Hyde Lecture Lin Foxhall (University of Liverpool): "Political regimes and the rural economies of ancient Greece"

Every spring, the Graduate Group in Ancient History hosts a week-long visit by a distinguished ancient historian, made possible by a gift by Walter Woodburn Hyde (1870-1966, Professor of Greek and Ancient History at Penn 1910-1940). During their stay, the Hyde visitor teaches several graduate seminars, meets with graduate students individually and in smaller groups, and delivers the formal Hyde Lecture. 

Hyde Lecture 2024

Lin Foxhall (University of Liverpool)

Lin Foxhall is Rathbone Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool and. She also serves as Editor of the Journal of Hellenic Studies (Cambridge University Press). Previously she was Dean of the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures at Liverpool and led the University-wide Heritage Research Theme, Professor of Greek Archaeology and History at the University of Leicester, and Head of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, where she played a major part in leading the team that discovered the body of King Richard III. She has held posts at St Hilda’s College, Oxford and University College London, and Visiting Professorships in Germany, Denmark and the USA. She studied at Bryn Mawr College, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Liverpool.

An active field archaeologist, she has led and participated in collaborative research projects in Greece and Southern Italy, and has written extensively on agriculture, rural economies, landscapes, land use, material culture and gender in the ancient Mediterranean, and especially the Greek world, mostly between the Bronze Age and Classical periods.

"Political regimes and the rural economies of ancient Greece"

This talk investigates the impact, if any, of political cultures on the rural economies of Greek communities and the organisation of Greek agrarian landscapes in the period from the second half of the 6th c. BC through the end of the 4th/early 3rd c. BCE. Did oligarchic or monarchic regimes, or political cultures like those of Sparta or Crete, foster different kinds of economic activities and structures from democratic regimes? Was wealth, property holding and access to land and other productive resources organised differently across the population in oligarchies than in democracies or were economic opportunities more limited for some groups? Alternatively, did other factors override differences between political regimes and ideologies?