wrote for an audience of fellow aristocrats. The mindset of this social element prevented its literary community from recording the events of their experience in an altogether useful manner. To a large degree the substance of the literature of the classical Mediterranean world, unquestionably the most extensive literature to exist on the globe at that time, amounted to little more than a recounting of the experience of "Great Men and Great Events." The Classical world was predominantly one dominated by aristocracies, local, regional, and imperial. An aristocratic ethos therefore prevailed. Although this perspective would have been very familiar to lower class elements living in Europe or the Americans 200 years ago, it is something that is lost on modern populations.

Due to their wealth and status ancient aristocrats enjoyed something the Romans referred to as otium, or freedom from subsistence labor. They relied on the work of other people to furnish them with the necessities of life, thus freeing them to devote their energies to "nobler pursuits." These last were invariably enumerated as individual contributions in religion, politics, and warfare. Little else had any value to an aristocratic career. Recognition of the value of the artes liberalae enabled aristocrats to tolerate the fact that some of their peers would pursue careers as poets, writers, artists, and sculptors, but the true job of an aristocrat was to lead his community through one of the recognized noble pursuits. It is interesting to observed, for example, the embarrassment expressed by the Syracusan aristocrat and scientist, Archimedes, when lamenting his decision to pursue an scientific career in Alexandria as opposed to the political career that was expected by his family and its dependents. This mindset is equally prevalent in the surviving literature of past civilizations. Aristocratic writers committed to text only those events that they and their noble audiences deemed worthy, in other words, accounts of aristocratic success in the acts of religious, political, and military careers. Lower class elements, and especially women, were rarely mentioned in this literature, only to the extent that they intrude in the aristocratic narrative. As a result, the textual literature of the Classical World Civilizations is as slanted and as limited in perspective as the literary community itself. One has to delve deeply and creatively into these texts to obtain the kind of information that cultural historians require to address these subjects for today's reading community. To probe beneath the surface of this literature and to peer into the world of everyday people in classical antiquity stands as one of the most formidable challenges confronting classical scholarship today.

For this reason, despite the existence of texts that illuminate the era of the Classical world, scholars such as the author rely extensively on archaeological data and models arising from the social sciences to inform ourselves about everyday conditions in the Classical world. In other words even with the significant textual records that survive from the Classical era, we are dependent on the archaeological record to reconstruct the patterns of existence for everyday people like ourselves. Archaeological data furnishes the "remote background noise of history" and enable historians to direct focus away from the bias of ancient written sources for the experience of elite cultures to the reconstruction of the historical experience of everyday people. Ancient historians and archeologists can also use archaeology to identify the juncture between "Great Men and Great Events" and the evolving record of la longue durée.