Recent Research on Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor
Panel at the Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of Canada, McGill University, Montreal (8 May 2014)
organized by Altay Coskun & Gillian Ramsey
Asia Minor has been functioning as a ‘bridge’ for migrating peoples and a ‘melting pot’ for different cultures since prehistory. Among the several major clashes that took place on the Anatolian subcontinent and that dug themselves deep into the collective memory, one may list the Trojan War as well as the Battles of Manzikert and Gallipoli. Such conflicts were of course only the ‘tips of the icebergs’ in the context of which multifarious kinds of intercultural exchange occurred and the development of social and political structures received new impetus. Combats with lasting effects were especially numerous in the early Hellenistic age, most prominently with the Battles of Issos (333), Ipsos (301) and Korupedion (281), which induced the fall, creation or redesign of numerous kingdoms. To these famous battlefields, at least Magnesia-on-the-Meander needs to be added, where the Romans established their hegemony for more than a millennium to come (190). Given the unique wealth of literary, archaeological, numismatic and especially epigraphic evidence for the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the importance of Asia Minor for nearly all subfields of Classical Studies has always been acknowledged. Over the past century, the number of related international research projects has steadily increased, but it is a relatively recent development that a growing number of scholars established in Canada contribute to the exploration of ancient Anatolia. (Read the full panel description)
Paper Titles (Read the full paper abstracts)
1) ‘Royal Palaces in Hellenistic Asia Minor’
Dr. Gillian Ramsey, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
2) ‘Soldiers and Hellenism in the Third-Century Seleucid Military’
Del John Houle, MA candidate, University of Waterloo
3) ‘Histoire par les noms in Ancient Galatia’
Dr. Altay Coşkun, Associate Professor, University of Waterloo
4) ‘Measuring Roman Power in Late Antique Asia Minor: the Case of Cappadocia’
Lukas Lemcke, PhD candidate, University of Cologne