Author’s Prologue
Forinstance,thephysicalremainsofconstruction,fromthefoundations
ofsmallhutstothePantheoninRome,withitsdomestillcompleteasHa-
drianbuiltit,canbefoundalmostanywhereintheareacoveredbyGraeco-
Romancivilisation.InDiamond’spictureoftherelativecapacitiesofdiffer-
entsocieties,thetopicofquarrying,stonecutting,thecarvingofdecoration
instone,andthehaulageofstonetotheintendedsitesforbuildingmight
haveplayedalargerpart.Wecanthinkofthisareaofenquiryasanaspectof
thehistoryoftechnology,orofeducationandtraining(howwasitpossible,
insomanymodestlocalcontexts,totraingenerationsofstonecutters,who
couldcutmarbleforuseinbuilding,orproduceelaboratemarblesarcophagi
by the thousand?), or of artistic styles. But quarrying too is a fundamen-
tal aspect of the interaction of humans with the natural world, brilliantly
explored, for instance, in a recently published ‘‘geological companion’’ to
Greece.^6
Butsanctuaries,cemeteries,villages,andcitiesareofcoursenotonlythe
product of physical efforts and technological skills, but are expressions of
thevaluesandprioritiesofthesocietieswhichproducedthem,andcanbe
‘‘read’’andinterpretedinawayquitesimilartotheinterpretationofwrit-
ten texts—which is,of course, to sayalso that, by the nature of interpre-
tation, theycan be ‘‘read’’ and interpreted wrongly,orat any rate in ways
which have no defensible logical foundation. But here again, it would be
futile and counter-productive to pretend that we eithercan,or should at-
temptto,‘‘read’’buildingsandurbanlandscapeswithoutdoingsointhelight
of what is recorded of them in literary or documentary texts. Interpreta-
tionofphysicalremainsintermssetbytheancientliterarytraditionhasits
dangers,ofcourse,aboveallthatoffailingtodistinguishwhatwearetold
inwordsfromwhatisactuallytobeseenandencounteredontherelevant
sitenow.^7 Butthefactremainsthatsomeofthemostsuccessfuladvancesin
understandingduringthepastfewdecadeshaveinvolvedtheinterpretation
of architectural complexes and of urban landscapes through the combina-
tionofliterary,archaeological,anddocumentaryevidence.Onemaythink
forinstanceofwhatis(verysurprisingly)thefirstoverallattempttointer-
pretthehistory,function,andmeaningoftheAthenianAcropolisandthe
. M. D. Higgins and R. A. Higgins,A Geological Companion to Greece and the Aegean
().
. The fact that the book maintains this distinction with such firmness and clarity is
one of the many merits of Amanda Claridge’s excellentRome: An Oxford Archaeological
Guide().