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"History, Art History, and Archaeology"
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The origins of monsters : image and cognition in the first age of mechanical reproduction
\"It has often been claimed that \"monsters\"--supernatural creatures with bodies composed from multiple species--play a significant part in the thought and imagery of all people from all times. The Origins of Monsters advances an alternative view. Composite figurations are intriguingly rare and isolated in the art of the prehistoric era. Instead it was with the rise of cities, elites, and cosmopolitan trade networks that \"monsters\" became widespread features of visual production in the ancient world. Showing how these fantastic images originated and how they were transmitted, David Wengrow identifies patterns in the records of human image-making and embarks on a search for connections between mind and culture.Wengrow asks: Can cognitive science explain the potency of such images? Does evolutionary psychology hold a key to understanding the transmission of symbols? How is our making and perception of images influenced by institutions and technologies? Wengrow considers the work of art in the first age of mechanical reproduction, which he locates in the Middle East, where urban life began. Comparing the development and spread of fantastic imagery across a range of prehistoric and ancient societies, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and China, he explores how the visual imagination has been shaped by a complex mixture of historical and universal factors.Examining the reasons behind the dissemination of monstrous imagery in ancient states and empires, The Origins of Monsters sheds light on the relationship between culture and cognition\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Roman Period Statuettes in the Netherlands and beyond
The subject of this study is a relatively rare category of artefacts, bronze and terracotta statuettes that represent deities, human figures and animals. They were introduced in the northwestern provinces by Roman troops from the end of the first century BCE onwards. The statuettes have been recovered from military and non-military settlements, the surrounding landscape and, to a far lesser extent, from sanctuaries and graves. Until now, their meaning and function have seldom been analysed in relation to their find-spots. Contrary to traditional studies, they have been examined as one separate category of artefacts, which offers new insights into the distribution pattern and iconographic representation of deities. When studying a group of artefacts, a large research area or a large dataset is required, as well as dateable artefacts and find-contexts. These conditions do not apply to the Netherlands and to the majority of statuettes that are central to this study. Moreover, although the changing appearance of statuettes suggest a transformation of cults, the identities of the owners of these statuettes remain invisible to us. Therefore, the issue of Romanization is not put central here. Instead, the focus is on a specific aspect of religion, known as lived religion, within the wider subject of its transformation in the Roman period: how people used statuettes in everyday life, in the context of their houses and settlements.
eBook
Warfare in Bronze Age society
\"In this book, it is argued that the Bronze Age represents the global emergence of a militarized society with a martial culture, materialized in a package of new efficient weapons that remained in use for millennia to come. It is evidenced in the ostentatious display of weapons in burials and hoards, as well as in iconography, from rock art to palace frescoes (Osgood, Monks and Toms 2000). This development has been described in a variety of ways: as the emergence of warrior aristocracies (Kristiansen 1999; Treherne 1995; Vandkilde chapter this book), linked to the emergence of the 'Hero' and his retinue (Hansen 2014; Vandkilde postscript), or simply through a study of weapons and their indications of use (Harding 2007; Horn 2013; Kristiansen 1984 and 2002; Molloy 2007; Quillec 2007; Randsborg 1995). It all comes down to the historical fact that warfare becomes institutionalized and professionalized during the Bronze Age, a new class of warriors make their appearance, even if there were differences between Eurasia, the Mediterranean and Europe, rooted in their different social and political complexity. However, they were not bigger than warriors employed similar types of swords and warrior gear. The causes behind this development can be traced back to a combination of factors\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Human Trafficking in Medieval Europe
Human trafficking has become a global concern over the last twenty years, but its violence has terrorized and traumatized its victims and survivors for millennia. This study examines the deep history of human trafficking from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. It traces the evolution of trafficking patterns: the growth and decline of trafficking routes, the everchanging relationships between traffickers and authorities, and it examines the underlying causes that lead to vulnerability and thus to exploitation. As the reader will discover, the conditions that lead to human trafficking in the modern world, such as poverty, attitudes of entitlement, corruption, and violence, have a long and storied past. When we understand that past, we can better anticipate human trafficking’s future, and then we are better able to fight it.
eBook
In-Between Textiles, 1400-1800
In-Between Textiles is a decentred study of how textiles shaped, disrupted, and transformed subjectivities in the age of the first globalisation. The volume presents a radically cross-disciplinary approach that brings together world-leading anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, conservators, curators, historians, scientists, and weavers to reflect on the power of textiles to reshape increasingly contested identities on a global scale between 1400 and 1800. Contributors posit the concept of “in-between textiles,” building upon Homi Bhabha’s notion of in-betweenness as the actual material ground of the negotiation of cultural practices and meanings; a site identified as the battleground over strategies of selfhood and the production of identity signs troubled by colonialism and consumerism across the world. In-Between Textiles establishes cutting-edge conversations between textile studies, critical cultural theory, and material culture studies to examine how textiles created and challenged experiences of subjectivity, relatedness, and dis/location that transformed social fabrics around the globe.
eBook
Reading Memory Sites Through Signs
What can space tell us about our past? Which stories do memory sites narrate? Which memories do they transmit? And, more importantly, how can we read their meanings? Semiotics can provide us with a homogeneous, shareable and theoretically sound methodology to analyse space within a comparable and common frame of reference for scholars of memory studies and traumatic heritage, as well as for historians, architects and museum curators. The book describes in clear and understandable language the main semiotic concepts that can be used to analyse space, illustrating them with carefully chosen case studies of memory spaces - monuments, museums, post-war urban restoration, filmed and virtual space - in order to show the applicability and efficacy of a semiotic methodology.
eBook
The man who invented Aztec crystal skulls : the adventures of Eugène Boban
\"Eugène Boban began life in humble circumstances in Paris, traveled to the California Gold Rush, and later became a recognized authority on pre-Columbian cultures. He also invented an entire category of archaeological artifact: the Aztec crystal skull. By his own admission, he successfully \"palmed off\" a number of these crystal skulls on the curators of Europe's leading museums. How could that happen, and who was this man? Detailed are the travels, self-education, and archaeological explorations of Eugène Boban; this book also explores the circumstances that allowed him to sell fakes to museums that would remain undetected for over a century.\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Ethnic Identity and the Archaeology of the aduentus Saxonum
For centuries, archaeologists have excavated the soils of Britain to uncover finds from the early medieval past. These finds have been used to reconstruct the alleged communities, migration patterns, and expressions of identity of coherent groups who can be regarded as ethnic 'Anglo-Saxons'. Even in the modern day, when social constructionism has been largely accepted by scholars, this paradigm still persists. This book challenges the ethnic paradigm. As the first historiographical study of approaches to ethnic identity in modern 'Anglo-Saxon' archaeology, it reveals these approaches to be incompatible with current scholarly understandings of ethnicity. Drawing upon post-structuralist approaches to self and community, it highlights the empirical difficulties the archaeology of ethnicity in early medieval Britain faces, and proposes steps toward an alternative understanding of the role played by the communities of lowland Britain - both migrants from across the North Sea and those already present - in transforming the Roman world.
eBook