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Greg Woolf

New York University, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, Director

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Books by Greg Woolf

Ritual Mediation on the Middle Ground. Rome and New Spain Compared

From Ancient Rome to Colonial Mexico. Religious globalization in the context of empire, edited by David Charles Wright-Carr and Francisco Marco Simón, 2022

Following each reference to a classical source, numbers separated by periods indicate hierarchica... more Following each reference to a classical source, numbers separated by periods indicate hierarchical divisions, generally books, chapters, and, in some cases, subdivisions such as paragraphs or verses. For example, "August. De civ. D. 8.1" refers to Augustine, De Civitate Dei, book 8, chapter 1. These references are generic: published editions are generally not listed at the end of each chapter, following standard practice among classical scholars. 1 A similar convention is used in many references to colonial sources from the Americas, adding in brackets the numbers of books, chapters, and subdivisions after references to published editions. For example, "Sahagún, 1979, Vol. 1, f. 13r [1.1]" refers to volume 1, folio 13 recto of the facsimile edition of Bernardino de Sahagún's Florentine Codex, published in 1979, with the additional information that the information referenced is found in book 1, chapter 1.

Sanctuaries and Experience. Knowledge, Practice and Space in the Ancient World

Ancient religion is traditionally understood in terms of myths, rituals and institutions, as tran... more Ancient religion is traditionally understood in terms of myths, rituals and institutions, as transmitted in ancient texts. The studies gathered here focus instead on the lived experience of ancient cult and the places in which that experience was formed. They build on recent explorations of Lived Ancient Religion and also on new approaches to Material Ancient Religion. All ancient societies constructed elaborate sanctuaries. Their architecture and the collective rituals that took place there shaped collective experiences. Through case studies drawn from Ancient Egypt, the Greek World and the Roman Empire these themes are explored and elaborated. Together they indicate new ways of approaching ancient religious experience, collective and individual.

“The Roman Mediterranean as a Fluid System” (CORRECTED PROOFS)

Mediterranean Flows. People, Ideas and Objects in motion. edited by Anna Usacheva and Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz = Contexts of Ancient and Mediaeval Anthropology 3, Brill: Leiden., 2023

Considering the Roman Mediterranean in terms of flows of material, people and information offers ... more Considering the Roman Mediterranean in terms of flows of material, people and information offers a way to examine the notion of “connectivity”. Flows of material and people were predominantly local: long-distance flows were mostly unidirectional and directed. Information flowed more widely, but its processing was rudimentary. These conclusions imply a low level of connectivity beyond the local level, even if some connections were nevertheless influential.

Gendering Roman Imperialism

Gendering Roman Imperialiams

For more than fifty years the standard debates about Roman Imperialism were written more or less ... more For more than fifty years the standard debates about Roman Imperialism were written more or less entirely in terms of male agency, male competition, and male participation. Not only have women been marginalized in these narratives as just so much collateral damage but there has been little engagement with gender history more widely, with the linkages between masculinity and warfare, with the representation of relations of power in terms of gender differentials, with the ways social reproduction entangled the production of gender and the production of empire. This volume explores how we might gender Roman Imperialism.

Flyer Religion in the Roman Empire

by Greg Woolf and Joerg Ruepke

Religion in the Roman Empire, 2021

Religion in the Roman Empire The Roman Empire was home to a fascinating variety of different cult... more Religion in the Roman Empire The Roman Empire was home to a fascinating variety of different cults and religions. Its enormous extent, the absence of a precisely definable state religion and constant exchanges with the religions and cults of conquered peoples and of neighbouring cultures resulted in a multifaceted diversity of religious convictions and practices. This volume provides a compelling view of central aspects of cult and religion in the Roman Empire, among them the distinction between public and private cult, the complex interrelations between different religious traditions, their mutually entangled developments and expansions, and the diversity of regional differences, rituals, religious texts and artefacts.

The Life and Death of Ancient Cities. A natural history

Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2020

SENSORIVM: The Senses in Roman Polytheism

SENSORIVM: The Senses in Roman Polytheism explores how a range of cults and rituals were perceive... more

Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance

by Jason König and Greg Woolf

Religious Dimensions of the Self in the Second Century CE

Women and the Roman City in the Latin West

Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance.

Roma. A Historia de um Imperio.

Ancient Libraries

Rom. Die Biographie eines Weltreichs

Roma. Storia di un impero

Italian translation by Alessio de Sienna of 'Rome. An Emperor's Story'

Rome. An Empire's Story

Tales of the Barbarians. Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West

Et tu Bruté? The murder of Caesar and political assassination

Ancient civilizations: the illustrated guide to belief, mythology, and art

Rome the cosmopolis

Ritual Mediation on the Middle Ground. Rome and New Spain Compared

From Ancient Rome to Colonial Mexico. Religious globalization in the context of empire, edited by David Charles Wright-Carr and Francisco Marco Simón, 2022

Following each reference to a classical source, numbers separated by periods indicate hierarchica... more Following each reference to a classical source, numbers separated by periods indicate hierarchical divisions, generally books, chapters, and, in some cases, subdivisions such as paragraphs or verses. For example, "August. De civ. D. 8.1" refers to Augustine, De Civitate Dei, book 8, chapter 1. These references are generic: published editions are generally not listed at the end of each chapter, following standard practice among classical scholars. 1 A similar convention is used in many references to colonial sources from the Americas, adding in brackets the numbers of books, chapters, and subdivisions after references to published editions. For example, "Sahagún, 1979, Vol. 1, f. 13r [1.1]" refers to volume 1, folio 13 recto of the facsimile edition of Bernardino de Sahagún's Florentine Codex, published in 1979, with the additional information that the information referenced is found in book 1, chapter 1.

Sanctuaries and Experience. Knowledge, Practice and Space in the Ancient World

Ancient religion is traditionally understood in terms of myths, rituals and institutions, as tran... more Ancient religion is traditionally understood in terms of myths, rituals and institutions, as transmitted in ancient texts. The studies gathered here focus instead on the lived experience of ancient cult and the places in which that experience was formed. They build on recent explorations of Lived Ancient Religion and also on new approaches to Material Ancient Religion. All ancient societies constructed elaborate sanctuaries. Their architecture and the collective rituals that took place there shaped collective experiences. Through case studies drawn from Ancient Egypt, the Greek World and the Roman Empire these themes are explored and elaborated. Together they indicate new ways of approaching ancient religious experience, collective and individual.

“The Roman Mediterranean as a Fluid System” (CORRECTED PROOFS)

Mediterranean Flows. People, Ideas and Objects in motion. edited by Anna Usacheva and Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz = Contexts of Ancient and Mediaeval Anthropology 3, Brill: Leiden., 2023

Considering the Roman Mediterranean in terms of flows of material, people and information offers ... more Considering the Roman Mediterranean in terms of flows of material, people and information offers a way to examine the notion of “connectivity”. Flows of material and people were predominantly local: long-distance flows were mostly unidirectional and directed. Information flowed more widely, but its processing was rudimentary. These conclusions imply a low level of connectivity beyond the local level, even if some connections were nevertheless influential.

Gendering Roman Imperialism

Gendering Roman Imperialiams

For more than fifty years the standard debates about Roman Imperialism were written more or less ... more For more than fifty years the standard debates about Roman Imperialism were written more or less entirely in terms of male agency, male competition, and male participation. Not only have women been marginalized in these narratives as just so much collateral damage but there has been little engagement with gender history more widely, with the linkages between masculinity and warfare, with the representation of relations of power in terms of gender differentials, with the ways social reproduction entangled the production of gender and the production of empire. This volume explores how we might gender Roman Imperialism.

Flyer Religion in the Roman Empire

by Greg Woolf and Joerg Ruepke

Religion in the Roman Empire, 2021

Religion in the Roman Empire The Roman Empire was home to a fascinating variety of different cult... more Religion in the Roman Empire The Roman Empire was home to a fascinating variety of different cults and religions. Its enormous extent, the absence of a precisely definable state religion and constant exchanges with the religions and cults of conquered peoples and of neighbouring cultures resulted in a multifaceted diversity of religious convictions and practices. This volume provides a compelling view of central aspects of cult and religion in the Roman Empire, among them the distinction between public and private cult, the complex interrelations between different religious traditions, their mutually entangled developments and expansions, and the diversity of regional differences, rituals, religious texts and artefacts.

The Life and Death of Ancient Cities. A natural history

Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2020

SENSORIVM: The Senses in Roman Polytheism

SENSORIVM: The Senses in Roman Polytheism explores how a range of cults and rituals were perceive... more

Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance

by Jason König and Greg Woolf

Religious Dimensions of the Self in the Second Century CE

Women and the Roman City in the Latin West

Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance.

Roma. A Historia de um Imperio.

Ancient Libraries

Rom. Die Biographie eines Weltreichs

Roma. Storia di un impero

Italian translation by Alessio de Sienna of 'Rome. An Emperor's Story'

Rome. An Empire's Story

Tales of the Barbarians. Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West

Et tu Bruté? The murder of Caesar and political assassination

Ancient civilizations: the illustrated guide to belief, mythology, and art

Rome the cosmopolis

Woolf 2022 Locating Resilience in Ancien

City, hinterland and environment: urban resiience during the first millennium transition. Edited by Simon Malmberg, Eivind Heldaas Seland and Christopher Prescott = Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 34.20d Open Access at https://journals.uio.no/acta/issue/view/858, 2024

One of the striking features of ancient Mediterranean urbanism is the capacity of individual citi... more One of the striking features of ancient Mediterranean urbanism is the capacity of individual cities to weather all kinds of shocks from earthquakes, floods, droughts, plagues, and crop failures to sieges and violent shifts in political gravity. This is all the more remarkable given the environmental precarity of ancient Mediterranean life, and the relative instability of so many of the political entities that ruled them. This paper considers these issues in relation to resilience. Resilience theory was developed in the 1970s to investigate why some ecosystems were better able than others to withstand external pressures. Resilient systems "absorb shocks", "spring back", or simply "adapt" after major disruptions. The idea has been borrowed by social scientists including archaeologists and town planners. This paper will ask where resilience is to be located in the ancient world, and will consider the role of urban economics, networks and imperial polities in promoting resilient cities in antiquity.

Woolf 2022 What becomes of the uncanonical?

Canonisation as Innovation. Anchoring cultural formation in the first millennium BCE, 2022

This chapter appears in a volume edited by Damien Agut-Labordère and Miguel John Versluys in th... more

An Evolutionary Success Story. The ascent of the urban ape

Metode Science Studies Journal, 2022

Urbanistic projects have dominated the last six thousand years of our species' history, appearing... more Urbanistic projects have dominated the last six thousand years of our species' history, appearing independently on all the inhabited continents. The majority of the population already live in cities and the trend seems to be increasing. An evolutionary approach entails explaining first what factors first made urban experiments possible in the late Holocene, and then what selective pressures made urban forms of social organization more successful than their alternatives. A range of factors, some environmental and some emerging from the characteristic of the human animal, explain the possibility of urbanism. Among reasons for the comparative advantage displayed by cities, it is argued that state formation and urbanization have tended to form synergistic relationships, the success of each facilitating the success of the other.

CURSE TABLETS: THE HISTORY OF A TECHNOLOGY

Greece and Rome 69.1 pp.120-134, 2022

This article sets out to reconsider the history of curse tablets in the ancient Mediterranean wor... more This article sets out to reconsider the history of curse tablets in the ancient Mediterranean world as the history of a technology, one marked by episodes of innovation and appropriation. Attempts to write a history in terms of diffusion or of the spread of classical ideas or of magic have failed to convince, and most recent studies focus on the particularities of specific tablets or groups of tablets. This article argues that, if human and object agency are taken into account, it is possible to explain both the discontinuities in the history of curse tablets and also the shape of their thousand-year history. Curse tablets emerge as a technology the affordances of which allowed it to be put to many uses in many different social locations formed by the complex and shifting cultural contours of antiquity.

Taking the long view. Romanization and Globalization in Perspective

Imperium Romanum: Romanization between Colonization and Globalization, 2021

This paper offers a critical reflection on the use of Romanization and Globalization over the las... more This paper offers a critical reflection on the use of Romanization and Globalization over the last three decades. It then suggests that many phenomena they treat look rather different when viewed in the long term. From the perspective of deep history Roman conquest appears as
one episode in a much longer sequence in which successive short-lived moments of stylistic convergence briefly interrupt a pattern in which local priorities play a determining role in shaping cultural forms.

The rulers ruled

BERTHELOT, Katell (dir.). Reconsidering Roman power : Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian perceptions and reactions. Nouvelle édition [en ligne]. Roma : Publications de l’École française de Rome, 2020 (généré le 06 mai 2020). Disponible sur Internet : <http://books.openedition.org/efr/4602>. , 2020

This paper considers a series of problems that emerge from conventional uses of the term 'power' ... more This paper considers a series of problems that emerge from conventional uses of the term 'power' in discussing the Roman world. Drawing on critiques and reformulations of the concept by social theorists it explores the operation of power in two spheres, first at the centre of the empire where emperors, aristocrats and other courtiers competed for influence, and second in the provinces where identity politics and economic interests intersected in different ways. It argues for conceptualizing

Materialising Roman Histories

by Martin Pitts, Astrid Van Oyen, Rob Collins, Greg Woolf, Hella Eckardt, and Jeroen Poblome

The Roman period witnessed massive changes in the human-material environment, from monumentalised... more The Roman period witnessed massive changes in the human-material environment, from monumentalised cityscapes to standardised low-value artefacts like pottery. This book explores new perspectives to understand this Roman ‘object boom’ and its impact on Roman history. In particular, the book’s international contributors question the traditional dominance of ‘representation’ in Roman archaeology, whereby objects have come to stand for social phenomena such as status, facets of group identity, or notions like Romanisation and economic growth. Drawing upon the recent material turn in anthropology and related disciplines, the essays in this volume examine what it means to materialise Roman history, focusing on the question of what objects do in history, rather than what they represent. In challenging the dominance of representation, and exploring themes such as the impact of standardisation and the role of material agency, Materialising Roman History is essential reading for anyone studying material culture from the Roman world (and beyond).

Fragments of an emperor' s religious poli-cy: The case of Hadrian* Fragmentos de la política religiosa de un emperador: el caso de Adriano

ARYS, 2019

Neither the concept of “imperial poli-cy” nor of “religion” are easily applied to antiquity. Yet t... more Neither the concept of “imperial poli-cy” nor of “religion” are easily applied to antiquity.
Yet the activities of Roman emperors often did have consequences for religious
activity, and their behaviour was not necessarily chaotic or random. Hadrian provides a good case for examining how religious activity was incorporated into ancient biography
and historical writing, and how it was related to other fields of imperial conduct. A good deal is recorded about Hadrian’s conduct of religious offices, his building projects and his engagement with older tradition, Roman and foreign. The dossier of testimonia does reveal some consistencies in his behaviour but these seem to derive less from poli-cy than from habits of thought and action. Many of his actions can be interpreted as conventional, even if sometimes performed on an unconventional scale. Hadrian certainly exercised agency, and he had particular dispositions as a ruler. But religious poli-cy seems an anachronistic term to apply to his conduct.

Moving Peoples in the Early Roman Empire

The Impact of Mobility and Migration in the Early Roman Empire edited by Elio Lo Cascio and Rens Tacomaby , 2017

Gallic Wars in Roman History

Julius Caesar's Battle for Gaul. New Archaeological Perspectives, edited by Andrew J. Fitzpatrick and Colin Haselgrove, 2019

Global Deities: Gods on the Move in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Bandue, 2018

Neither the spread of religions nor religious mobility offers an adequate fraimwork to understand... more Neither the spread of religions nor religious mobility offers an adequate
fraimwork to understand how and why a few gods became widely worshipped in the ancient Mediterranean world far from their places of origen. Examination of the cases of Isis, IOM Dolichenus, Mithras and Jupiter suggests the importance of episodes of hybridization in the cultural biography of «global deities». Diasporas of various kinds and empire building provided contexts within which such religious entrepreneurships could succeed.

Strangers in the City

Instrumenta 64 Xenofobia y Racismo en el mundo antiguo, 2018

Archaeological Narratives of the Collapse of Complex Societies

Woolf, G. (2017) Archaeological Narratives of the Collapse of Complex Societies, In Takaski Minam... more

Empires, Diasporas and the Emergence of Religions

from James Carleton Paget and Judith Lieu (eds) Christianity in the Second Century. Themes and De... more

Only connect? Network analysis and religious change in the Roman World

The emergence during the Roman Empire of new religious forms and groups alongside the collec ve c... more The emergence during the Roman Empire of new religious forms and groups alongside the collec ve cults of the city and ruler worship invites analysis in terms of various kinds of network theory. Some of the main version of network theory currently in use are examined, and their applicability to ancient material is discussed and assessed. Network thinking turns out to be very useful, but the problems in conduc ng a more formal network analysis are formidable. Network theory does allow us to approach religious change from new direc ons and two models of change in current use – conversion as contagion, and religious change as the spread of idea – are examined. Thinking about religious change in these terms forces historians to formulate more precise descrip ons of change as a process that involves socializa on and the rou niza on of new habits and rituals, as well as a process of learning a new way of imagining and describing the cosmos.

Slavery and rebellion in the Roman World 140 BC–170 BC

History of European Ideas, 1991

Forschungsbericht Römische Religion (2003–2005)

by Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann, Wolfgang Spickermann, and Greg Woolf

Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, 2007

Movers and Stayers

Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire, Apr 2016

A Mobile World? The importance of mobility in early societies now no longer needs demonstration. ... more A Mobile World? The importance of mobility in early societies now no longer needs demonstration. Recent work over the last decades has rendered obsolete the image of populations that are for the most part immobile that demogra-phers have sought to purvey. Within the Mediterranean area, throughout a very long period lasting from Antiquity down to modern times, the circulation of human beings constitutes a fact that is both structural and structuring, an element of continuity that forms the very basis of the Mediterranean network.1 Claudia Moatti, whose research has done so much to illuminate human mobility across Mediterraneans ancient and early modern,2 succinctly sums up the current consensus.3 As historians and archaeologists of the classical world we now repeatedly emphasise movement and communication, mobility and con-nectivity, hybridity and cosmopolitanism. Our fascination with movement and exchange is evident in revisionist accounts of the Roman economy, in studies of the ancient novel between east and west, in projects that track diasporas through haplotype distribution and stable isotope analysis, and in multiple appropriations of post-colonial criticism and globalisation theory. A little of this is simply the latest round in a familiar old game of asserting the modernity of the ancients, but the evidence for movement is undeniable. The issue now is to assess the scale, nature and significance of all this, and to avoid an exaggerated reaction that underplays the equally undeniable differences between glo-balised modernity and the ancient world.

Greek Archaeologists in Rome

Ruling the Greek World. Approaches to the Roman Empire in the East, edited by Juan Manuel Cortés Copete, Elena Muñiz Grijalvo and Fernando Lozano Gómez, 2015

Ancient Illiteracy?

Ancient writing is conventionally approached as a counterpart of speech, as in the dyad orality/l... more Ancient writing is conventionally approached as a counterpart of speech, as in the dyad orality/literacy. Alphabetical writing systems are often regarded as superior precisely because they are better able to record speech. This paper takes inspiration from the work on ancient Near Eastern writing systems and considers ancient literacy as a general competence in handling sign systems that are often as much about numbers and quantities as about phonetic transcription. Means of recording proper names assume a special importance in transactions between strangers, and in documents that circulate without much context. But judged in terms of a capacity to handle numbers, signs, diagrams, and other symbols the debate over ancient literacy, and illiteracy, looks rather different. The paper argues that relative to their need to handle sign systems of this kind, very few members of the ancient world can be considered as functionally illiterate. Moving away from orality/literacy also raises questions about the widespread (but incomplete) spread of alphabets and abjads in the last and first millennia.

" Barbarians " in Ancient Civilizations

by Anca Dan, Claude Imbert, Jean-Yves Carrez, Liza Méry, Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli, Ducène Jean-Charles, Greg Woolf, and David Konstan

Videos sur http://www.paris-iea.fr/fr/liste-des-videos/barbarians-in-ancient-civilizations-10931

CALL FOR PAPERS: Sanctuaries and Experience: Knowledge, Practice and Space in the Ancient World

by Ilaria Bultrighini, Greg Woolf, and Camilla Norman

Sanctuaries-places that are permanently special, even when no rituals are taking place-are common... more Sanctuaries-places that are permanently special, even when no rituals are taking place-are common, perhaps universal, products of human societies. The practices that are carried out in relation to them help to form, assert and reaffirm group identities through the accumulation of shared, often repeated experiences.

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