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Using the visual and tactile experience of small-scale figurines, Greeks and Babylonians negotiated a hybrid, cross-cultural society in Hellenistic Mesopotamia.
Miniature and fragmentary objects are both eye-catching and yet easily dismissed. Tiny scale entices users with visions of Lilliputian worlds. The ambiguity of fragments intrigues us, offering tactile reminders of reality's transience. Yet, the standard scholarly approach to such objects has been to see them as secondary, incomplete things, whose principal purpose was to refer to a complete and often life-size whole. The Tiny and the Fragmented offers a series of fresh perspectives on the familiar concepts of the tiny and the fragmented. Written by a prestigious group of internationally-acclaimed scholars, the volume presents a remarkable diversity of case studies that range from Neolithic E...
A collection of essays on possible methodological and theoretical approaches to gender within the framework of ancient Near Eastern studies.
Interdisciplinary study of monumental art and architecture in human history. Monumentality is a human phenomenon that has occurred in nearly all times and places. Because of its ubiquity, monumentality is something that has been studied by a large number of disciplines and individuals. Approaching Monumentality in Archaeology explores the phenomenon of monumental art and architecture from humankinds most ancient past to recent history, and does so using an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates the research of anthropological archaeologists, art historians, classicists, and sociologists working in a wide variety of historical and cultural contexts. The volume seeks to define what is meant by the terms monument and monumentality, and to understand the social and political significance of monument-building as it has manifested around the world. By advocating for a relational approach to the topic that seeks to find monumentality in the ongoing relationship between object and person, this book offers the opportunity to begin the process of uniting these varied interests into a unified discourse.
The clothed and adorned body has been at the forefront of Nili S. Fox's scholarship. In her hallmark approach, she draws on theoretical models from anthropology and archaeology, and locates the text within its native cultural environment in conversation with ancient Near Eastern literary and iconographic sources. This volume is a tribute to her, a collection of essays on dress and the body with original research by Fox's students. With the field of dress now garnering the attention of biblical and Ancient Near Eastern scholars alike, this book adds to the growing literature on the topic, demonstrating ways in which both dress and the body communicate cultural and religious beliefs and practices. The body's lived experience is the topic of section one, the body lived. The body and the social construction of identity is discussed in section two, the body cultured, while section three, the body adorned, analyzes the performative nature of dress in the biblical text.
Explains the social function and aesthetic achievement of Greek sculpture from c.750 BC to the end of antiquity.
This collection of 23 essays, presented in three sections, aims to discuss women’s studies as well as methodological and theoretical approaches to gender within the broad framework of ancient Near Eastern studies. The first section, comprising most of the contributions, is devoted to Assyriology and ancient Near Eastern archaeology. The second and third sections are devoted to Egyptology and to ancient Israel and biblical studies respectively, neighbouring fields of research included in the volume to enrich the debate and facilitate academic exchange. Altogether these essays offer a variety of sources and perspectives, from the textual to the archaeological, from bodies and sexuality to onomastics, to name just a few, making this a useful resource for all those interested in the study of women and gender in the past.
This volume addresses and problematizes the formation and transformation of the ancient Near Eastern art historical and archaeological canon. The 'canon' is defined as an established list of objects, monuments, buildings, and sites that are considered to be most representative of the ancient Near East. In "testing" this canon, this project takes stock of the current canon, its origins, endurance, and prospects. Boundaries and typologies are examined, technologies of canon production are investigated, and heritage perspectives on contemporary culture offer a key to the future.
In this book, Lauren Ristvet rethinks the narratives of state formation by investigating the interconnections between ritual, performance, and politics in the ancient Near East. She draws on a wide range of archaeological, iconographic, and cuneiform sources to show how ritual performance was not set apart from the real practice of politics; it was politics. Rituals provided an opportunity for elites and ordinary people to negotiate political authority. Descriptions of rituals from three periods explore the networks of signification that informed different societies. From circa 2600 to 2200 BC, pilgrimage made kingdoms out of previously isolated villages. Similarly, from circa 1900 to 1700 BC, commemorative ceremonies legitimated new political dynasties by connecting them to a shared past. Finally, in the Hellenistic period, the traditional Babylonian Akitu festival was an occasion for Greek-speaking kings to show that they were Babylonian and for Babylonian priests to gain significant power.
The proem to Herodotus's history of the Greek-Persian wars relates the long-standing conflict between Europe and Asia from the points of view of the Greeks' chief antagonists, the Persians and Phoenicians. However humorous or fantastical these accounts may be, their stories, as voiced by a Greek, reveal a great deal about the perceived differences between Greeks and others. The conflict is framed in political, not absolute, terms correlative to historical events, not in terms of innate qualities of the participants. Becky Martin reconsiders works of art produced by, or thought to be produced by, Greeks and Phoenicians during the first millennium B.C., when they were in prolonged contact with...