Thread by @FlintDibble

Nearly 1,900 years ago, a scholar named Pausanias wrote an eye-witness account of his travels through Greece

There’s no better ancient text for visualizing the archaeology of the ancient Greek world

A thread about digital approaches to Pausanias & archaeology. #SwanseaCA2022
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In spring 2021, Julie Hruby & I were supposed to lead a group of @dartmouth students on a trip to Greece (cc: @Classics22FSP)

Covid nixed it

Instead, my class traveled digitally to Greece with Pausanias as our guide using online Classics & archaeology resources
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We started off simple, reading a book of Pausanias & mapping out his travels on Google Earth (map by Duncan Antich*)

The exercise revealed the routes Pausanias took around a region and allowed for an overhead look at the Greek landscape
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*all w/ permission to share assignments

Google Earth also shows some of the ancient ruins

1.24.5 “As you enter the Parthenon, all the sculptures you see on the pediment refer to birth of Athena, those on the rear pediment represent the contest between Athena and Poseidon. The statue itself is made of ivory & gold”
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Next we connected Pausanias with the wealth of information found in online resources: ToposText, @PleiadesProject, and digital archives from @ASCSAthens & museums

The students wove this data together by annotating the researched connections in Recogito (@aboutgeo @eltonteb)
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The collaborative result was a rich tapestry of historical information, archaeology photographs, and open-links for further exploration

All mapped to geographical locations along Pausanias’s itinerary
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*this was a whole class collaboration to map & annotate this material

Several of the students received the Justin Firestone Memorial Prize from @dartmouth Classics for their efforts to digitally visualize the ancient world

Check out one of the publicly accessible projects here by N. Curtis, E. MacTaggart & J. Winfrey: earth.google.com/earth/d/139LJw…
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These students digitally followed in the footsteps of generations of archaeologists who have connected Pausanias’s writings with on-the-ground archaeology

Pausanias has helped us locate sites, name monuments, and see their art in detail that’s been lost to the ages
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The truth of Pausanias’s descriptions of Greece cannot be denied, but as a scholar, I’m also curious in what he leaves out. His omissions and biases

I’ve been developing a database to try to crack this nut, not just for Pausanias but for a wide range of ancient Greek texts
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I’m lucky to study ancient Greek animals. Some were cute, others were tasty

And, unlike so much else in our evidence, animals were described by the thousands in ancient texts, depicted as frequently in ancient art, and millions of their bones have been dug up
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It’s my opinion that animals are key to examining the relationship between different sources in a rigorous, quantitative fashion

While many scholars combine “big data” to understand the past, I think the 1st step is to compare our sources of evidence to reveal their biases
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In so many ways, Pausanias is commendable because, like a true scholar, he readily admitted his biases in his description of Greece

In Book 1, he makes the bold claim to be recording “all things Greek” but by book 3 he amends this to “the really memorable things”
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Zooming in to his many descriptions of animal sacrifice, we see his self-critical assessment holds up as true

We have a good understanding of animal sacrifice from hundreds of textual descriptions and iconographic depictions and 1000s of burned bones
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Typically, the hindquarters (the thighbone and/or the tails) were burned as an offering to the gods. I have a thread on this topic here:

But Pausanias rarely describes this ritual clearly, and if so, it’s to set off a practice as unique or memorable
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For example, at the sanctuary of Herakles at Sikyon, he classifies standard forms of sacrifice to a deity and to a hero and examines how here the ritual practice combines the two

After all, Herakles was odd as a hero who was deified, and this practice was memorable
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Or at Olympia, where the huge quantities of sacrifices offered to Zeus were memorialized into a monumental altar constructed from the ashes of sacrificial victims

Who would not see this as exceptional?
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Throughout, Pausanias focuses on exceptions, whether simple (night-time sacrifices) or a one-off event (murder during a sacrifice) or over-the-top sacrifices like the festival of Artemis Laphria at Patrai where countless wild animals were thrown alive onto a fiery altar
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Pausanias doesn’t describe the ordinary, he presents the memorable

Taking a quantitative approach to the animals mentioned in Pausanias (counting sheep) allows us to go beyond anecdotes and compare his biases with those found in other sources, both textual and archaeological
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Looking at the primary domestic animals used as food (cattle, pig, sheep, and goat), it’s clear that Pausanias most frequently mentions cattle

This contrasts sharply with the animal bone record where cattle distantly trail sheep and goat at most Greek sites
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But, this contrast makes sense: cattle are larger animals that represented wealth and status. Cattle as livestock or as sacrificial victims were more memorable, and they fit in well with Pausanias’s acknowledged biases
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Interestingly, my database shows this bias towards cattle and other elite animals is true in much of our ancient Greek literary and artistic sources

I presented on some of my questions and preliminary results at #AIASCS2022. You can see it here:
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These results are important. They reveal the the formation processes of our evidence

And thanks to an “Innovation for All” grant from @CUHistArchRel & @CardiffUniversity, I’ll be publishing this animal database open-access on @OpenContext: opencontext.org
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On Sunday, @Classical_Assoc, I’ll present this animal database and my attempt to integrate it with other open-linked datasets available online

#SwanseaCA2022 attendees tune in to the Digital Pausanias session. For others, I’ll post my talk on YouTube after
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Anyone who wants to travel to ancient Greece, but can’t jump on a plane, I suggest giving Pausanias a read

But, remember, you can improve his eyewitness journey by connecting his text to the fantastic online resources that are available for free
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I highly recommend reading the text on ToposText designed by @BradyKiesling: topostext.org/work/213

Full English translation with links to info on people & places. Especially useful if you want to map out where Pausanias goes

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For those interested in mythology, be sure to check out the MANTO database: manto.unh.edu/viewer.p/60/26… developed by @GretaHawes & @GrkMythMaster

Greta will present on mythical connections to Pausanias:
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And finally, check out the digital Periegesis (periegesis.org) led by @AnnaOFoka. There are great resources there to visualize Pausanias’ journey on this website

She’ll be presenting Sunday too:
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If you’re at #SwanseaCA2022, the Digital Pausanias organized session by @eltonteb should be a good one, with all above plus discussion with @MariaPretzler and @nmacsweeney

If not, these resources are available free, so dig in & explore ancient Greece
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Several of my students last year are finally travelling to Greece this spring. I’ll see them in a few weeks to present to them about ancient animal bones

Since last year was all remote, I’m excited to meet some in person

Thanks for their hard work!
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