Three Approaches to Ancient History
At Stanford, we believe that the intellectual upheavals of recent decades have renewed the most fundamental question: what is the significance of the ancient Mediterranean in world history? Answering this, we think, should be ancient historians' main task. As we see it, the question implies three sub-questions, interlinked but calling for different approaches and methods:
- What exactly happened in the ancient Mediterranean world? Much remains obscure, even in the best-trodden fields of political history; and we have barely scratched the surface of questions about economics, society, and culture. We need to continue developing traditional philological skills, and to combine them with new evidence from material culture, new methods from the social sciences and humanities, and new interests.
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