Winner of the 2020 PROSE Award for Multivolume Reference/Humanities The world of work saw marked developments over the course of antiquity. These were driven by social and economic changes, especially growth in market trade and related phenomena like urbanization and specialization. Although the self-sufficient agrarian household continued to prevail, economic realities everywhere intervened. Corresponding changes include the emergence of archaeologically distinct workplaces and even, in certain times and places, preindustrial factories. A diversity of workplace cultures often defied dominant gender and other social norms. Across an increasingly connected Mediterranean world, work contributed to and was in turn structured by mobility. Other striking developments included the emergence of state-sponsored leisure activities that offered respite from toil for all social classes. Through an exploration of these and other themes, this volume offers a reappraisal of ancient work and its relationship to Greek and Roman culture. A Cultural History of Work in Antiquity presents an overview of the period with essays on economies, representations of work, workplaces, work cultures, technology, mobility, society, politics and leisure.

Winner of the 2020 PROSE Award for Multivolume Reference/Humanities In the early modern age technological innovations were unimportant relative to political and social transformations. The size of the workforce and the number of wage dependent people increased, due in large part to population growth, but also as a result of changes in the organization of work. The diversity of workplaces in many significant economic sectors was on the rise in the 16th-century: family farming, urban crafts and trades, and large enterprises in mining, printing and shipbuilding. Moreover, the increasing influence of global commerce, as accompanied by local and regional specialization, prompted an increased reliance on forms of under-compensated and non-compensated work which were integral to economic growth. Economic volatility swelled the ranks of the mobile poor, who moved along Europe's roads seeking sustenance, and the endemic warfare of the period prompted young men to sign on as soldiers and sailors. Colonists migrated to Europe's territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, while others were forced overseas as servants, convicts or slaves. The early modern age proved to be a “renaissance” in the political, social and cultural contexts of work which set the stage for the technological developments to come. A Cultural History of Work in the Early Modern Age presents an overview of the period with essays on economies, representations of work, workplaces, work cultures, technology, mobility, society, politics and leisure.

Theatre was at the very heart of culture in Graeco-Roman civilizations and its influence permeated across social and class boundaries. The theatrical genres of tragedy, comedy, satyr play, mime and pantomime operate in Antiquity alongside the conception of theatre as both an entertainment for the masses and a vehicle for intellectual, political and artistic expression. Drawing together contributions from scholars in Classics and Theatre Studies, this volume uniquely examines the Greek and Roman cultural spheres in conjunction with one another rather than in isolation. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: institutional frameworks; social functions; sexuality and gender; the environment of theatre; circulation; interpretations; communities of production; repertoire and genres; technologies of performance; and knowledge transmission.

These volumes present an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. With six volumes covering 2500 years, this is the most authoritative history available of women in Western cultures. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters: the Life Cycle; Bodies and Sexuality; Religion and Popular Beliefs; Medicine and Disease; Public and Private Worlds; Education and Work; Power; and Artistic Representation. This means readers can either have a broad overview of a period by reading a volume or follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume.

Winner of the 2020 PROSE Award for Multivolume Reference/Humanities The period 1800–1920 was one in which work processes were dramatically transformed by mechanization, factory system, the abolition of the guilds, the integration of national markets and expansion into overseas colonies. While some continued to work in trades that were similar to those of their parents and grandparents, increasing numbers of workers found their workplace and work processes changed, often in ways that were beyond their control. Workers employed a variety of means to protest these changes, from machine-breaking to strikes to migration. This period saw the rise of the labor union and the working-class political party. It was also a time during which ideas about work changed dramatically. Work came to be seen as a source of pride, progress and even liberation, and workers garnered increased interest from writers and artists. This volume explores the multi-faceted experience of workers during the Age of Empire. A Cultural History of Work in the Age of Empire presents an overview of the period with essays on economies, representations of work, workplaces, work cultures, technology, mobility, society, politics and leisure.

The meaning of our concern for mortal remains—from antiquity through the twentieth century The Greek philosopher Diogenes said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In The Work of the Dead, acclaimed cultural historian Thomas Laqueur examines why humanity has universally rejected Diogenes's argument. No culture has been indifferent to mortal remains. Even in our supposedly disenchanted scientific age, the dead body still matters—for individuals, communities, and nations. A remarkably ambitious history, The Work of the Dead offers a compelling and richly detailed account of how and why the living have cared for the dead, from antiquity to the twentieth century. The book draws on a vast range of sources—from mortuary archaeology, medical tracts, letters, songs, poems, and novels to painting and landscapes in order to recover the work that the dead do for the living: making human communities that connect the past and the future. Laqueur shows how the churchyard became the dominant resting place of the dead during the Middle Ages and why the cemetery largely supplanted it during the modern period. He traces how and why since the nineteenth century we have come to gather the names of the dead on great lists and memorials and why being buried without a name has become so disturbing. And finally, he tells how modern cremation, begun as a fantasy of stripping death of its history, ultimately failed—and how even the ashes of the victims of the Holocaust have been preserved in culture. A fascinating chronicle of how we shape the dead and are in turn shaped by them, this is a landmark work of cultural history.

A Cultural History of Objects in Antiquity covers the period 500 BCE to 500 CE, examining ancient objects from machines and buildings to furniture and fashion. Many of our current attitudes to the world of things are shaped by ideas forged in classical antiquity. We now understand that we do not merely do things to objects, they do things to us. Reinterpreting objects in Greece and Rome casts new light on our understanding of ourselves and turns the ancient world upside down. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds. Robin Osborne is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge, UK. Volume 1 in the Cultural History of Objects set. General Editors: Dan Hicks and William Whyte