In this study of Athenian vases of the late Archaic period‎,‎ Neer tracks the design and imagery of the symposium‎,‎ with its elaborate riddles and poems and the development of ‎"‎naturalistic‎"‎ techniques‎,‎ such as foreshortening and shading‎.‎ He also traces the birth of self‎-portraiture at the end of the sixth century and the treatment of overtly political subject‎-matter in the early democracy‎.‎ The author thus reexamines basic ideas about Greek art and history‎,‎ with particular regard to naturalism‎,‎ realism‎,‎ allegory‎,‎ and the relation of ceramics to social life‎.‎ Neer further demonstrates how formal ambiguity provided vase painters and their audiences with a means of creating new conceptions of civic identity‎.‎