In the past thirty years, scholarship on the history and culture of ancient Greece has changed profoundly. The impact of archeology is transforming the historical views of the archaic and classical era. The written material itself, both literary and epigraphical, is being reassessed in the light of recent theories, including those on orality and literacy. The contacts between Greece and the Near East, and with the mediterranean west and north are reconsidered to have played a formative role in historical developments. Patterns of social life and the interaction between religion and society are reinterpreted from the perspective of comparative anthropology. The application of social and political theory to ancient evidence changes our understanding of legal and political life.
The fascinating and challenging results of these changes affect the views of scholars in different ways, conditioned among other things by country, language, discipline and institutional affiliation. Moreover, the enormous increase in the number of publications, both to be read and to be made, makes it difficult to keep in touch with all the developments that seem to be most promising for one’s field.
The European Network for the Study of Ancient Greek History intends to meet these challenges by bringing scholars and scholarship from different areas together.
The Network operates on the basis of the following principles: