Approaching The Ancient Artifact

This volume consists consists of forty contributions written by an internationally renowned selection of scholars. The authors adopt an interdisciplinary methodology, examining both literary and archaeological sources, and a comparative perspective that transgresses national, chronological, and cultural boundaries, in order to investigate the nature of the links between text and image. This multifaceted approach to the study of ancient artifacts enables the authors to treat art and artistic production as activities that do not merely mirror social or cultural relationships but rather, and more significantly, as activities that create social and cultural relationships. The essays in this book are motivated by their authors' belief that there is no simple direct link between art and myths, art and text, or art and ritual, and that art should not be delegated to the role of a by-product of a literate culture. Instead, the contextual and symbolic analyses of artifacts and representations offered in this volume elucidate how art actively shaped myth, how it changed texts, how it transformed ritual, and how it altered the course of local, regional, and Mediterranean histories.

This volume consists consists of forty contributions written by an internationally renowned selection of scholars. The authors adopt an interdisciplinary methodology, examining both literary and archaeological sources, and a comparative perspective that transgresses national, chronological, and cultural boundaries, in order to investigate the nature of the links between text and image. This multifaceted approach to the study of ancient artifacts enables the authors to treat art and artistic production as activities that do not merely mirror social or cultural relationships but rather, and more significantly, as activities that create social and cultural relationships. The essays in this book are motivated by their authors' belief that there is no simple direct link between art and myths, art and text, or art and ritual, and that art should not be delegated to the role of a by-product of a literate culture. Instead, the contextual and symbolic analyses of artifacts and representations offered in this volume elucidate how art actively shaped myth, how it changed texts, how it transformed ritual, and how it altered the course of local, regional, and Mediterranean histories.

The study of paleopathology has two very different constituencies, the medical scientist and the zoologist/paleontologist/anthropologist. Their investigative procedures and professional jargon are different, sometimes to the point of mutual incomprehensibility. Paleontologists/anthropologists/zoologists have a limited data base for the characterization and interpretation of pathology. This must come from the human and veterinary medical experience. What, beyond intellectual satisfaction, can the health care community expect from this relationship? The past history of the appearance and dispersal of infectious disease and cancer is of considerable theoretical importance and leads to new insights on the nature and transmission of diseases that are otherwise ambiguous. The discovery of rheumatoid arthritis in pre-Columbian North America exemplifies insights gained. The current effort delineates osseous impact of disease (as manifest in clinical populations diagnosed in life), representation in the zoologic, paleontologic and anthropologic record, and assessment techniques that can be confidently applied. The chapters form “columns” that provide the foundation for scientific critical thinking. The actual integration of the information is in its application. Our purpose is to provide a data base and atlas of actually documented skeletal impact of diseases (as population phenomenon), an initial data base of reported skeletal pathology, and a methodology for expanding this to new arenas. The first section of the book examines the scientific basis of paleopathology, its transition from speculation-based musings, resolution of misconceptions and the denouement of paleo-epidemiology. The second section provides holistic analysis of the gamut of pathology/diseases with significant skeletal impact, with a validated archeologic/zoological/paleontological record. The third section provides a glossary to resolve the semantic challenges inherent to interdisciplinary efforts. The fourth section provides an atlas of pathology representation in the fossil record. Ultimately, this book intends to present a scientifically-validated approach to recognition of disease in the archeological, zoological and paleontological record, superseding previous speculation-based offerings.

Is it possible to trace the footprints of the historical Sokrates in Athens? Was there really an individual named Romulus, and if so, when did he found Rome? Is the tomb beneath the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica home to the apostle Peter? To answer these questions, we need both dirt and words—that is, archaeology and history. Bringing the two fields into conversation, Artifact and Artifice offers an exciting excursion into the relationship between ancient history and archaeology and reveals the possibilities and limitations of using archaeological evidence in writing about the past. Jonathan M. Hall employs a series of well-known cases to investigate how historians may ignore or minimize material evidence that contributes to our knowledge of antiquity unless it correlates with information gleaned from texts. Dismantling the myth that archaeological evidence cannot impart information on its own, he illuminates the methodological and political principles at stake in using such evidence and describes how the disciplines of history and classical archaeology may be enlisted to work together. He also provides a brief sketch of how the discipline of classical archaeology evolved and considers its present and future role in historical approaches to antiquity. Written in clear prose and packed with maps, photos, and drawings, Artifact and Artifice will be an essential book for undergraduates in the humanities.

What is a vessel? As objects made for human interaction and handling, both containing and bounded by space, vessels can take many forms and be constructed of a wide variety of materials. However, they are all unified in signifying a potential for practical functioning, whether or not a particular object is in fact used in this way in its particular context. In this second volume in the Visual Conversations in Art & Archaeology series, and the first in the Center for Global Ancient Art sub-series, four essays by leading scholars tackle the category of vessels in ancient Greece, late antique Rome, pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and ancient China. By considering the material properties of the object as container, the interactions between user and vessel, and the power of the vessel as both a conceptual category and material metaphor, they argue that many vessels - and assemblages of vessels - were in their own time sites of considerable intellectual power, smart and sophisticated commentaries on the very categories that they embody. In collecting these individual case studies together, the volume offers an art historical and cross-cultural study of vessels from ancient societies, drawing illuminating comparisons and interpretations between traditions. In keeping with the aims of the series, it serves as a model for a new kind of comparative art history, one which emphasizes material culture and is attentive to questions of evidence and method, yet remains historically grounded and contextually sensitive.

Is it possible to trace the footprints of the historical Sokrates in Athens? Was there really an individual named Romulus, and if so, when did he found Rome? Is the tomb beneath the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica home to the apostle Peter? To answer these questions, we need both dirt and words—that is, archaeology and history. Bringing the two fields into conversation, Artifact and Artifice offers an exciting excursion into the relationship between ancient history and archaeology and reveals the possibilities and limitations of using archaeological evidence in writing about the past. Jonathan M. Hall employs a series of well-known cases to investigate how historians may ignore or minimize material evidence that contributes to our knowledge of antiquity unless it correlates with information gleaned from texts. Dismantling the myth that archaeological evidence cannot impart information on its own, he illuminates the methodological and political principles at stake in using such evidence and describes how the disciplines of history and classical archaeology may be enlisted to work together. He also provides a brief sketch of how the discipline of classical archaeology evolved and considers its present and future role in historical approaches to antiquity. Written in clear prose and packed with maps, photos, and drawings, Artifact and Artifice will be an essential book for undergraduates in the humanities.

Human beings have speculated about whether or not there is life after death, and if so, what form that life might take, for centuries. What did people in the ancient world think the next life would hold, and did they imagine there was a chance for a relationship between the living and the dead? How did people in the ancient world keep their dead loved ones alive through memory, and were they afraid the dead might return and haunt the living in another form? What sort of afterlife did the ancient Greeks and Romans imagine for themselves? This volume explores these questions and more. While individual representations of the afterlife have often been examined, few studies have taken a more general view of ideas about the afterlife circulating in the ancient world. By drawing together current research from international scholars on archaeological evidence for afterlife belief, chiefly from funerary sites, together with studies of works of literature, this volume provides a broader overview of ancient ideas about the afterlife than has so far been available. Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World explores these key questions through a series of wide-ranging studies, taking in ghosts, demons, dreams, cosmology, and the mutilation of corpses along the way, offering a valuable resource to those studying all aspects of death in the ancient world

When Roman objects and artifacts are properly analyzed, they serve as valuable primary sources for learning about ancient history. This book provides the guidance and relevant historical context students need to see relics as evidence of long-past events and society. Artifacts from Ancient Rome is a unique social history that explores major aspects of daily life in a long-ago era via images of physical objects and historical information about these items. This book also affords "hands-on training" on how to approach primary sources. The author—a historian also trained as an archaeologist—begins by explaining the concept of using artifacts to understand and "see" the past and providing a primer for effectively analyzing artifacts. Entries on the artifacts follow, with each containing an introduction, a description of the artifact, an explanation of its significance, and a list of further sources of information. Readers of the book will not only gain a composite impression of daily life in ancient Rome through the study of artifacts from domestic life, religion, war, transportation, entertainment, and more, but will also learn how to best understand and analyze primary sources for learning.