Aegean Imagery and the Syntax of Viewing (original) (raw)
Related papers
"Iconography in Context: The Visual Elements of Aegean Art"
Current Approaches and New Perspectives in Aegean Iconography, edited by Fritz Blakolmer. Aegis 18 (2020), 369-384., 2020
Abstract: The iconographic meanings of Aegean art have long been the subject of scholarly investigation, but comparatively little attention has been paid to that other major component of artistic content: emotion, and the emotional impact that art makes upon the viewer. This investigation explores how artists of the Aegean Bronze Age incorporated expressive content through intentional engagement of artistic form as developed through the visual elements (line, texture, color [hue], value, shape and space) and the principles of organization (harmony, variety, balance, proportion, dominance, movement, and economy). Three canonical artworks (the Spring Fresco of Delta 2, Akrotiri, Thera; the Cupbearer and Procession Frescoes of Knossos, Crete; and a Mycenaean phi figurine) are discussed to explore how each artwork’s expressive and emotional content was purposely developed to support its symbolic meanings as understood through traditional iconographic method. It is suggested that formal analysis of the elements and principles of prehistoric art can be engaged in alliance with iconographic study, not only to define the characteristic features of Aegean art, as has been done in the past, but also to explore Aegean art’s deeper emotional meaning as it impacted the viewer and shaped the prehistoric visual environment.
Imagery beyond Representation.
2012
Pictorial and visual elements are special types of archaeological data that transgress boundaries: between us and the past and between the material and immaterial. Traditionally, images have been discussed in terms of what they represent, mean or symbolize. In this volume, the authors explore other ways in which images a!ect and engage the beholder and the modes in which they are entangled in past worlds. The articles comprise examples from various regions and time periods and include a diverse array of topics including northern European rock art of the Neolithic and Bronze Age, anthropomorphic aspects of ceramic pots and "gures in gold, erotic themes on children’s burial vessels, and nineteenth-century rock art created by quarantined sailors in Australia.
The agency of 'things' in social networks has been the topic of several previous studies. This paper focuses on archaeological things, or artifacts, and exemplifies with three case studies how certain factors complicate the modern understanding of the past human-thing networks that these artifacts are involved with. These factors include the bygone nature of the networks and the involvement of time and culture-specific beliefs, such as magic, that determined the social processes. As the main factor of complication, this paper proposes a certain agency attributed to artifacts, here named the “imagined” agency, which could be thought of as an extension of primary agency, but differs from it in the sense that the thing was “imagined” to act in now-lost social processes. When combined with the intrinsic material qualities of the thing, imagined agency results in a problematic comprehension in multiple layers; once, when the artifact was imagined to be something that it is not; second, when its own material agency acts; and third, when it is interpreted by the archaeologist. As a result, the treatise on an ancient artifact may end up being several times removed from reality, when imagined agency is added to or clashes with the intrinsic material quality of the artifact.
Encountering Imagery: Materialities, Perceptions, Relations
2012
Pictorial and visual elements are special types of archaeological data that transgress boundaries: between us and the past and between the material and immaterial. Traditionally, images have been discussed in terms of what they represent, mean or symbolize. In this volume, the authors explore other ways in which images affect and engage the beholder and the modes in which they are entangled in past worlds. The articles comprise examples from various regions and time periods and include a diverse array of topics including northern European rock art of the Neolithic and Bronze Age, anthropomorphic aspects of ceramic pots and figures in gold, erotic themes on children’s burial vessels, and nineteenth-century rock art created by quarantined sailors in Australia.
Zoomorphic imagery and social process during the Early Bronze Age
Documenta Praehistorica
Through the agency of animals, we think about our identity, landscape and society, and therefore animal imagery holds a special place in approaches to human thought. Through a study of the zoomorphic figurine assemblage recorded at the Early Bronze Age site of Koçumbeli-Ankara, we argue that the zoomorphic figurines of this time period were produced through a meaningful linking of particular images and raw materials to particular use contexts. For example, the ambiguously sexed zoomorphic figurines of clay are usually found within the settlement contexts, whereas the rest of the zoomorphic imagery, in the form of elaborately decorated and often male-sexed metal statues and standards, are found in ‘elite’ burials located in cemeteries. This occurs on the background of an emergent form of ritual control, which was negotiated through the separation of cemetery and settlement. In these contexts, the authority of the past was invoked via ancestral imagery through the careful employment o...