"Life at Sardis, Before and After the Peace of Apamea"
Tuesday, April 7th, 4:45 PM
Goldwin Smith Hall, G22
Abstract
In this talk I examine what happens to a place when political power vanishes. I focus on the famous site of Sardis, in the years before and after the Peace of Apamea (188 BCE). Before, Sardis played a starring role as the capital of Seleucid cis-Tauric Asia. After, Sardis became a minor city within the newly expansive kingdom of Pergamon. My primary evidence is household pottery found at various spots around the city. A close look reveals that as political stature diminished, the quality of peoples’ daily lives rose – a peace dividend as welcome as it was unexpected.
Biography
Andrea M. Berlin is the James R. Wiseman Chair in Classical Archaeology and Professor of Religion at Boston University. Dr. Berlin is an award-winning teacher who has written and edited six books and over 80 articles about life in the ancient Near East from the time of Alexander the Great through the Roman era. She is also an active field archaeologist who has worked in the eastern Mediterranean for fifty years, at projects from Troy in Turkey to Coptos in southern Egypt to Paestum, in Italy. Her most recent field project was Tel Kedesh, Israel, where she co-directed a team that uncovered an imperial administrative compound dating from the fifth through second centuries BCE.
