Book Review Greek City Walls of the Archaic Period, 900-480 BC By Rune Frederiksen (Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology). Pp. xxx + 238, figs. 114, tables 15, maps 4. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011. $170. ISBN 978-0-19-957812-2 (cloth). 117.1 Claire Balandier This book, based on a Ph.D. thesis defended at the University of Copenhagen in 2004, is a most welcome addition to the archaeological studies of city walls. Frederiksen tries to fill a gap in the studies on fortifications of the Archaic period, since almost nothing has been published on this topic. However, this elegant volume only partly fills the lacuna. In fact, the material covered in the book is broader than its title. In the first half of the book, the author not only treats different aspects of fortification and city wall studies from the Iron Age to the Early Hellenistic period, he also devotes parts of the discussion to the relationship between poleis and city walls. The second half of the book is devoted to a catalogue of the fortified sites. After an introductory chapter (1-7) that summarizes the history of research on archaic walls, the second chapter inventories the different types of fortifications and raises the fundamental question of the relationship between polis and fortification. I prefer to use the Greek word "polis" instead of "city," since the latter's meaning is not the same in all languages. The English expression "city wall" itself raises a problem, and we should rather speak of "town walls" or "urban fortification" because these walls protected mainly the astu or urban center of a polis, or sometimes a secondary built-up area and even perioikoi agglomerations. The sixth chapter (62-9) discusses the dating of city walls-a crucial problem in studies of fortifications. The author argues
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