This book features the first comprehensive interdisciplinary study of the mosaics from Antioch, one of the four capitals of the Roman and Early Christian world. A follow-up to the critically acclaimed Antioch: The Lost Ancient City by Christine Kondoleon, this volume includes the latest scholarly and scientific discoveries that grew out of the Antioch exhibition. For the first time, the research of art historians and archaeologists is combined with that of conservators and scientists to shed new light on mosaic and glass workshops. The authors take an in-depth look at the Antioch excavations, which yielded a range of mosaics, sculpture, and glass- and metalwork spanning four centuries. They also explore the development of mosaic conservation in museums since the 1930s. Included are recent findings on mosaic materials, artistic techniques, glassmaking technology, stone quarries, workshops, trade, and patronage. An introduction by the director of the Worcester Art Museum outlines the history of the museum's involvement with the excavations of Antioch, and gives insight into several personalities who were key to the realization of the project. The catalogue section offers detailed information regarding the archaeological context, art historical significance, and technical study of over 150 objects, including the finest group of Roman and Early Byzantine mosaics in North America, and a chronological series of 106 coins from Antioch. With 400 photographs and illustrations, The Arts of Antioch provides a new basis for future scientific and art historical study. The contributors to the book include Paula Artal-Isbrand (Worcester Art Museum), Anna Gonosová (University of California, Irvine), Florent Heintz (Antiquities Department, Sotheby's), Rebecca Molholt (Columbia University), Richard Newman (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Antero Tammisto (Institutum Historicum Universitatis Helsingiensis), Cornelius Vermeule III (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), James A. Welu (Worcester Art Museum), Anne Leinster Windham (Assumption College), and Mark T. Wypyski (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

Featuring 118 objects excavated from the city's ruins, all reproduced in full color, Antioch: The Lost Ancient City recreates the spatial sensation, visual splendor, and cultural richness of this urban center."--Jacket.

Winner of ASOR's 2022 G. Ernest Wright Award for the most substantial volume dealing with archaeological material, excavation reports and material culture from the ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean. This is a complete history of Antioch, one of the most significant major cities of the eastern Mediterranean and a crossroads for the Silk Road, from its foundation by the Seleucids, through Roman rule, the rise of Christianity, Islamic and Byzantine conquests, to the Crusades and beyond. Antioch has typically been treated as a city whose classical glory faded permanently amid a series of natural disasters and foreign invasions in the sixth and seventh centuries CE. Such studies have obstructed the view of Antioch’s fascinating urban transformations from classical to medieval to modern city and the processes behind these transformations. Through its comprehensive blend of textual sources and new archaeological data reanalyzed from Princeton’s 1930s excavations and recent discoveries, this book offers unprecedented insights into the complete history of Antioch, recreating the lives of the people who lived in it and focusing on the factors that affected them during the evolution of its remarkable cityscape. While Antioch’s built environment is central, the book also utilizes landscape archaeological work to consider the city in relation to its hinterland, and numismatic evidence to explore its economics. The outmoded portrait of Antioch as a sadly perished classical city par excellence gives way to one in which it shines as brightly in its medieval Islamic, Byzantine, and Crusader incarnations. Antioch: A History offers a new portal to researching this long-lasting city and is also suitable for a wide variety of teaching needs, both undergraduate and graduate, in the fields of classics, history, urban studies, archaeology, Silk Road studies, and Near Eastern/Middle Eastern studies. Just as importantly, its clarity makes it attractive for, and accessible to, a general readership outside the framework of formal instruction.

This book offers a new narrative of the great ancient city Antioch's origins, growth, and significance.

During the fourth century, Antioch on the Orontes was the most important imperial residence in the Roman Empire and a "hot-bed" of intellectual and religious activity. The writings of men such as Libanius, the emperor Julian, Ammianus Marcellinus, John Chrysostom, Theodoret, and many others, provide a density of written sources that is nearly unmatched in antiquity, while the archaeological evidence of the city's evolution is much harder to reconstruct. This volume assembles state-of-the-art scholarship on these ancient authors within the context of recent archaeological work to offer a rare comprehensive view of this late Roman city. Contributors: Rudolf Brandle, Gunnar Brands, Silke-Petra Bergjan, Susanna Elm, Johannes Hahn, Gavin Kelly, Blake Leyerle, Jaclyn Maxwell, Wendy Mayer, Yannis Papadogiannakis, Catherine Saliou, Adam M. Schor, Christine Shepardson, Jan R. Stenger, Claudia Tiersch, Edward Watts, Jorit Wintjes