At the Montreal meeting, I complained about my luggage being overweight and hence making it difficult for me to pick up bargains at the AIA book fair. Part of the reason for this was the substantial amount of books that was already in my bags. So what did I buy? For anyone who’s interested, there’s a list is below the fold. Iconoclasm posts will return shortly.
Indra Kagis McEwen, “Vitruvius – Writing the Body of Architecture” (Boston 2003), found in the ‘hurt’ section of the MIT bookstore for $7. I was not familar with this one prior to purchase, but was happy to see a book entirely devoted to this Augustan architect.
Keith Hopkins & Mary Beard, “The Colosseum” (Cambridge, MA 2005). $20 at the MFA. I read this on the flight home and it was excellent. I really enjoyed Beard’s Very Short Introduction to Classics and this was in a similar style.
Diane E. E. Kleiner, “Cleopatra & Rome” (Cambridge, MA 2005). Another MFA purchase, $30. An enjoyable enough book, but I didn’t find her argument entirely convincing. An alternative title could have been ‘It’s All About Cleopatra’, as Kleiner argues that the Egyptian queen had a hand in introducing everything from the ‘nodus’ to female portraiture in Rome. Here’s the BMCR review.
Lynn Meskell, “Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt” (Princeton 2002). $18 in a Cambridge, MA bookstore.
Michael Shanks & Christopher Tilley, “Social Theory and Archaeology” (Albuquerque 1987). This is the University of New Mexico 1988 paperback edition, but well worth having. $8.50 in Commonwealth Books, Boston.
H.P. L’Orange, “Art Forms and Civic Life in the Late Roman Empire” (Princeton 1978). Also found in Commonwealth Books, Boston for $7.50. This is the English edition of Fra Principat til Dominat. Apparently still in press.
Lea Stirling, “The Learned Collector” (Ann Arbor 2005). Gift from the author. The first synthetic account of late antique mythological statuary.
Bernard Wood, “Human Evolution. A Very Short Introduction” (Oxford 2005). There are just so many good things to say about this series!
Jefferson Reid & Stephanie Whittlesey, “The Archaeology of Ancient Arizona” (Tucson 1997). Bought at the Pueblo Grande Museum in Phoenix.
Debbie Felton, “Haunted Greece & Rome. Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity” (Austin 1999). A bargain at $5 at the MFA. Something for Alun? Here’s the review from BMCR.
Michael Balter, “The Goddess and the Bull. Çatalhöyük: An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization” (New York 2005). Kind of an odd one, as I’m not sure how well the biography genre and archaeology mix, but it’s well-written and there’s lots of interesting background information to the dig. I’m not sure refering to Ian Hodder only by first name, and his ‘opponents’ by last name is a good idea, but then again, it quickly lets you know who the author’s hero is.
Add to that a number of non-archaeology books, a vast number of ILL copies and the books that I had brought with me from Europe…and there’s probably a few that I’ve missed here. Which explains why I ended up buying just one title at the AIA meeting (as previously mentioned), Eric Varner’s catalogue “Tyranny & Transformation” on Roman imperial portraiture and damnatio memoriae.