Periploi and the Greek Worldview

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Current Research in Maritime Archaeology" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The periplous is generally considered to be a subset of the popular genre of Greek geographical writing. The surviving examples of periploi, including those physically extant and those cited in other works, were written between the Archaic and Byzantine periods. The word periplous, meaning "sailing around," "circumnavigation," or "coasting voyage," is used to indicate a description of a real or hypothetical voyage. The subgenre has a distinctive set of characteristics, and all of the surviving examples have several features in common, including their underlying cultural implications. Periploi reflect the general Greek worldview, including the ways in which Greeks thought about the dichotomy between the inhabited world and the rest of the earth, and how both of these regions were believed to be structured. Additionally, periploi are indicative of how Greeks viewed the other people with whom they interacted and are thus illustrative of the network connections that the sea facilitated.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019   •
• Current Research in Maritime Archaeology

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 248