Style as a Fragment of the Ancient World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marian H. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Art History ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Stylistic Analysis ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Social Contingency ◽  
Historical Past

Style in art history is often taken as a fragment or residue of a larger historical past and as such it plays a foundational role in the study of ancient societies. What actually causes style, however, remains vaguely theorized, if considered at all. This chapter reviews a range of theories that explore, to varying degrees, an explanation for style and then proposes an understanding of style as the product of human/social practices, drawing upon concepts such as Giddens’s structuration and Bourdieu’s habitus. It concludes by distinguishing the art historical method of stylistic analysis from that of stylistic interpretation, arguing that stylistic analysis can serve as a universal disciplinary approach, while at the same time acknowledging that what style meant to past viewers/users varied according to specific cultural context and thus must be interpreted from within this context. Because of its social contingency, style is therefore a potent fragment of past practices that survives for our analytic assessment/interpretation. This conclusion is explored through a case study of early Iron Age art from the Levant and Assyria.

scholarly journals Burials with Weapons and Horse Bridle of Yuldashevsky Burial Ground in the South Ural Region

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 152-166
Author(s):  
Lyasovich Vsevolod I. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Southern Urals ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Burial Ground ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Relative Proximity ◽  
The Military ◽  
Archaeological Monument

The study of the peculiarities of the armament of the Pianobor tribes is an urgent direction of modern archaeological science. The purpose of this article is to isolate and then analyze the sets of weapons for the male burials of the Yuldashevsky burial ground of the Pyanobor archaeological culture of the Early Iron Age. The problem of the study is to reconstruct the nature of the military culture of one local group in the Pianobor society. The novelty of the work is the fact that the totality of weapons in the burial, the weapon set, is considered within the framework of one specific archaeological monument, and not as a whole in terms of culture.The Yuldashevsky burial ground belongs to one of the necropolises of the Pianobor culture, where an increased content of weapons is noted. The occurrence as well as the combination of a certain type of weapon in the burial inventory makes it possible to distinguish weapon sets, as well as to designate popular types of weapons among a specific group of the drunken population. Applying the comparative-historical method, including the method of statistics and chronology, it was possible to focus on the number of weapon sets, their filling with weapons, the time frame of some weapons, and its similarity with the Kara-Abyz set of weapons. As well as the Kara-Abyz, the Pianobor culture inherited a set of weapons characteristics of the Ananyin time. Its indispensable attributes are: a) polearms in the form of spears with small points; b) arrowheads made of different materials ‒ bronze, iron and bone, with the domination of the latter in quiver sets; c) long single-edged blades ‒ combat knives. Despite the relative proximity of the habitat of the Pianobor tribes to the Sarmatian world, the latter did not have a significant impact on the armament complex of the Pyanobor tribes. Moreover, in the drunken environment, its own standardized weapon set was formed, represented by various variations in the mutual occurrence of a bow, spear and a combat knife. Keywords: Pianobor archaeological culture, weapons, burial ground, military burials, early Iron Age, Yuldashevsky burial ground, southern Urals

scholarly journals Burial Mounds, Ard Marks, and Memory: A Case Study from the Early Iron Age at Bamble, Telemark, Norway

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Christian Løchsen Rødsrud
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
System Analysis ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Old Field ◽  
Field System ◽  
Burial Mounds ◽  
Point Of Departure

The point of departure for this article is the excavation of two burial mounds and a trackway system in Bamble, Telemark, Norway. One of the mounds overlay ard marks, which led to speculation as to whether the site was ritually ploughed or whether it contained the remains of an old field system. Analysis of the archaeometric data indicated that the first mound was related to a field system, while the second was constructed 500–600 years later. The first mound was probably built to demonstrate the presence of a kin and its social norms, while these norms were renegotiated when the second mound was raised in the Viking Age. This article emphasizes that the ritual and profane aspects were closely related: mound building can be a ritualized practice intended to legitimize ownership and status by the reuse of domestic sites in the landscape. Further examples from Scandinavia indicate that this is a common, but somewhat overlooked, practice.

Gender, Temporalities, and Periodization in Early Iron Age West-Central Europe

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Danube River ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Social Variables ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Individual Mobility ◽  
The Social ◽  
Archaeological Chronologies

Archaeological chronologies tend to conflate temporalities from all cultural contexts in a region without consideration for the different depositional trajectories and life histories of the objects that serve as the basis of those chronologies. Social variables, such as gender, age, status, and individual mobility, act on artifacts in ways that must be identified and differentiated in order for seriations derived from one context to be applicable in another. This article presents evidence from early Iron Age contexts in Southwest Germany to illustrate this phenomenon and discusses its ramifications from the perspective of a case study focusing on the mortuary landscape of the Heuneburg hillfort on the Danube River. Gender in particular is strongly marked in this society and can be shown to affect the depositional tempo of certain artifact categories, which have different social lives and depositional fates depending on context. Artifact assemblages vary not only in terms of archaeological context and temporality but also are impacted by the social personae of the human agents responsible for, or associated with, their deposition.

Chanukka-Eisen: Ethnography, Museums and “Hanukkah Lamps of Iron” from Rural Germany

Images ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Batsheva Goldman-Ida
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Community History ◽  
Geographic Spread ◽  
Former Teachers ◽  
Jewish School ◽  
Private Collections

This case study combines the disciplines of art history, community history, and ethnographic fieldwork to identify a group of museum objects within their cultural context. It shows how ethnography can be used to supplement the tool box available to the art historian in a positive way. Thus, private collections are used to identify the group of Hanukkah lamps of sheet metal in museums. Images of the lamps in folk and fine art, and mention of them in newspaper advertisements and community satirical publications—all contemporary to the period of their use—were consulted. Over 80 interviewees from southern Germany, Alsace, and the Netherlands were interviewed; the majority former teachers from a Jewish school in Wurzburg, others residing in Jerusalem and on the Moshav Shavei Tzion. As a result, the Hanukkah lamps were identified by country, ethnic group, religious affiliation, and object name in the local idiom. Tracing the development and geographic spread of the form also enabled us to identify the same lamp used in different social contexts, among itinerate members of society and the bourgeoisie.

Possibilities and limitations of pXRF as a tool for analysing ancient pottery: a case study of Late Bronze and Early Iron Age pottery (1100–600 BC) from the northern Black Sea region

2020 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 238-266
Author(s):  
Malgorzata Daszkiewicz ◽  
Nadezhda Gavrylyuk ◽  
Kirsten Hellström ◽  
Elke Kaiser ◽  
Maya Kashuba ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Black Sea ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Black Sea Region ◽  
Working Groups ◽  
Fluorescence Spectrometer ◽  
Archaeological Cultures

AbstractIn an archaeometric research project supported by the Volkswagen Foundation (Project 90216 [https://earlynomads.wordpress.com/]), working groups consisting of chemists, geologists and archaeologists in Berlin, Kiev and Saint Petersburg collaborated on analysing pottery recovered from Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age burials and settlements from sites of different archaeological cultures in the steppes and forest steppes north of the Black Sea. The article presents the results of the classification of 201 samples using energy-dispersive X-Ray fluorescence spectrometer (pXRF) compared to the results of MGR-analysis and WD-XRF of these samples. Fingerprints for the seven sites studied could be defined.

scholarly journals DATA FOR RECONSTRUCTION OF TEXTILE TECHNOLOGIES AND SOME ELEMENTS OF LATE BRONZE AGE AND EARLY IRON AGE CLOTHES IN THE SOUTHERN AREA OF THE BALTIC SEA

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
К. Слюсарска
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Published Data ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The Baltic Sea ◽  
Textile Production ◽  
Human Figure ◽  
The Baltic

Для некоторых времен и регионов у археологов не так много возможностей по изучению костюма древних эпох. Костюм – это мощный инструмент общения, регулирования или формирования социальной практики. Кремация как погребальная традиция эпохи поздней бронзы сопряжена с отсутствием прямых источников для реконструкции одежды. Ситуация меняется во время раннего железного века с появлением новой погребальной традиции (лицевых урн) с представлением фигуры человека. Основной целью исследования является сбор опубликованных и рассеянных в литературе данных для реконструкции текстильной продукции и некоторых элементов одежды позднего бронзового и начала железного века из со­временной Польши. For some times and regions, archaeologists have little chance of studying the costumes of past societies. The costume is a powerful tool for communication, regulation or formation of social practices. Cremation as a main funeral tradition of the Late Bronze Age destroyed all direct sources for clothes reconstruction. The situation changed a little during the transition to the Iron Age with the advent of the new funeral tradition (facial urns) and the representation of a human figure. The main purpose of this paper is to collect the published data of the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age of the southern Baltic Seabasin for reconstruction of textile production and identification some gender-related elements of costume.

Reinterpreting the Diachronic Variations in the Numbers of Burials Known from Early Iron Age Athens

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 146-165
Author(s):  
Maximilian F. Rönnberg
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Patterns ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
The Core ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Diachronic Analysis ◽  
New Interpretation

The number of burials per year known from Athens decreases significantly in the Protogeometric period and then increases rapidly again in the Late Geometric period. The explanation offered for this development by Morris in 1987 is the most popular one so far. This paper will first quickly discuss this and other previous ideas and their wider implications, but then focus on providing a new one. The starting point of this new interpretation is that various types of burial sites may have different recovery rates. I will thus first sketch the different possibilities for the location of graves in Athens in the Early Iron Age and the Archaic period. The subsequent diachronic analysis of these different types of burial sites and their respective popularity forms the core of this contribution. A case study of the Kerameikos and the area of the later Agora as well as an overview of all Athenian sites is provided. These developments and their correspondences in the grave count allow for an interpretation which does account for the variations in the known numbers of graves as well as the changing spatial patterns. This is finally set into the wider field of socio-cultural changes in Early Athens.

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