Communities of style: portable luxury arts, identity, and collective memory in the Iron Age Levant

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (11) ◽  
pp. 52-5697-52-5697
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Iron Age Levant

Thinking Through Monuments: Levantine Monuments as Technologies of Community-Scale Motivated Social Cognition

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Timothy Hogue
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Scientific Model ◽  
Conceptual Integration ◽  
Iron Age Levant ◽  
Relational Qualities ◽  
Motivated Social Cognition

This study proposes that monuments are technologies through which communities think. I draw on conceptual blending theory as articulated by Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier to argue that monuments are material anchors for conceptual integration networks. The network model highlights that monuments are embedded in specific spatial and socio-historical contexts while also emphasizing that they function relationally by engaging the imaginations of communities. An enactivist understanding of these networks helps to explain the generative power of monuments as well as how they can become dynamic and polysemic. By proposing a cognitive scientific model for such relational qualities, this approach also has the advantage of making them more easily quantifiable. I present a test case of monumental installations from the Iron Age Levant (the ceremonial plaza of Karkamiš) to develop this approach and demonstrate its explanatory power. I contend that the theory and methods introduced here can make future accounts of monuments more precise while also opening up new avenues of research into monuments as a technology of motivated social cognition that is enacted on a community-scale.

Radiocarbon dating the Iron Age in the Levant: a Bayesian model for six ceramic phases and six transitions

Antiquity ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 84 (324) ◽  
pp. 374-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Israel Finkelstein ◽  
Eli Piasetzky
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Bayesian Model ◽  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Online Supplement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Iron Age Levant

The Bayesian model presented in this article is the first attempt to produce a chronological framework for the Iron Age in the Levant, using radiocarbon dating alone. The model derives from 339 determinations on 142 samples taken from 38 strata at 18 sites. The framework proposes six ceramic phases and six transitions which cover c. 400 years, between the late twelfth and mid eighth centuries BC. It furnishes us with a new scientific backbone for the history of Iron Age Levant.The article is supported by an online supplement which can be found in at http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/finkelstein324

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