The Instantiated Identity: Critical Approaches to Studying Gesture and Material Culture. (original) (raw)
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"World is experienced both through worldly and bodily expressions. Emotions are embodied, deeply rooted in the corporeal and sensual experience, and directly communicated through gestures and vocalisations. This session aims to reconstruct with a transdisciplinary approach the materiality of gestures in the Roman world. Thanks to the study of the archaeological record, it is possible to identify the "techniques of the body", through which emotions are perceived, enacted, shared and communicated. Objects are not merely neutral things, but a channel which allows us to detect the agency behind the gesture and (even through the repetition and intensification of an act, i.e. ritual) its use of media in order to interact with the socially structured environment and networks it belongs to. Speakers - chosen among the international specialists - are challenged to test this paradigm on the field of Pompeii, focusing on the material culture concerning sanctuaries, domestic religious practices and funerary rituals."
Current Research in Egyptology 2019, 2021
Kekes, C. 2021. Speaking Bodies: An Approach to the Egyptian and Aegean Ritual Gestures of the Bronze Age (Preliminary Remarks). In: Current Research in Egyptology 2019. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Symposium, University of Alcalá, 17-21 June 2019, ed. by M. Arranz Cárcamo, R. Sánchez Casado, A. Planelles Orozco, S. Alarcón Robledo, J. Ortiz García and P. Mora Riudavets, 1–11. Oxford: Archaeopress.
The body is man's first and most natural instrument." So wrote Marcel Mauss in 1935 in his seminal paper on the 'Techniques of the Body.' 1 He stressed that even the most basic bodily actions, such as techniques of walking, eating and sleeping, were learned and socially constructed. This is a now familiar argument in the massive literature devoted to reading and deconstructing the Body in its many different incarnations, ranging from the controlled body, the consuming body, the sexually constructed body, as well as the classificatory and symbolic body. Mauss also made brief reference to his belief that there were bodily techniques "at the bottom of all our mystical states" and that these deserved socio-psycho-biological study. This call to engage with the importance of profound bodily experiences seems to have gone largely unheeded. More recently, however, anthropologists have begun to explore how specific embodied practices may direct and shape varieties of religious experience, showing that this can be a fruitful area of study. 2 Modern religions privilege metaphysical theories over ritual action, but the immersion of the body in ritual practice is amply documented across a wide range of religions: the extreme denial of the body through fasting and self-mutilation in ascetic traditions; the body as an expressive vehicle for entering altered states in shamanic traditions and possession cults; and the use of gesture and posture through which the worshipper formally engages in communication with the divine. Embodied practices are always sited within specific relations, those between individuals or groups, and those of social or cosmological structures. 3 They are also both symbolic and symptomatic or expressive. Thus in discussion of the simple act of kneeling in prayer Roy Rappaport notes that the posture moulds the body within a structured environment, so that it does not merely express an inner state but actively "generates a body identified with subordination." 4
Gesturing Age, Posturing Gender. The Neolithic Antecedents of Bodily Comportment in the Aegean
Gesture, Stance, and Movement Communicating Bodies in the Aegean Bronze Age. Acts of the International Conference at the University of Heidelberg, 11–13 November 2021, 2024
The research presented in this paper examines the postures and gestures of anthropomorphic figurines from Neolithic Crete and a selection of sites from Thessaly. Postures and gestures are classified by type and then analysed statistically in comparison with the sex of figurines. The aim is to distinguish whether or not bodily comportment is related to sex and possibly gender and age. Conversely, the differences in postures and gestures may be the result of the materials employed to make the figurines or a chronological development. The preliminary conclusions suggest that different factors determine the modelling of bodily comportment in Neolithic bodies: the chronology and materials used for the manufacture of the figurines are related to specific postures and arm-positions, gestures and postures that conceal or emphasise sexual attributes are possibly associated with different age-stages; and shared gestures and postures in figurines of different sexual categories may represent similar gender identities.
Homage to Cornelia-Magda Lazarovici. Senica Turcanu and Constantin-Emil Ursu (eds.), Suceava 2018, Karl A. Romstorfer Publishing House., 2018
“Standard” examples of Neolithic three-dimensional, clay images are generally isolated and static, independently of the posture in which they are depicted. However, some composite figures are uncommon, since they may be represented as if permanently “acting” or “functioning”, including even in “unnatural” occurrences. Such unusual representations could then be considered either as images of real, observed individuals in a particular condition or performing an act, or as signifiers of the communal recollection of an event or of the narration of a belief. Either reality or fiction, a specific true or mythical scene would have been memorized and materialized, fixed permanently in image, as it would have appeared during tangible or invented performance. The paper endeavours to present a number of such examples and seek possible interpretative directions of their meanings and functions.
BAR Publishing, 2020
This monograph analyses human figures that appear in Aegean Bronze Age art, considering the roles and relations between genders, and interpreting differential status or power implications. Susan E. Poole studies a comprehensive range of figures that appear on wall paintings, glyptics (seals, seal impressions and finger rings), and some three-dimensional objects. The gestures and postures displayed in the body language are examined, together with placements and orientations between the figures. The author considers the way figures occupy their surrounding space, possible gender distinct activities, the seating of figures, and processions. A structural iconographic method is used to interpret the material, together with ethological, sociological and linguistic approaches, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis is applied. The research includes a rich corpus of images from a wide range of sources to illustrate observations.