Traditional discourses on the Classical body have been dominated by the question of naturalism. Visually, this has meant trying to understand the shift from flattened and schematic representations of the human body in Archaic Greece to the three-dimensional, so-called naturalistic, depictions of the Classical period (things like the famous Riace bronzes). This shift has been associated with the contemporary development of mathematical ideas of symmetry and harmony, with Classical medical writings on the integral body whose different components exist in balance with each other, and with the unique political and social characteristics of the Classical Greek polis. The Classical Body project has three parallel components which presume but also attempt to depart from and comment upon this received picture. Without claiming to provide a comprehensive account of “the Classical body”, these projects reveal different sides of the complex processes of embodied thought which both integrated and differentiated people within the Classical tradition.

Jessica Hughes was employed by the Leverhulme Project as a post-doctoral researcher until September 2008; she is now a Lecturer in the Department of Classical Studies at the Open University. Her work on the Leverhulme project explored fragmentation and hybridity as alternative models to the traditional discourses of holism and individuality described above. Her forthcoming monograph focuses on the votive models of body parts found in sanctuaries across the ancient world. In this book, a comparative approach is applied to a series of case studies of votive assemblages from Greek, Italic, Romano-Gallic and Lydian-Phrygian sanctuaries, facilitating the reconstruction of changing beliefs in the human (and divine) body over time and space. A preliminary article on the material from Classical Greek sanctuaries was published in 2008 in the journal Social History of Medicine. In addition to her research on votive body parts, she also considered ancient hybrids alongside anatomical dissection; the results of this work will be published in summer 2009 in a volume on partibility co-edited with Marie-Louise Sorensen and Katharina Rebay. Her presentations this year have included talks on votives from Italy and on 18th century receptions of the Classical Body, and other public lectures presenting the results of her research will take place in 2009 (see publications/presentations).

'Antipatros' stele: this unique relief and unique epigram commemorate the death of a Phoenician in Athens in an artistic style that is straightforwardly classical, but with an iconography that is quite foreign. Understanding this image and this monument requires reassessing the place of the foreign body in classical Athens (Photo: Marie Mauzy).

Robin Osborne has been bought out of teaching by the Leverhulme Programme “Changing Beliefs of the Human Body” during the calendar year 2008. The Wiles Lectures which he gave at Queen's University Belfast in May 2008 were his attempt to reassess Classical Greek, and more particularly Classical Athenian, body culture. Under the title “The History Written on the Classical Greek Body” he explored the gap between those aspects of personal status and identity in which the Athenian state took an interest (citizenship, foreignness, pollution) and those aspects of personal status and identity which were visible on the body in life and/or were represented in art. He expanded these lectures substantially in a monograph submitted to Cambridge University Press in October 2008. In October/November 2008 he was Geddes-Harrower Visiting Professor at the University of Aberdeen, delivering five public lectures on “The changing body of classical art”: Understanding change in classical art; Changing in the gymnasium, Fighting change, Sex changes, Changing gods). These were largely developments of the Martin Classical Lectures given at Oberlin College, Ohio in 2007 and concern how the iconography of non-mythological scenes in red-figure pottery changes from the introduction of the red-figure technique at the end of the sixth century up until the middle of the fifth century. By concentrating on changing iconography, rather than simply on the individual figure, this research puts the changing styles of figurative representation into a wider context, revealing the inadequacy of both of purely internalist and of purely externalist accounts of artistic change. In due course a monograph on this topic will be submitted for publication to Princeton University Press. Robin Osborne's publications during the year reflect the input of the project onto his work in a number of areas, including theoretical approaches to archaeological understanding as well as substantive work on Greek sculpture and painted pottery.

Simon Stoddart has continued to explore the prehistoric body from previous fieldwork in Malta, and to analyse the protohistoric body from a comparative framework to the Etruscans. The first has seen fruition in a major monograph (Malone et al 2009) which will be followed up by a broader analysis currently in preparation (Malone and Stoddart in preparation). The second has seen preliminary publication (Stoddart 2009), concentrating on the general characteristics of the Etruscan Body, and will shortly see more detailed publication (Stoddart in press) concentrating on the variation in body representation over space and time, including comparison and entanglement with other identities. His presentations have included coverage of both topics at the EAA in Malta and early in 2009 in Heidelberg and Edinburgh.

Etruscan neighbours: Faliscan depiction of Ariadne and Dionysus (4th century BC)