Hülden, Oliver: Das griechische Befestigungswesen der archaischen Zeit. Entwicklungen - Formen - Funktionen. Wien: Holzhausen 2020. ISBN: 978-3-903207-41-7; 560 S.
Abstrakt
The book in question is based on the author’s Habilitation and represents its revised and enlarged version. The author’s effort is to present a general study of fortifications in the whole ancient Greek world (including two regions of Asia Minor, whose history was closely connected to the history of the Greeks – Phrygia and Lydia), namely from the Protogeometric (Early Iron Age) to the late Archaic/early Classical periods. The author deals especially with the issues of the origins of the defensive architecture in the (Early) Iron Age (when and where did the first Greek fortified settlements come into existence), the question of the potential influence by Oriental models, if the Greek colonization influenced in turn the development of fortifications in the core (home) Greek territories and what was the role of fortifications during the genesis and formation of early Greek poleis.
The book is an extensive volume (510 pages of text, with additional almost 40 pages of bibliography) and is well-illustrated. It is a refreshing companion and successor of several similar publications that came out in the last ca. 25 years, which are, naturally, surpassed at least in several points – especially a „Classical“ book by F. Lang and a recent study by R. Frederiksen. It also well follows up the extensive overview of the Greek prehistoric defensive architecture.