[Discipuli] Classics/Underwater Archaeology Lecture Tomorrow (Thurs, 2/18)

[James Sickinger]

Dear Classics Majors,

You are invited to the Classics department's annual Elizabeth Hunter Lecture tomorrow (Thursday, February 16) at 6:00 pm:

The Anatomy of an Ancient Naval Battle: The Battle of the Aegates (Egadi) Islands

Professor William M. Murray
Mary and Gus Stathis Professor of Greek History and Director of the  Ancient Studies Center
University of South Florida

The lecture is being given via Microsoft Teams, and you can watch it either through the Teams app or directly through a web browser. The link is: https://bit.ly/3jF9HCs

The lecture combines both Roman history and underwater archaeology and is aimed specifically at undergraduates. Here is a summary:

Guided by a fisherman’s recovery of a single bronze warship ram, the Sicilian Soprintendenza del Mare initiated a joint underwater project with RPM Nautical Foundation in 2005 and, together, they found the ancient debris field, the first ever discovered from an ancient sea battle, of the Battle of the Aegates (Egadi) Islands, fought between the Romans and Carthaginians on 10 March 241 B.C. After two decades of research, only a portion of the full battle zone has been discovered and mapped. Rich in finds (23 bronze rams, 30+ helmets, multiple sword concretions, hundreds of amphoras destined for the troops ashore, etc.), this site allows us to attempt what has never before been possible, the analysis of an actual sea battle with reference to both historical texts and physical evidence. Guided by this goal, the lecture will compare our best ancient account of the battle with the artifact scatter on the sea floor to help explain the peculiarities and problems posed by the new Egadi evidence.

Hope you can make it!
Dr Sickinger


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.fsu.edu/pipermail/discipuli/attachments/20210217/07f26603/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Hunter-Lecture-Sp21.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 1861295 bytes
Desc: Hunter-Lecture-Sp21.pdf
URL: <http://lists.fsu.edu/pipermail/discipuli/attachments/20210217/07f26603/attachment.pdf>