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The Clark Collection at Ripon College allows us to revisit a day in ancient Mesopotamia, Etruria, Greece and Rome. One of the finest collections of ancient art in Wisconsin, the Clark Collection includes a wide array of artifacts that helps to increase our understanding of these chronologically and geographically distant locales. Business receipts, funerary vases, coins, lamps, perfume bottles and dishes dating from 1950 BCE to 300 CE provide glimpses into historic attitudes toward religion, burial, politics, commerce, sports and leisure, hygiene, gender and domesticity. As we use these objects to recreate the components of ancient living -- from dining tables to battlefields -- the origins of some of our own cultural beliefs and practices also are illuminated.
A "global village" existed long before communications satellites, cellular phones and e-mail became commonplace. It is easy to forget that exposure to foreign ideas was routine for the ancients, too. The Clark Collection at Ripon College provides tangible evidence of how these civilizations were enriched by exposure to other cultures.
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