POCKET MUSEUM: ANCIENT GREECE – DAVID MICHAEL SMITH

Pocket Museum: Ancient Greece presents more than 200 objects currently housed in public collections around the world that offer both context and immediacy to the rich culture of Ancient Greece. From the bifacial hand tools of the Lower Palaeolithic to the Hellenistic Great Altar of Pergamon, the artifacts presented here reveal a complex sociocultural history of shifting priorities, spiritual beliefs, and cultural traditions; the influence on material culture of isolation and internationalism, of technological advance and decline, and of prosperity and adversity. They also reflect the transmission of shared social-cultural ideals across vast distances through relationships maintained for centuries at a time – objects from across the Greek world, valued in life and in death. Pocket Museum: Ancient Greece also offers an insight into the history of collecting and methods of interpretation, examining how the perception of objects has changed over time. Beautifully illustrated with photographs of each featured artifact, this is an absorbing introduction to a culture that has exerted an unparalleled influence on Western civilization.