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The Oxford Handbook of Palmyra

Online ISBN:
9780190858148
Print ISBN:
9780190858117
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Oxford Handbook of Palmyra

Rubina Raja (ed.)
Rubina Raja
(ed.)
Classical Archaeology, Aarhus University
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Rubina Raja (DPhil 2005, University of Oxford) is Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at Aarhus University, Denmark, and Centre Director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions. Dr Raja has published widely on the Mediterranean region and the East from the Hellenistic to the medieval periods, high-definition archaeology, and the intersection between archaeology and natural sciences, iconography, and portrait studies, as well as the history of religion in the Roman world. Among her monographs about Palmyrene archaeology and history are Pearl of the Desert. A History of Palmyra (OUP, 2022) and co-authored together with Olympia Bobou, Palmyrene Sarcophagi (Brepols, 2023). She has headed the Palmyra Portrait Project since 2012.

Published online:
23 January 2024
Published in print:
2 May 2024
Online ISBN:
9780190858148
Print ISBN:
9780190858117
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The Oxford Handbook of Palmyra comprises 37 chapters written by specialists, ancient and global historians, archaeologists, epigraphers, and philologists working on the ancient world, all of them with a particular interest in Palmyra, ancient Tadmor, the famous oasis city in the Syrian steppe desert. The handbook covers the site’s archaeology and history from its pre-Roman phases, from the time of its deepest prehistory, until the recent destruction of many of the city’s monuments and the looting that it has seen during the devastating conflict in Syria that broke out in 2011. Numerous of the authors have conducted fieldwork in Palmyra prior to the 2011 conflict, and others have collected large corpora of evidence from the site or specialized in particular themes concerning the site and its relations across the ancient world. The handbook is structured in five parts, preceded by an introductory chapter, and concluded with a postludium chapter that focuses on the time since the conflict in Syria broke out in 2011. A broad range of themes are covered in the book, which do not only relate to the development of the site, its archaeology, and history, but just as much to its position in the networks running throughout the ancient world from Antiquity until modern times. The chapters hold firsthand expert knowledge that is condensed for the readership in an easily accessible manner and with updated bibliographies, making this the ideal place to begin research on this important location in the ancient world.

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