Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series is one the entertainment industry's most popular titles set in the past. With a new game released on an annual basis-each full of distinct historical places,... Show moreUbisoft's Assassin's Creed series is one the entertainment industry's most popular titles set in the past. With a new game released on an annual basis-each full of distinct historical places, events, and people-the series has unfolded across post-classical history, from the Levant during the Third Crusade to Victorian-era London. The 2017 release of Assassin's Creed: Origins, which entailed a massive reconstruction of Hellenistic Egypt, pushed the series even further back in time. With it, Ubisoft also launched its Discovery Tour, allowing players to explore the game's setting at their leisure and without combat. These trends continued in 2018's Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, set in Greece during the Peloponnesian War. This review discusses the narrative, world, and gameplay of the latest Assassin's Creed within the series more broadly. We provide a critical appraisal of the experience that Odyssey offers and link it to this question: in the Assassin's Creed series, do we engage in meaningful play with the past, or are we simply assassinating our way through history? Show less
This dissertation compares divination in ancient Greece to divinatory practices in Republican Rome and Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia. Divination is the human production and interpretation of signs which... Show moreThis dissertation compares divination in ancient Greece to divinatory practices in Republican Rome and Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia. Divination is the human production and interpretation of signs which were thought to have come from the supernatural – the signs could be concerned with past, present or future. The process of divination consists of three elements: homo divinans, sign and text. These three elements are systematically compared, after which divination is discussed in its relation to time and uncertainty.********************************************************************************Commercial edition available at Brill Publishers, ISBN 978-90-04-25239-4 (hbk) ; 978-90-04-46422-3 (pbk); 978-90-04-25630-9 (e-book)https://brill.com/view/title/24193 Show less
Aim of the work is to illustrate a possible way of dealing with a regional landscape and its long-term settlement history based on the integration of archaeological data applying a GIS based... Show moreAim of the work is to illustrate a possible way of dealing with a regional landscape and its long-term settlement history based on the integration of archaeological data applying a GIS based approach to the social dimension of the landscape. The large province area (ca 2,500 sqkm) of Boeotia (Central Greece) is examined by means of GIS (Geographical Information System), processing data from different archaeological, historical and environmental sources. The methodology established, dealing jointly with material culture and the environment, follows a critical comparative regional approach and opts for both region and micro-regions as the analytical unit. It aims mainly to assess landscape characters and the interface between human and social actions and landscape by critically assessing, first of all, the available archaeological record constituted by diverse, variegate and often incoherent data sets. Main periods of interest are the historical periods from Archaic to Late Roman, while earlier (Neolithic to Geometric) and later periods are taken into account for the analysis and understanding of diachronical processes which took place at the micro-regional and regional levels. Show less
