A richer, better-resolved dataset allows both ‘social’ and ‘ecological’ perspectives to be explored in greater detail than is possible for earlier periods. Themes discussed include regionalisation in material culture, the development of formal burial, shifts in exchange networks, changes in landscape use and subsistence, fluctuations in regional demography, and potential indicators of socio-economic intensification. This last point raises the question of how ‘complex’ southern Africa’s hunter-gatherer societies were and whether social and/or environmental constraints inhibited the emergence of food production using indigenous resources. Recent improvements in dating now offer the possibility of drawing southern Africa’s rich hunter-gatherer rock art into temporally anchored conversations with other components of the archaeological record. The chapter shows that Bushman ethnography strongly supports interpretations of that art in terms of beliefs and practices associated with shamanism, but that new theoretical work (notably studies employing the ‘new animism’) and further work on gender and initiation continue to expand how it can be understood.

Chapter 4 consists of an introduction to the discourses and ideologies of patronage and benefaction and to the ways in which they are appropriated throughout the Apocalypse. Across ancient Mediterranean societies, one of the primary functions of the king consisted of distributing benefits to subjects, material and otherwise, in order to establish loyalty amongst subjects as well as power that accrued therefrom, a pattern which is best understood within broader systems of patronage and benefaction. A survey of the general contours of personal, imperial, and divine patronage and benefaction reveal how some of the most basic discursive strategies, attending socio-cultural-economic realities, and underlying ethical frameworks not only appear in Revelation but constitute the primary means of depicting the relationship between God, Lamb, and the followers thereof. In sum, Revelation depicts the Lamb as a royal benefactor who dispenses divine benefits on behalf of God.

Chapter 4 consists of an introduction to the discourses and ideologies of patronage and benefaction and to the ways in which they are appropriated throughout the Apocalypse. Across ancient Mediterranean societies, one of the primary functions of the king consisted of distributing benefits to subjects, material and otherwise, in order to establish loyalty amongst subjects as well as power that accrued therefrom, a pattern which is best understood within broader systems of patronage and benefaction. A survey of the general contours of personal, imperial, and divine patronage and benefaction reveal how some of the most basic discursive strategies, attending socio-cultural-economic realities, and underlying ethical frameworks not only appear in Revelation but constitute the primary means of depicting the relationship between God, Lamb, and the followers thereof. In sum, Revelation depicts the Lamb as a royal benefactor who dispenses divine benefits on behalf of God.

The Introduction outlines the main themes, issues and structure of the volume; provides a historiography of the debate on public giving and euergetism; and discusses recent theories.

Athens represents a special case in the history of Greek public benefactions. It is probably the polis that most resisted the emergence of civic euergetism, that is, the establishment of an organized exchange of benefactions for honors between polis and citizens. At the same time, no other classical polis contributed so much to the development of the practice and to its transformation into a defining institution of the Hellenistic age. This chapter examines these two sides of the history of Athenian euergetism in order to explain the widespread integration of citizens into an institution born before the classical period to regulate the relationship between poleis and foreigners. It deals with the reasons for the opposition to donations and honors for citizens, the factors that contributed to overcoming resistance to euergetism, and the elitist content of classical civic euergetism. Finally, it discusses some developments that counterbalanced this elitist component: the ‘democratization’ of euergetism through grants of honors to non-wealthy citizens, the organization of epidoseis, and other measures that served to prevent the rise of a class of great financial benefactors, along with the relaxation of this policy in the time of Lycurgus.