The Origin of Social Classes, Profession and Colour in the Indo- European Societies and Ancient Persia (original) (raw)
Related papers
Arts Asiatiques, 2015
Colour in the archaeological record is a critical yet often understudied category of inquiry. In this paper, we explore how the use of colour in monumental art can be used to analyse cultural markers of status. The primary focus of this analysis is the colour on the costume of a group of bust figures in a late first millennium bce painted gallery at the site of Akchakhan-kala, in ancient Khorezm, Uzbekistan. Analysis reveals that the selection of colours at Akchakhan-kala was influenced both by the availability of raw materials and by broader trends of colour usage throughout the Iranian and steppe worlds. A systematic examination of colour facilitates a more informed perspective on the differentiated status of these elites in pre-Islamic Central Asia. This paper provides an initial step to building a database of contextualized colours found throughout the region, as well as a foundation for colour studies in elite costume worn in ceremonial contexts in the pre-Islamic Iranian world.
(Colour illustrations for CD-ROM version you can see after black-white variant) Colour combinations in the costume of peoples in the Iranian World reveal their traditional character: red, white and blue, with rarer use of yellow, black and green. It reflects ancient Iranian colour symbolism rather than the contents of dye-stuffs. The influence of the Achaemenid Empire on other Iranian peoples includes the use of multi–coloured and, partly, striped fabrics and continued into the period of the Sasanian Empire when the concept of decorating cloth with medallions. Multi-coloured fabrics are not typical for Iranian costume and the costume of many other Iranian peoples in the Parthian period, which can be explained through Greek aesthetic influence.
Color and Meaning in the Art of Achaemenid Persia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2023)
2023
"In this volume, Alexander Nagel investigates the use of polychromy in the art and architecture of ancient Iran. Focusing on Persepolis, he explores the topic within the context of the modern historiography of Achaemenid art and the scientific investigation of a range of works and monuments in Iran and in museums around the world. Nagel's study contextualizes scholarly efforts to retrieve aspects of ancient polychromies in Western Asia and interrogates current debates about the contemporary use of color in the architecture and sculpture in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Bringing a multi-disciplinary perspective to the topic, Nagel also highlights the important role of theory, methodology, and conservation studies in the process of reconstructing polychromy in ancient monuments. A celebration of the work of painters, artisans, craftsmen and -women of Iran's past, his volume suggests frameworks through which historical and contemporary research play a dynamic role in the reconstruction of ancient technological knowledge."
Color Theory in Medieval Islamic Lapidaries: Nshbr, Ts and Kshn
2012
Abstract. This paper discusses descriptions of color theory in a series of lapidaries by Nı̄shābūrı̄, Tūsı̄ and Kāshānı̄, written in 1196, ca. 1258 and in 1300, respectively. The texts are almost identical and seem to originate from Nı̄shābūrı̄. They describe a color theory that deviates from the Aristotelian account in several ways. They represent one of the first instances in which it is stated explicitly that by mixing black and white, grey is produced. This contradicts the Aristotelian dogma that such mixtures may produce all other colors. The texts are the first to refer explicitly to a hue scale, recognizing that by mixing blue and yellow in different proportions, colors are produced that change gradually from blue, via green, to yellow. Only tonal scales, obtained by mixing a color pigment with black or white, had been described before. In spite of the description of a hue scale in this text and tonal scales in another text by Tūsı̄, it is shown that the authors of these text...
Despite the renewed attention for Persian period Elephantine, the focus of many publications is still on the history, identity, and religion of the Yehudite group in the Persian border garrison. This article displays the data on the other ethnic groups. Next to Persians, Egyptians, and Judeo-Arameans, some fifteen ethnic groups are referred to in the Aramaic and Demotic inscriptions. The analysis of the material leads to the conclusion that members of these other groups had various social roles in the local community: mercenaries, merchants, administrators, and slaves.
The idea that a group's cohesive identity (its ethnicity) will be reflected in and discernible through the stylistic idiosyncrasies of its visual culture has long been central to the art historical and archaeological approach. This is, however, a problematic premise. Style cannot be linked productively to ethnicity without a direct social context that can characterize the nature of the population group at issue and provide cues to possible versions of meaning. The persistent and tortured use ofthe term "Graeco-Persian style" is a prime example of difficulties caused by the approach-especially when it is deployed within a narrow and predetermined eurocentric worldview. Invented by a classicist at the beginning of the twentieth century, the term has continued to exert tremendous influence on scholarship despite its serious flaws, even on the level of describing what it is intended to signify visually. It has served to describe and explain collections of predominantly unprovenanced seals produced in the Achaemenid empire in terms of their imagined relations to a notionally pure Greek idiom. Here analysis of securely contextualized seal impressions from the Persepolis Fortification and Treasury archives excavated in the Achaemenid heartland capital highlights the problematic nature of assumptions behind the term "Graeco-Persian." In particular, PT4 866, a clay label from the Persepolis Treasury archive bearing impressions of six discrete seals, is examined to illustrate the value of focusing on contextualized artifacts in discussions of stylistic variability in imperial glyptic production and use. Style, we find, was one element in a tool kit for communicating a fluid notion of identity in the Achaemenid empire. Relationships that emerge suggest the significance of a more nuanced concept of the linkages between style and identity. A notion of situational, rather than ethnic, identity becomes a key element in this imperial milieu.
Color in ancient and medieval East Asia
Asian Studies Review, 2016
Many years ago I went to talk to Wai-kam Ho, then curator of Chinese art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Wai-kam told me that if I wanted to understand color in ancient China, the first thing I should comprehend was that color is a source of power. We talked further, but he brushed aside lesser questions to emphasize the importance of understanding that color has power. It was a potent force in ancient Chinese society. This book is the outcome of years of research and the collaboration of chemists, conservators, archaeologists, dyers, historians of art and literature, and scholars of Buddhism and Daoism. Separately and together we have worked to explore the roles that color-and specific dyes and mineral pigments-played in the social and political life, thought, art, and ritual practices of ancient and medieval East Asia. The source material is rich and includes dynastic histories, court documents, travelers' journals, merchants' ledgers, literature, Daoist liturgical and meditative manuals, paintings in tombs and Buddhist grottoes, religious icons, paintings on silk and on paper, pottery, lacquer, and textiles. The seeds for this book were sown at a College Art Association conference. In 2003 I organized a panel, Languages of Color in East Asian Visual Culture, for that conference and invited several scholars represented in this volume to discuss the role of color in East Asian cultures. Guolong Lai, Amy McNair, and I were joined later by chemist Richard Laursen at a small, exploratory colloquium, The Power of Color in Ancient and Medieval East Asia, at the University of Kansas in September 2010. The meeting was sponsored by the Spencer Museum of Art and supported by a seed grant from The Commons Research Initiative in Nature and Culture, a grant designed to nurture and develop interdisciplinary, collaborative research at the University of Kansas. After two days of sharing research and learning each other' s vocabulary, 4. Color was used to indicate political authority, rank, and prestige in systems understood throughout East Asia. 5. The courts, aristocracies, and bureaucrats of kingdoms throughout East Asia were color-literate. They knew the dye plants that produced the correct colors and those that produced non-official popular colors. They understood the particularities of each plant, the properties of the colors it yielded, and the principles of dye technology. Poets could, and did, use 8. Edward H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T' ang Exotics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 208. Schafer referenced the Tang liudian [Compendium of administrative law of the six divisions of the Tang bureaucracy] (Kyoto, 1935), 22, 21a. For an English translation of the Tang liudian, see: Wallace Johnson, The T'ang Code, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979 and 1997). Core components of the Five Agents Direction Season Element Color Planet Directional Animal Musical tones South Summer Fire Red Mars Vermilion Bird jue (mi) East Spring Wood Blue/green Jupiter Azure Dragon zhi (sol) North Winter Water Black Mercury Black Tortoise/ Snake gong (do) West Autumn Metal White Venus White Tiger shang (re) Center * Earth Yellow Saturn Yellow Dragon yu (la) * an intercalary period sometimes described as midsummer and sometimes as a period between summer and autumn. essays. I am greatly indebted to him as a friend and colleague. Colleagues across the University of Kansas have supported the project as participants in the two colloquia and as consultants. In addition to Amy McNair, I would like to thank
An introduction to gender structure and social inequality in the Sasanian Empire , Iran
2012
The Sasanian dynasty was one of the empires of ancient Iran, dating from 224 to 651 A.D. The research investigates the social inequality between men and women in Sasanian Empire in Iran. The exertion of some kinds of gender discrimination and men superiority has appeared in archaeological records and Sasanian text such as Ardaviraf Nameh. The presentation of women in archaeological evidence such as visual arts is rare in comparison to men. The research follows a comparative method in data analysis. Based on the above evidences, this research examines women’s social status and their role in Sasanian society in comparison to other groups such as men and children.