SOFIA GREAVES
Ancient History, Urbanism and Memory
My Phd was completed as part of the Impact of the Ancient City Project: an Advanced ERC grant financed to re-examine and investigate the conceptual and material legacy of Greco-Roman urbanism on subsequent urban history in Europe and the Islamic world. Bringing together researchers trained in historical, archaeological and literary analysis, the project spanned the entire Mediterranean region from antiquity to the present day. The research team investigated case histories in the western and eastern Mediterranean, and posed a set of questions about how urban forms responded to changing social needs.
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The project produced three co-authored monographs each of which adopted a different focus: Memory, the Palimpsest, and Colonialism.
Below are the cover images I produced for these monographs.
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We also curated an exhibition within the Museum of Classical Archaeology. The Illustrating Ancient History exhibition, Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge (Nov 2020 - Jan 2021), co-curated with Dr Javier Martinez-Jimenez, and Zofia Guertin​, explored the roles and responsibilities of artists and archaeologists when producing knowledge about the ancient world. "Art" can make archaeological sites more accessible, and plays a role in promoting community engagement with excavations. Equally, artists have great responsibility when representing material. To what degree is archaeology an art and science? The exhibition is online, below.
Book Cover Designs
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Image, and cover design commissioned for the academic 'Impact of the Ancient City' series, Oxbow Press.
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Remembering and Forgetting the Ancient City
Remembering and Forgetting. This work explores how our understanding of the past is constantly reshaped by processes of memorialisation. By layering, interweaving and distorting the representational tropes of urbanism - arches, columns, windows, and walls - this image mimics the complex ways in which memories are formed and embedded within eachother
Cities as Palimpsests?
This work engages with the metaphor of city as palimpsest. Palimpsests are pieces of parchment, or paper, upon which something is written and subsequently erased so that the parchment may be used again. This leaves traces of what has come before, producing a layering of different voices and times. Often it is remarked that cities are like palimpsests because they are built and rebuilt over time. This work was produced by layering paint in thin washes and taking it away to reveal an urban landscape.
Rome and the Colonial City
Rome and the Colonial City
The idea of Rome and the Roman Empire has been key to the history of colonisation, because many empires have sought to emulate and outdo the ancient example. The arched aqueduct is of the most typical symbols of 'Romanitas': it has represented both imperial power and the subjugation of natural landscapes to engineering prowess. This image thinks about the output of an aqueduct in disintegration, in relation with the scholarly process of 'de-colonising the Classics', which seeks to understand and deconstruct how the reception of the ancient past has been key to colonial power dynamics and narratives.
