Constance Von Rüden - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
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Papers by Constance Von Rüden
This introduction to a set of papers on innovations in ancient societies discusses an overview of... more This introduction to a set of papers on innovations in ancient societies discusses an overview of crucial issues raised in the collected contributions. It is evident that the esteem for innovations in different societies was highly uneven. Most of the contributions collected here argue that in non-modern circumstances, innovations had to be inserted into existing cultural traditions with utmost care to be successful.
PLOS ONE
The construction of the Iron Age Mediterranean chronology began in the Levant based on historical... more The construction of the Iron Age Mediterranean chronology began in the Levant based on historical evidence and has been additionally supported in recent decades by means of radiocarbon analysis, although with variable precision and ratification. It is only in recent years that new evidence in the Aegean and the western Mediterranean has opened discussion towards its further acceptance as an authoritative i.e. highly reliable, and widely applicable historiographic network. Altogether, the Mediterranean Iron Age chronology has only undergone minor changes during the last hundred years. The Phoenician metropolis of Sidon in southern Lebanon now provides a new, large and robust dataset obtained through a combination of archaeological and14C-radiometric analysis of materials from stratified contexts that allow their statistical assessment. The appearance of substantial amounts of pottery of Greek, Cypriot and Egyptian origin together with Phoenician local wares in a long stratigraphy is ...
In ihrem Erfahrungsbericht berichten Nachwuchswissenschaftler/innen über Erfahrungen, bei denen d... more In ihrem Erfahrungsbericht berichten Nachwuchswissenschaftler/innen über Erfahrungen, bei denen die geltenden Normen einer fairen Behandlung verletzt wurden. Die beschriebenen Normbrüche setzen eine zweite Ebene des Stillschweigens voraus, die die Autoren mit ihrem Bericht durchbrechen. Sie laufen damit Gefahr, mit (indirekten) Sanktionen rechnen zu müssen, die sich gegen sie und nicht gegen die primären Tabu-Brecher wenden, womit die doppelte Verbotsstruktur und der Herrschaftsaspekt von Tabus deutlich wird, in diesem Fall auf das Verbot ihrer Publikation. (HoF/Text übernommen)
The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 2018
At Tell el-Qirqafa/cEzbet Helmi, just west of Tell el Dabca in the Eastern Nile delta, a large am... more At Tell el-Qirqafa/cEzbet Helmi, just west of Tell el Dabca in the Eastern Nile delta, a large amount of “Aegean” type wall paintings has been excavated since the beginning of the 1990s. Tens of thousands of lime plaster fragments were dispersed in front of the entrances of two palaces of the Tuthmoside period, palaces F and G, on the eastern bank of the former Pelusiac branch of the Nile. In contrast to other sites with fresco paintings in the Middle East, the findings from Tell el Dabca are..
In the second half of the th Century BCE Yarim-Lim of Alalakh gave instructions to decorate his p... more In the second half of the th Century BCE Yarim-Lim of Alalakh gave instructions to decorate his palace with wall paintings. Instead of following the inner-Syrian or 'Mesopotamian' tradition of al secco painting on dark mud plaster, he decided in favor of a technical and iconographical innovation known from the Aegean, a bright, shiny lime plaster with a griffin as a depiction. Later, similar decorations appeared in palaces and houses in Syria and beyond. My paper analyzes why this technical and social innovation was successful within the local life world. Secondly, it takes a closer look at the impact of the murals by exploring the use and meaning of Aegean-related motifs in the following centuries and the production of a Levantine Aegeanness in different media of expression.
Das Mittelmeer und der Tod, 2016
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2020
In the Aegean-type wall paintings of Tell el-Dab c a, Egypt, steatite was used as a constituent o... more In the Aegean-type wall paintings of Tell el-Dab c a, Egypt, steatite was used as a constituent of the white colour. Previous research has revealed that the use of talc as a pigment can be considered as an important marker of Aegean craft traditions. In this case study it is therefore of primary importance to trace back the origin of this particular mineral and rock, especially since it can be found in several locations in the Mediterranean including Egypt, Crete and Cyprus. While there is still no generally valid strategy to assign archaeological objects made from this particular material to a specific steatite deposit, the physio-chemical characterisation of the latter mostly relies on the measurement of Rare Earth Elements (REE's) or other methods focusing on the chemical composition of the whole rock. In this paper, a new way to determine steatite origin is presented using electron microprobe characterisation of spinels inside the steatite matrix. Those tracer minerals can not only be the source of information concerning the formation of steatite but their core composition can in some cases also reflect the primary composition of the precursor ultramafic rock. This method focuses on the geotectonical history and genesis of the protolith rather than on steatite's chemical composition. The results reveal the spinels to have similar characteristics to those of supra-subduction ophiolites in the Egyptian Central Eastern Desert. We suggest a correlation between gold and steatite exploitation and thus the use of local raw materials for the creation of the Aegean-type paintings.
Multiple Mediterranean Realities, 2015
Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art
Alalakh and its Neighbours, 2020
Together with Tel Kabri in the southern Levant, Alalakh has been often considered the earliest fi... more Together with Tel Kabri in the southern Levant, Alalakh has been often considered the earliest find spot with wall paintings of the so-called fresco-secco technique in Western Asia and hence a central corpus for the long-lasting discourse about the technique’s origin in the Eastern Mediterranean. But one of its most crucial aspects, namely that fragments of this type of painting have been discovered as early as Level IX and up to the Late Bronze Level IV, has often been eclipsed due to the prominence of the famous and appealing reconstruction of the palatial paintings of Alalakh Level VII. Nonetheless, their chronologically widespread contextual dates challenge the assumption that these paintings are the result of Minoan craftsmanship and raise the question of whether we are not dealing with a locally embedded tradition of their production and consumption — a tradition which lasted from the period when Alalakh was still under the control of Yamhad until it became a Levantine city kingdom in the area of conflict between Mitanni, Hatti and Egypt. Within the frame of our research project ‘Aegean Design in Near Eastern Palaces,’ funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which aims to discuss the diversity in the production and consumption of wall paintings at different sites in the Levant, Anatolia and Egypt, Alalakh is thus a key site for approaching the phenomenon of fresco-secco painting in Western Asia. How these paintings have been embedded within the local material culture, to what extent the practices involving them are interwoven with other regions of the Eastern Mediterranean, or the nature of the local intention of using such a technique and iconography are thus central questions to be addressed within this chapter.
Multiple Mediterranean Realities, 2015
This introduction to a set of papers on innovations in ancient societies discusses an overview of... more This introduction to a set of papers on innovations in ancient societies discusses an overview of crucial issues raised in the collected contributions. It is evident that the esteem for innovations in different societies was highly uneven. Most of the contributions collected here argue that in non-modern circumstances, innovations had to be inserted into existing cultural traditions with utmost care to be successful.
PLOS ONE
The construction of the Iron Age Mediterranean chronology began in the Levant based on historical... more The construction of the Iron Age Mediterranean chronology began in the Levant based on historical evidence and has been additionally supported in recent decades by means of radiocarbon analysis, although with variable precision and ratification. It is only in recent years that new evidence in the Aegean and the western Mediterranean has opened discussion towards its further acceptance as an authoritative i.e. highly reliable, and widely applicable historiographic network. Altogether, the Mediterranean Iron Age chronology has only undergone minor changes during the last hundred years. The Phoenician metropolis of Sidon in southern Lebanon now provides a new, large and robust dataset obtained through a combination of archaeological and14C-radiometric analysis of materials from stratified contexts that allow their statistical assessment. The appearance of substantial amounts of pottery of Greek, Cypriot and Egyptian origin together with Phoenician local wares in a long stratigraphy is ...
In ihrem Erfahrungsbericht berichten Nachwuchswissenschaftler/innen über Erfahrungen, bei denen d... more In ihrem Erfahrungsbericht berichten Nachwuchswissenschaftler/innen über Erfahrungen, bei denen die geltenden Normen einer fairen Behandlung verletzt wurden. Die beschriebenen Normbrüche setzen eine zweite Ebene des Stillschweigens voraus, die die Autoren mit ihrem Bericht durchbrechen. Sie laufen damit Gefahr, mit (indirekten) Sanktionen rechnen zu müssen, die sich gegen sie und nicht gegen die primären Tabu-Brecher wenden, womit die doppelte Verbotsstruktur und der Herrschaftsaspekt von Tabus deutlich wird, in diesem Fall auf das Verbot ihrer Publikation. (HoF/Text übernommen)
The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 2018
At Tell el-Qirqafa/cEzbet Helmi, just west of Tell el Dabca in the Eastern Nile delta, a large am... more At Tell el-Qirqafa/cEzbet Helmi, just west of Tell el Dabca in the Eastern Nile delta, a large amount of “Aegean” type wall paintings has been excavated since the beginning of the 1990s. Tens of thousands of lime plaster fragments were dispersed in front of the entrances of two palaces of the Tuthmoside period, palaces F and G, on the eastern bank of the former Pelusiac branch of the Nile. In contrast to other sites with fresco paintings in the Middle East, the findings from Tell el Dabca are..
In the second half of the th Century BCE Yarim-Lim of Alalakh gave instructions to decorate his p... more In the second half of the th Century BCE Yarim-Lim of Alalakh gave instructions to decorate his palace with wall paintings. Instead of following the inner-Syrian or 'Mesopotamian' tradition of al secco painting on dark mud plaster, he decided in favor of a technical and iconographical innovation known from the Aegean, a bright, shiny lime plaster with a griffin as a depiction. Later, similar decorations appeared in palaces and houses in Syria and beyond. My paper analyzes why this technical and social innovation was successful within the local life world. Secondly, it takes a closer look at the impact of the murals by exploring the use and meaning of Aegean-related motifs in the following centuries and the production of a Levantine Aegeanness in different media of expression.
Das Mittelmeer und der Tod, 2016
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2020
In the Aegean-type wall paintings of Tell el-Dab c a, Egypt, steatite was used as a constituent o... more In the Aegean-type wall paintings of Tell el-Dab c a, Egypt, steatite was used as a constituent of the white colour. Previous research has revealed that the use of talc as a pigment can be considered as an important marker of Aegean craft traditions. In this case study it is therefore of primary importance to trace back the origin of this particular mineral and rock, especially since it can be found in several locations in the Mediterranean including Egypt, Crete and Cyprus. While there is still no generally valid strategy to assign archaeological objects made from this particular material to a specific steatite deposit, the physio-chemical characterisation of the latter mostly relies on the measurement of Rare Earth Elements (REE's) or other methods focusing on the chemical composition of the whole rock. In this paper, a new way to determine steatite origin is presented using electron microprobe characterisation of spinels inside the steatite matrix. Those tracer minerals can not only be the source of information concerning the formation of steatite but their core composition can in some cases also reflect the primary composition of the precursor ultramafic rock. This method focuses on the geotectonical history and genesis of the protolith rather than on steatite's chemical composition. The results reveal the spinels to have similar characteristics to those of supra-subduction ophiolites in the Egyptian Central Eastern Desert. We suggest a correlation between gold and steatite exploitation and thus the use of local raw materials for the creation of the Aegean-type paintings.
Multiple Mediterranean Realities, 2015
Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art
Alalakh and its Neighbours, 2020
Together with Tel Kabri in the southern Levant, Alalakh has been often considered the earliest fi... more Together with Tel Kabri in the southern Levant, Alalakh has been often considered the earliest find spot with wall paintings of the so-called fresco-secco technique in Western Asia and hence a central corpus for the long-lasting discourse about the technique’s origin in the Eastern Mediterranean. But one of its most crucial aspects, namely that fragments of this type of painting have been discovered as early as Level IX and up to the Late Bronze Level IV, has often been eclipsed due to the prominence of the famous and appealing reconstruction of the palatial paintings of Alalakh Level VII. Nonetheless, their chronologically widespread contextual dates challenge the assumption that these paintings are the result of Minoan craftsmanship and raise the question of whether we are not dealing with a locally embedded tradition of their production and consumption — a tradition which lasted from the period when Alalakh was still under the control of Yamhad until it became a Levantine city kingdom in the area of conflict between Mitanni, Hatti and Egypt. Within the frame of our research project ‘Aegean Design in Near Eastern Palaces,’ funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which aims to discuss the diversity in the production and consumption of wall paintings at different sites in the Levant, Anatolia and Egypt, Alalakh is thus a key site for approaching the phenomenon of fresco-secco painting in Western Asia. How these paintings have been embedded within the local material culture, to what extent the practices involving them are interwoven with other regions of the Eastern Mediterranean, or the nature of the local intention of using such a technique and iconography are thus central questions to be addressed within this chapter.
Multiple Mediterranean Realities, 2015