Dancing and the Beginning of Art Scenes in the Early Village Communities of the Near East and Southeast Europe

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yosef Garfinkel
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Near East ◽  
Geographical Range ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
The Social ◽  
Village Communities

Dancing is depicted in the earliest art of the ancient Near East. It appears in many variations from the ninth to the sixth millennium BP over a vast geographical range. This article discusses the dancing performance, the social context of the dance and cognitive aspects of the dancing scenes. Ethnographic observations are used in order to gain a wider view of dancing and dancing scenes in pre-state societies. A correlation can be observed between art, symbolism, religion and social organization.

scholarly journals Ancient Iconic Texts and Scholarly Expertise

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 331-344
Author(s):  
James W. Watts
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Cultural Authority ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Constant Attention ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Social Prestige ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

This essay probes the origins of iconic textuality in the ancient Near East, informed by post-colonial perspectives on iconic texts. The surviving art and texts from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia exhibit at least four forms of iconic textuality: monumental inscriptions, portraits of scribes, displays and manipulations of ritual texts, and beliefs in heavenly texts. The spread of literacy did not displace the social prestige of scribal expertise that was established in antiquity. The every-growing number and complexity of texts accounts for the continuing cultural authority of scholarly expertise. The tension between expert and non-specialist uses of texts, however, explains scholarship’s avoidance of the subject of iconic books and texts while drawing constant attention to their semantic interpretation instead.

The Tiny and the Fragmented

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Partial Form ◽  
Partial State ◽  
Neolithic Europe ◽  
Made In

Miniature and fragmentary objects are both remarkably fascinating and easily dismissed. Tiny scale entices users with visions of Lilliputian worlds. The ambiguity of fragments intrigues us, offering vivid reminders of the transitory nature of reality. Yet, the standard scholarly approach to such objects has been to see them as secondary, incomplete things, designed primarily to refer to a complete and often life-sized whole. This volume offers a series of fresh perspectives on the familiar concepts of the tiny and the fragmented, in chapters ranging in focus from Neolithic Europe to Pre-Columbian Honduras to the Classical Mediterranean and Ancient Near East. Diverse in scope, the volume is united in considering the little and broken things of the past as objects in their own right. When a life-sized or whole thing is made in a scaled-down or partial form, deliberately broken as part of its use, or considered successful by ancient users only if it shows some signs of wear, it challenges our expectations of representation and wholeness. Overall, this volume demands a reconsideration of the social and contextual nature of miniaturization, fragmentation, and incompleteness. These were more than just ancient strategies for saving space, time, and resources. Rather, they offered new possibilities of representation, use, and engagement—possibilities unavailable with things that were life size or more conventionally “complete.” It was because of, rather than in spite of, their small or partial state that these objects were valued parts of the personal and social worlds they inhabited.

Discovering the Pedagogy of Experience

1981 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Thornton Moore
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Learning Program ◽  
The Social

David Thornton Moore develops a framework for analyzing the social organization of education in nonclassroom environments, presenting his observations of students in an experiential learning program over a three year period. He argues that the process of education must be understood as being shaped by certain nonpedagogical features of the broader social context within which it occurs.

The human face and the origins of the Neolithic: the carved bone wand from Tell Qarassa North, Syria

Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (339) ◽  
pp. 81-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan José Ibáñez ◽  
Jesús E. González-Urquijo ◽  
Frank Braemer
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Near East ◽  
Human Face ◽  
Southern Levant ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Faces ◽  
East Anatolia ◽  
Small Bone

The origins of the Neolithic in the Near East were accompanied by significant ritual and symbolic innovations. New light is thrown on the social context of these changes by the discovery of a bone wand displaying two engraved human faces from the Early Neolithic site of Tell Qarassa in Syria, dating from the late ninth millennium BC. This small bone object from a funerary layer can be related to monumental statuary of the same period in the southern Levant and south-east Anatolia that probably depicted powerful supernatural beings. It may also betoken a new way of perceiving human identity and of facing the inevitability of death. By representing the deceased in visual form the living and the dead were brought closer together.

The Adoption Papyrus in Social Context

1992 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. Eyre
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Near East ◽  
Childless Woman ◽  
Family Solidarity ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Village Life

The social context of the Adoption Papyrus is discussed. It is argued that the motivation behind the text was to ensure the material security and social position of a childless woman, first through a ‘non-divorce’ settlement, and then through control of succession to the role of head of the family. This is related to issues of family solidarity, marriage strategies, and the administration of property rights. These are discussed in the context of norms of social behaviour in the Near East, and in particular through comparison with Aramaic documents from Elephantine and with more modern village life in Egypt.

scholarly journals Non-capitalist organizations in Latin America: lessons from the Brazilian Faxinal grassroot community

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Vizeu ◽  
Rene Eugenio Seifert ◽  
Antônio João Hocayen-da-Silva
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Organizational Studies ◽  
Dominant Model ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The Social

This essay reveals the foundations of an unconventional form of social organization observed in Brazil's South region, the Faxinal. Methodologically, from the perspective that the Faxinal community embodies a traditional form of organization that has decreased dramatically in recent decades and that many of its original features have changed, we decided to adopt a historical approach. This was a means used to grasp traits and characteristics that, although lost or abandoned, may be instructive regarding the study objectives. Historically, capitalism has taken a position of higher order, by disseminating ideological principles and rationality as possibilities of evolution and better life when compared to the traditional foundations of social organization. The hegemonic view of the dominant model, with determinations imposed by instrumental rationality, pose limits to the richness deriving from the multiplicity of beliefs, traditions, particular customs and practices of the Faxinais, as it supports the generation of ideas and thoughts aimed at maintaining the rationale of development and progress. Thus, substantive organizational phenomena, such as the Faxinais, are situated in a historical process of construction, subject to the local social context of Brazilian regions marginalized by the urbanization and rationalization process of the capitalist economy, which has led their members to devise ways of organizing the social, economic, and political life based on principles different from those that support ideologically the capitalist organizational model. Therefore, the characteristics of the Faxinais point out Unconventional Form of Organization that break with the assumptions of the Organizational Studies.

scholarly journals Averting Curses in the Law of War (Deuteronomy 20)

2020 ◽  
Vol 132 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-223
Author(s):  
Laura Quick
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Law Of War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sitz Im Leben ◽  
The Law ◽  
Ancient Warfare ◽  
The Military

AbstractThis essay explores the military exemption of Deut 20:5–7 in light of the futility curse in Deut 28:30. By uncovering the social and ritual contexts of the futility curse, I argue that Deut 20:5–7 can be productively understood as a warfare ritual against the curse. I explore the ritual dimensions of Deut 20:5–7 in light of rituals for avoiding curses and maledictions from the ancient Near East, arguing that the original Sitz im Leben of these verses can be found in a pre-war ritual responding to the hegemonic aims of enemies as this crystallized in the inscriptional and ritual contexts of ancient warfare.

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