The Death of the Figurine: Reflections on an Abrahamic Abstention

Figurines ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 130-181
Author(s):  
Jaś Elsner
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Near East ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Abrahamic Religions ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Western Half

This chapter explores an evidential absence, arising from a striking archaeological fact. In all the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean, including Egypt and north Africa, of the near East at least as far as India, both prehistoric and historic, from the earliest Palaeolithic to the end of pre-Abrahamic pagan polytheism in the western half of this vast geography spanning the Mediterranean and Asia, the figurine is a prime and ubiquitous product of material culture, with huge attestation in the archaeological record; with the rise to hegemony of Christianity and then Islam, this phenomenon ends and we witness the near-universal death of the figurine in the archaeological archive across the vast geography that came to be dominated by the Abrahamic religions. Why? The chapter examines the ideological transformations that came to effect such fundamental change on the archaeological archive.

The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
A Current

The Phoenicians created the Mediterranean world as we know it-yet they remain a shadowy and poorly understood group. The academic study of the Phoenicians has come to an important crossroads; the field has grown in sheer content, sophistication of analysis, and diversity of interpretation, and we now need a current overview of where the study of these ancient seafarers and craftsman stands and where it is going. Moreover, the field of Phoenician studies is particularly fragmented and scattered. While there is growing interest in all things Phoenician and Punic, the latest advances are mostly published in specialized journals and conference volumes in a plethora of languages. This Handbook is the first of its type to appear in over two decades, and the first ever to appear in English. The chapters (organized in four parts) are written by a wide range of prominent and promising scholars from across Europe, North America, Australia, and the Mediterranean world, who offer readers summary studies and new perspectives on key historical moments (such as the history of Carthage), areas of culture (organized around language, religion, and material culture), regional studies and areas of contact (spanning from the Levant and the Aegean to Iberia and North Africa), and the reception of the Phoenicians as an idea, entangled with the formation of other cultural identities, both ancient and modern.

Dairy Queen. Churns and milk products in the Aegean Bronze Age

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 205-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah P. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Dairy Products ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Specific Function ◽  
Milk Products ◽  
The Third ◽  
Household Processing

This article assembles examples of an unusual vessel found in domestic contexts of the Early Bronze Age around the Aegean and in the Eastern Mediterranean. Identified as a “barrel vessel” by the excavators of Troy, Lesbos (Thermi), Lemnos (Poliochni), and various sites in the Chalkidike, the shape finds its best parallels in containers identified as churns in the Chalcolithic Levant, and related vessels from the Eneolithic Balkans. Levantine parallels also exist in miniature form, as in the Aegean at Troy, Thermi, and Poliochni, and appear as part of votive figures in the Near East. My interpretation of their use and development will consider how they compare to similar shapes in the archaeological record, especially in Aegean prehistory, and what possible transregional relationships they may express along with their specific function as household processing vessels for dairy products during the third millennium BC.

Die Spur des Stoffs. Ermittlungsrausch in Friedrich Glausers Die Fieberkurve

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-89
Author(s):  
Mareike Schildmann
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Conservative Approach ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
The 19Th Century

Abstract This article traces some of the fundamental poetological changes that the traditional crime novel undergoes in the work of the Swiss author Friedrich Glauser at the beginning of the 20th century. The rational-analytical, conservative approach of the criminal novel in the 19th century implied – according to Luc Boltanski – the separation of an epistemologically structured, institutionalized order of “reality” and a chaotic, unruly, unformatted “world” – a separation that is questioned, but reestablished in the dramaturgy of crime and its resolution. By shifting the attention from the logical structure of ‘whodunnit’ to the sensual material culture and “atmosphere” that surrounds actions and people, Glauser’s novels blur these epistemological and ontological boundaries. The article shows how in Die Fieberkurve, the second novel of Glauser’s famous Wachtmeister Studer-series, material and sensual substances develop a specific, powerful dynamic that dissipates, complicates, crosslinks, and confuses the objects and acts of investigation as well as its narration. The material spoors, dust, fibers, fingerprints, intoxicants and natural resources like oil and gas – which lead the investigation from Switzerland to North Africa – trigger a new sensual mode of perception and reception that replaces the reassuring criminological ideal of solution by the logic of “dissolution”. The novel thereby demonstrates the poetic impact of the slogan of modernity: matter matters.

Danaus chrysippus chrysippus (Linnaeus, 1758) ff. 'alcippus' and 'alcippoides' (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae, Danainae) from Cyprus

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 135-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eddie John ◽  
Richard I. Vane-Wright
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Recent Observation ◽  
Old World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Old World Tropics ◽  
Vast Range ◽  
Previous Occasion

We report a recent observation of D. c. chrysippus f. 'alcippus' in Cyprus, a variant of the Plain Tiger or African Queen butterfly infrequently seen in the Mediterranean, especially in the east of the region. D. c. chrysippus f. 'alcippus' appears to have been recorded from Cyprus on just one previous occasion, by R. E. Ellison, in 1939. However, a specimen of the similar f. 'alcippoides' collected by D. M. A. Bate in Cyprus in 1901 could perhaps be the source of Ellison's otherwise undocumented claim. These records are assessed in relation to the known distributions of the various forms of D. chrysippus across the Mediterranean, North Africa and Middle East, and more briefly with respect to the vast range of this butterfly across much of the Old World tropics and subtropics. The ambiguity and potential confusion caused by using an available name to designate both a geographically circumscribed subspecies or semispecies, and a genetically controlled phenotype that can be found far beyond the range of the putative subspecies or semispecies, is also discussed.

Diachronic trends in the evolution of civilizations in the Nile valley

2018 ◽  
pp. 37-49
Author(s):  
Элеонора Кормышева ◽  
Eleonora Kormysheva
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social History ◽  
Contact Zone ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean

The diachronic trends in socio-economic and cultural development of the societies in the Nile valley are revealed based on the materials from Giza necropolis (the 3rd millennium BC) and the settlement of Abu Erteila (1st century AD). The research made it possible to trace the typological similarities in the evolution of the studied societies in cultural and historical contexts. The main fields of the research were epigraphy, iconography, social history, and material culture. Many previously unknown monuments discovered by Russian archaeologists in Egypt and Sudan were introduced into scientific discourse. The basis was created for studying the Nile valley as a contact zone between the Mediterranean world and Africa.

Warfare and Environment in the Ancient World

2013 ◽  
pp. 127-140
Author(s):  
J. Donald Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Near East ◽  
Mediterranean Area ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Direct Effects ◽  
Environmental Properties ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Ancient Warfare ◽  
The Military

This chapter deals with ancient warfare and the environment. Hunting was often been considered as a form of warfare, and art frequently portrayed humans in battle with animals. Armed conflict had its direct influences on the environment. Along with damage to settled agriculture, warfare had affected other lands such as pastures, brush lands, and forests. It is noted that birds, pigs, bears, rodents, snakes, bees, wasps, scorpions, beetles, assassin bugs, and jellyfish have been employed as weaponized animals in ancient warfare, which, in the Mediterranean area and Near East, had vital environmental properties. The direct effects of battle have been shown by ancient historians, but just as important were the influences of the military-oriented organization of societies on the natural environment and resources.

The departure of the Greeks from Egypt, 1961: the perspective of Greek diplomacy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Evanthis Hatzivassiliou
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Many ◽  
Economic Failure

The departure of the greater part of the Greek community from Egypt is one of the many sad stories of the post-war Mediterranean. This article focuses upon the reports of the Greek Consul-General in Alexandria, Byron Theodoropoulos, regarding the Egyptian ‘Socialist Laws’ of summer 1961, which gave the coup de grâce to the Greek community. It argues that the expulsion of the Greeks was part of a wider redistribution of power in the region. This episode, together with similar experiences in other parts of the Mediterranean, evidently cemented the determination of a younger generation of political leaders and diplomats to seek Greece's future in the cosmopolitan, post-nationalist West, rather than in a ‘Near East’ rife with nationalism and economic failure.

scholarly journals New Book Chronicle

Antiquity ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 91 (359) ◽  
pp. 1401-1411
Author(s):  
Robert Witcher
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Technology Change ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
The Past ◽  
Transfer Of Technology ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
New Phase

Is the era of globalisation on the wane or on the cusp of a new phase of extraordinary expansion? US president Trump's abandonment of trade agreements and the rise of protectionism coincide with China's ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, an unprecedented investment in infrastructure across Asia, Europe and North Africa to improve the connectivity of China with its markets by both land and sea. The future is therefore anyone's guess, but what about the past? There has been much discussion by archaeologists about ancient globalisations (most recently, Hodos 2017), but archaeological studies have often typically been set within the looser framework of ‘connectivity’—the interconnectedness of people and places and the movement of material culture and ideas. The books reviewed here are concerned with various aspects of connectivity, focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean and its European hinterland. All of the volumes are edited collections, each adopting a different unifying theme—the influence of Braudel, a single country as microcosm, the transfer of technology, changevstradition, and the effects of boundaries and frontiers. Do any wider insights into connectivity in the past emerge? And where might archaeological studies of connectivity go next?

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