M-L. Nosch and A. Ulanowska, The Materiality of the Cretan Hieroglyphic Script: Textile Production-Related Referents to Hieroglyphic Signs on Seals and Sealings from MBA Crete, in: P.J. Boyes, P.M. Steele, N.E. Astoreca (eds) The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, 73–100 (original) (raw)
Related papers
For more than 100 years Aegean glyptic has been widely explored as a valuable source of information about many aspects of life in Bronze Age Greece. Intensive research has been undertaken into the sphragistic use of seals, their remarkable iconography, as well as symbolic and talismanic function of seals. Iconographic depictions that may be related to textile making have been recognised only recently, demonstrating that the relevant evidence is available and advanced iconographic studies of textile production in the Aegean glyptic art are promising. These recent observations, revealed motifs that possibly depict loom-weights and the warp-weighted loom(s), motifs referring to raw materials, such as woolly animals or fibre plants, as well as symbolic references, e.g. spiders. In my new research project investigating complex relations between textile production and Aegean seals and sealing practices, I aim to re-examine the imagery of glyptic with a reference to the recently enhanced knowledge of textile technology in Bronze Age Greece and to search for multiple relations to textile production. In this paper, I will discuss the key methodological issues required by this study, such as the basic conventions and constraints that exist in Aegean glyptic iconography, as well as methods and assumptions I adapt in order to decode the motifs potentially related to textile production. This will include comparative studies of iconography of textile production and, specifically, small-scale representations in Mesopotamian glyptic were several references to various sequences of textile making have already been discussed in detail by Catherine Breniquet. The question whether any repetitive patterns of display of motifs and more complex iconographic programmes may have existed (and how to recognise them), will also be addressed.
Cretan Hieroglyphic Seals and Script: A View from the East
Pasiphae, 2022
The focus of this paper is to present a new methodology that examines Cretan Hieroglyphic seals from both epigraphic and glyptic standpoints to be understood as parts of an integrated and multimodal system of communication. As our premise, we consider the newly published material from Myrtos-Pyrgos (Ferrara, Weingarten, Cadogan, 2016), and then compare and contrast local trends impacting the presence and use of inscribed seals from reasonably well provenanced Middle Minoan contexts in the East of the island. The goals are : 1) to throw light on the cultural significance of the administrative and functions played by Hieroglyphic seals and seal impressions ; and 2) to gain a synoptic appreciation of the emergence and use of this relatively short-lived writing system.
The aim of this poster is to present the preliminary results of a research carried out within the project “Textiles and Seals. Relations between Textile Production and Seals and Sealing Practices in Bronze Age Greece” (financed by the National Science Centre, Poland, conducted by Dr. Agata Ulanowska) and concerning seals with textile motifs used in the Aegean region during the Bronze Age (c. 2650-1200 BC). Hitherto, the analysis of the imagery of more than 250 selected seals and impressions allowed to re-evaluate the previously distinguished motifs and identify several recurring iconographic references to textile production, as well as the different stages of its chaîne opératoire. Among them were representations related to the type and preparation of raw materials, textile tools, and the technologies of spinning and weaving used in the process. This study also enabled the distinction and classification of repeating combinations of textile motifs present either on one or more seal faces within the investigated repertoire. Such approach permitted to deepen our understanding of how textile production was reflected in the imagery of the Aegean glyptic and explore it as a sources of textile knowledge. A group of seals bearing the motif of a sheep was chosen for the purposes of this presentation as a case study in order to investigate the ways in which these specific objects were used and check what relations, if any, existed between the depicted motif and the use of these seals.
Seals, Craft, and Community in Bronze Age Crete
Seals, Craft, and Community in Bronze Age Crete, 2016
Generations of scholars have grappled with the origins of 'palace' society on Minoan Crete, seeking to explain when and how life on the island altered monumentally. Emily Anderson turns light on the moment just before the palaces, recognizing it as a remarkably vibrant phase of socio-cultural innovation. Exploring the role of craftspersons, travelers and powerful objects, she argues that social change resulted from creative work that forged connections at new scales and in novel ways. This study focuses on an extraordinary corpus of sealstones which have been excavated across Crete. Fashioned of imported ivory and engraved with images of dashing lions, these distinctive objects linked the identities of their distant owners. Anderson argues that it was the repeated but pioneering actions of such diverse figures, people and objects alike, that dramatically changed the shape of social life in the Aegean at the turn of the second millennium BCE.
The Annual of the British School at Athens, 2021
What's in a sign? What is there to be ‘seen’ in a sign? This paper sets out to explore the sources and processes of sign creation in the scripts of the Bronze Age Aegean, namely Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A, in use on Crete from c. 1900–1600 bce (Middle Minoan IB/II–Middle Minoan III) and c. 1800–1450 bce (Middle Minoan IIA–Late Minoan IB) respectively. Linear B, developed out of Linear A to write Greek (c. 1450–1190 bce), will also be touched upon where relevant. By investigating contemporary iconographic production and putting forward a methodological framework for the analysis and interpretation of visual motifs, a theory will be tentatively proposed for understanding the process(es) of selection of sign shapes, their incorporation into a script as script-signs and their transmission from one script onto a graphically related one. The underlying research questions leading this enquiry are the following: how did ‘images’ find their way into script(s) to become ‘signs’ in t...
PV VII organisers: Macarena Bustamante Álvarez, Elena H. Sánchez López and Javier Jiménez Ávila, Granada, 2-4 October 2019
The complexity of textile production and larger scale redistribution of textiles required producers to use elaborate scheduling patterns, skills and management methods. In the Aegean Bronze Age, the organisation of textile production has been traced through archaeological discoveries of production spots, such as households, specialised workshops and dye-works, and Late Bronze Age written documents, specifically Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean palaces. However, the initial system of administrative practices based on the use of seals, which in later periods (c. 2100-1200 BCE) was complemented by writing systems, has not yet been investigated in relation to textiles. Thus, it is the focus of the research project ‘Textiles and Seals. Relations between Textile Production and Seals and Sealing Practices in Bronze Age Greece’ (NCN SONATA 13, UMO-2017/26/D/HS3/00145) that I am leading at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw. The abundant, yet largely ignored evidence from imprints of textiles that are preserved on the undersides of lumps of clay stamped by the seals, provides unique information about the qualities of actual fabrics, as well as various uses of textiles in everyday life and administrative practices. An assemblage of silicone casts of the undersides of the sealings from Phaistos, Crete, which is kept in the Archive of the Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel, University of Heidelberg, will constitute a case study for further consideration in this paper.
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.