THE SILK TIE AND THE CRETAN CHEST (original) (raw)
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AN EARLY MEDIEVAL BUCKLE WITH CLOISONNÉ DECORATION
efolyoirat.oszk.hu
The cloisonné buckle found as a stray find at Rákóczifalva-Kastélydomb close to Szolnok adds to the so-called "Mediterranean buckles" dated to the end of 5 th century, beginning of 6 th century. Finds of this type were designated in the literature by its supposed origin deduced from its main spread area and from decorating tradition. However, by expanding the archaeological material this interpretation became obviously too general, determination of origin needs refinement because of the cultural diversity in the Mediterranean region. Moreover, it became likewise clear that besides real Mediterranean products, artifacts with Mediterranean character but different origin may also be supposed. Thus, the primary question apart from the further clarification of the Mediterranean origin is concerning how the products made by ancient goldsmith tradition influenced the material culture of barbarian peoples living at the periphery of the Mediterranean region. It means among others the decision about how the particular exemplars are to be considered, which process led to their appearance: are those "import" of a foreign, non local product; local "imitation" of that, or "integration" of the artefact type or the style in the local culture? Besides stylistic studies reliable differentiation is based on technological observations and especially on analysis of material composition.
Materials and technological aspects of gilded buckles from a North Eastern Medieval Italian context
Applied Physics A, 2013
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Innovations and the art of deception: mixed cloths in Venetian Crete (17th century)
La moda come motore economico: innovazione di processo e prodotto, nuove strategie commerciali, comportamento dei consumatori / Fashion as an economic engine: process and product innovation, commercial strategies, consumer behavior
This paper investigates innovations of the early modern European textile industry and practices of cultural transfer using seventeenth-century Venetian Crete as a case study. It explores the use of novelties, such as mixed cloths, in the dowries assigned to brides in the urban setting of Candia (modern Heraklion) and the surrounding countryside during the period 1600-1645. It draws on computer-processed data from marriage agreements and inventories of movables from the State Archives of Venice. It illustrates, through a comparative lens, how brides used (silk) mixed fabrics to differentiate themselves from others and how Venetian Crete followed the changes in production techniques of the European textile industry.
The Coat of Arms, 2009
A recently discovered elaborate openwork buckle plate from Shipdham, Norfolk displays a lion passant regardant biting its tail and with its hindquarters charged with a cross potent. The decoration of the lion’s rear in this manner is derived from Eastern exemplars where the shoulder and/or the rump of a beast carries one of a range of devices, variously interpreted as hair whorls, rosettes, stars or tamgas, amongst others. The employment of such shoulder ornament on the Romanesque dress accessory described here demonstrates the extraordinary longevity of this early form of decoration, which was translated to the West via fine silks and textiles. It can be included with a number of other Central Asian and Oriental devices and motifs that were absorbed into the applied arts in Europe, and which had a considerable influence on the birth and development of European heraldry.
While the Late Bronze Age archives with Linear B tablets provide detailed information about gender and social status of textile workers controlled by the Mycenaean palaces, much less is known about gendered division of labour in earlier periods and in other modes of production. Middle Bronze Age Crete (c. 2100–1700 BCE) witnessed the formation and development of centralised polities, described by Aegean archaeologists as palaces. It was also the age of an intensive, large scale textile production and several technical developments, such as an introduction of new types of loom weights and new techniques of dyeing. Those Cretan weaving technique(s) that were followed by the introduction of discoid weights in the Early Bronze Age, in the Middle and early Late Bronze Age spread over the Aegean islands and western shores of Asia Minor. In my paper, archaeological evidence of textile workplaces, tools and methods by which the technical developments may have been transmitted will be examined in relation to potential engendering of textile labour in this period. A special focus, however, will be placed on the iconography and function of Middle Minoan soft stone prismatic seals from central and eastern Crete, and possible representations of weavers on their seal faces. I will argue that human figures shown with a ‘loom weight’ motif must have been weavers and I will examine whether other sequences in the chaîne opératoire of textile production, and other textile workers, can also be recognised on these seals. I will also discuss how seals and sealings may have been used in administration of textile production in this period, as well as who the seal bearers may have been, in terms of their social status and gender.
P.J. Boyes, P.M. Steele and N.E. Astoreca (eds), The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, Oxbow Books, Oxford and Philadelphia, 2021
In this paper, we explore textile production-related iconography on MBA seals from Crete. We argue that real-world referents to material culture related to textile production could have developed into stylised and abbreviated motifs on Cretan seals, specifically three- and four-sided prisms. We find that these real-world referents can be identified both in representational motifs and in the graphic forms of some signs of the Cretan Hieroglyphic script. Eleven motifs related to textile production are recognised in the imagery of MBA seals from Crete, ranging from the flax plant and the ‘woolly animal’, to fibre combing, purple dyeing, spinning, and weaving using loom weights and perhaps also the comb and rigid heddle. All these processes and tools are symbolically interwoven in the figure of the spider, a frequent motif in Aegean glyptic. By proposing new identifications of motifs and referents, we suggest that textile production with the material culture related to it constituted an important semantic reference reflected in the imagery of seals and the graphic forms of script signs.
2019
A 7th-century b.c. cup from the sanctuary of Kommos in Crete presents what may be the most complex and multifigured scene on a Cretan ceramic vessel of any period, and it has long puzzled scholars. Based on a recent reexamination of the cup, the present study offers original insights into its fabric, its technique of manufacture, and especially its iconography. Through this examination, an identification of episodes from the Trojan War is proposed, the relevance of this imagery to the cultural context of production and consumption is explained, and this interpretation is situated within the debate over the identification of myth and ritual in Cretan art of the early 1st millennium b.c.
BEAUTY AND THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. Personal adornments across the millennia
2020
The International Colloquium: “Beauty and the eye of the beholder: personal adornments across the millennia” took place at Valahia University, Târgoviște, Romania, between 12 and 14 September 2019. Bearing in mind the complexity of the subject, the participants were invited to discuss a variety of topics, expressing the views of various “beholders” both in the past and at the present moment: their meaning/symbolism within the prehistoric/historical societies (e.g. cultural tradition, social and spiritual organization and exchange systems), raw materials (identification of sources and acquisition), various methodologies of study (technological and usewear analyses, microscopy, SEM+EDS analysis, FTIR and RAMAN spectroscopy, etc.) and experimental approaches (creating experimental reference collections), etc. At the end of the colloquium, following the discussions with our colleagues, it was decided to gather all presentations in a volume while also inviting other contributions dedicated to this topic, in an attempt to capture a broader spatial and temporal image. The result is the present volume comprising 26 studies organized in three major sections related to regional studies on adornments, and their use and presence in everyday life and afterlife. Within one section, papers were organized in chronological order. The papers in the volume cover geographically the whole of Europe and Anatolia: from Spain to Russia and from Latvia to Turkey; it spans chronologically many millennia, from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Iron Age (2nd – 4th centuries AD). The volume opens with ten regional studies offering not only comprehensive syntheses of various chronological horizons (Palaeolithic - Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer, Neolithic/Chalcolithic - Emma L. Baysal; Fotis Ifantidis; Selena Vitezović and Dragana Antonović; Sanda Băcueț Crișan and Ancuța Bobînă; Andreea Vornicu-Țerna and Stansislav Țerna; Roberto Micheli) but also new data on the acquisition and working of various raw materials or specific types of adornments (Columbella rustica shells - Emanuela Cristiani, Andrea Zupancich and Barbara Cvitkusić; wild boar tusk - Ekaterina Kashina and Aija Macāne; canid tooth pendants - Petar Zidarov). The unbreakable link between adornments of the everyday life and those of the afterlife it is also highlighted in some of the contributions. The following section - Adornments in settlement archaeology - includes nine studies, covering the archaeological evidence from specific settlement sites. Many studies focused on the adornments' iconographic designs, meaning, and exchange but also on raw materials, technologies of production and systems of attachment. Chronology-wise, this section brings together the most varied range of ornaments, raw materials and processing techniques from sites in Spain (Esteban Álvarez-Fernández), Turkey (Sera Yelözer and Rozalia Christidou), Greece (Catherine Perlès and Patrick Pion; Christoforos Arampatzis) and Romania (Adina Boroneanț and Pavel Mirea; Ioan Alexandru Bărbat, Monica Mărgărit and Marius Gheorghe Barbu; Monica Mărgărit, Mihai Gligor, Valentin Radu and Alina Bințințan; Gheorghe Lazarovici and Cornelia-Magda Lazarovici; Vasile Diaconu). The last section - Adornments of the afterlife - focuses on ornaments identified in various funerary contexts allowing for a more detailed biography of ornaments through mostly use- and micro-wear studies, in order to reconstruct their production sequence and use life. Raw material availability and their properties, as well as contexts of deposition are also taken into account. In the seven studies of the section, different funerary contexts from Latvia (Lars Larsson), Ukraine (Nataliia Mykhailova), Hungary (Zsuzsanna Tóth) and Romania (Monica Mărgărit, Cristian Virag and Alexandra Georgiana Diaconu; Vlad-Ștefan Cărăbiși, Anca-Diana Popescu, Marta Petruneac, Marin Focşăneanu, Daniela Cristea-Stan and Florin Constantin; Dragoş Măndescu; Lavinia Grumeza) are discussed.
2012
A lidded sarkophagus of Proconnesos marble was discovered in the East of the cemetery of Thessaloniki. The sarkophagus contained a lead coffin with the body of a woman clothed in a gold-woven textile, an exceptional example of high weaving skill, using the tapestry weaving technique. The paper deals the find complex, epigraphical evidence from Thessaloniki regarding the craftsmen who produced such garments, and the wider cultural and histoical context of Late Roman Thessaloniki, and its stong East Mediterrannean influences. The study of the skeletical material showed that th dead woman was 50-60 years of age. The burial is datd in the 4th c. AD. The intrement in a lead sarkophagus contributed to the inhibition of microbiological attack and the preservation of both the human organic remains and the textile, given his antimicrobiocal properties.The main characteristics of the textile include the use of silk, the purple colour, and the use of composite gold thread the decorative motif. Six pieces are preserved in total. The decorative motif consists of two vertical bands of linear decoration and two further narrow parallel bands with a running tendril framing oval leafs. The flowers and leaves of Isatis trincoria or woad are the main source of the plant dye used to produce a purle hue. The similarity between the leaves on the textile and those on the plant may well indicate that the textile pattern is an imitation of actual woad leaves.
Studia Romana et Mediævalia Europænsia. Miscellanea in honorem annos LXXXV peragentis Professoris emeriti Dan Gh. Teodor oblata, 2018
In 2016, in the Cernica Forest, on the territory of Pantelimon, Ilfov County, a treasure of medieval adornments was discovered by using a metal detector. It was handed over to the authorities, who brought it to the National Museum of Romanian History. The treasure consisted of two gold earrings and four silver bracelets. The earrings and two bracelets were entirely preserved. The other two items are partially broken and have repair marks. According to the manufacturing technique, with a link made of simple wire, the earrings can be dated before 1270 (Braničevo, Kalna, Cernăuţi). Their decoration consists of three pendants, two of which are equal in size (relatively similar to those found in an earring at Isaccea or another at Cetina-Sv. Spas in Croatia), hemstitched and arranged on the sides of a larger, central one. The latter was decorated in the granulation and filigree technique and adorned with eight gold leaf cones. The analogies lead to the earrings discovered in the treasures from Voinești and Cernăuţi, or to items from the necropolis at Cuptoare-Sfogea. The bracelets were manufactured either of thick silver wires or of silver foil tubes, twisted, widened at the ends. The decoration was made in the granulation and filigree technique. This type of bracelets can be dated to the 13th century and the first half of the 14th century. The items have analogies on the Romanian territory, such as the specimens discovered in the treasures of Voinești, Amnaș and Păcuiul lui Soare. It is hard to pinpoint the date of burial of the treasure, but it has to be sought most likely towards the end of the 13th century, when conflicts took place between the Lower Danube Tartar chieftains.