Book Description
Using the visual and tactile experience of small-scale figurines, Greeks and Babylonians negotiated a hybrid, cross-cultural society in Hellenistic Mesopotamia.
Author : Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 39,59 MB
Release : 2020-03-12
Category : Art
ISBN : 1108488145
Using the visual and tactile experience of small-scale figurines, Greeks and Babylonians negotiated a hybrid, cross-cultural society in Hellenistic Mesopotamia.
Author : Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 10,68 MB
Release : 2023-09-07
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781108738460
In this volume, Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper investigates the impact of Greek art on the miniature figure sculptures produced in Babylonia after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Figurines in Hellenistic Babylonia were used as agents of social change, by visually expressing and negotiating cultural differences. The scaled-down quality of figurines encouraged both visual and tactile engagement, enabling them to effectively work as non-threatening instruments of cultural blending. Reconstructing the embodied experience of miniaturization in detailed case studies, Langin-Hooper illuminates the dynamic process of combining Greek and Babylonian sculpture forms, social customs, and viewing habits into new, hybrid works of art. Her innovative focus on figurines as instruments of both personal encounter and global cultural shifts has important implications for the study of tiny objects in art history, anthropology, classics, and other disciplines.
Author : Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : pages
File Size : 33,96 MB
Release : 2020-03-12
Category : Art
ISBN : 1108848303
In this volume, Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper investigates the impact of Greek art on the miniature figure sculptures produced in Babylonia after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Figurines in Hellenistic Babylonia were used as agents of social change, by visually expressing and negotiating cultural differences. The scaled-down quality of figurines encouraged both visual and tactile engagement, enabling them to effectively work as non-threatening instruments of cultural blending. Reconstructing the embodied experience of miniaturization in detailed case studies, Langin-Hooper illuminates the dynamic process of combining Greek and Babylonian sculpture forms, social customs, and viewing habits into new, hybrid works of art. Her innovative focus on figurines as instruments of both personal encounter and global cultural shifts has important implications for the study of tiny objects in art history, anthropology, classics, and other disciplines.
Author : Kathryn Stevens
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 465 pages
File Size : 41,74 MB
Release : 2019-05-23
Category : History
ISBN : 1108419550
Focusing on Greece and Babylonia, this book provides a new, cross-cultural approach to the intellectual history of the Hellenistic world.
Author : Thorsten Fögen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 506 pages
File Size : 39,25 MB
Release : 2017-08-21
Category : History
ISBN : 3110545624
The seventeen contributions to this volume, written by leading experts, show that animals and humans in Graeco-Roman antiquity are interconnected on a variety of different levels and that their encounters and interactions often result from their belonging to the same structures, ‘networks’ and communities or at least from finding themselves together in a certain setting, context or environment – wittingly or unwittingly. Papers explore the concrete categories of interaction between animals and humans that can be identified, in what contexts they occur, and what types of evidence can be productively used to examine the concept of interactions. Articles in this volume take into account literary, visual, and other types of evidence. A comprehensive research bibliography is also provided.
Author : Lauren Ristvet
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 10,45 MB
Release : 2015
Category : Gardening
ISBN : 1107065216
In this book, Lauren Ristvet rethinks the narratives of state formation by investigating the interconnections between ritual, performance, and politics in the ancient Near East. She draws on a wide range of archaeological, iconographic, and cuneiform sources to show how ritual performance was not set apart from the real practice of politics; it was politics. Rituals provided an opportunity for elites and ordinary people to negotiate political authority. Descriptions of rituals from three periods explore the networks of signification that informed different societies. From circa 2600 to 2200 BC, pilgrimage made kingdoms out of previously isolated villages. Similarly, from circa 1900 to 1700 BC, commemorative ceremonies legitimated new political dynasties by connecting them to a shared past. Finally, in the Hellenistic period, the traditional Babylonian Akitu festival was an occasion for Greek-speaking kings to show that they were Babylonian and for Babylonian priests to gain significant power.
Author : Nigel Spivey
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 355 pages
File Size : 48,31 MB
Release : 2013-01-31
Category : Art
ISBN : 0521760313
Explains the social function and aesthetic achievement of Greek sculpture from c.750 BC to the end of antiquity.
Author : Brian A. Brown
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 842 pages
File Size : 31,37 MB
Release : 2013-12-13
Category : Art
ISBN : 1614510350
This volume assembles more than 30 articles focusing on the visual, material, and environmental arts of the Ancient Near East. Specific case studies range temporally from the fourth millennium up to the Hellenistic period and geographically from Iran to the eastern Mediterranean. Contributions apply innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to archaeological evidence and critically examine the historiography of the discipline itself. Not intended to be comprehensive, the volume instead captures a cross-section of the field of Ancient Near Eastern art history as its stands in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The volume will be of value to scholars working in the Ancient Near East as well as others interested in newer art historical and anthropological approaches to visual culture.
Author : Stephanie Marie Langin-Hooper
Publisher :
Page : 1042 pages
File Size : 29,62 MB
Release : 2011
Category :
ISBN :
This dissertation investigates the social role played by terracotta figurines in the Greek-Mesopotamian cross-cultural interactions of Hellenistic Babylonia. Previous studies of Hellenistic Babylonian terracotta figurines have largely been organized as typological catalogues, with an emphasis placed on organizing the vast number of figurines within an understood dichotomy of "Greek" or "Babylonian". This dissertation makes two unique contributions to the study of these figurines. The first is to highlight the limitations of typology, an organizational tool that has the effect of privileging some features of the figurines over others, as well as using those features to cement figurines into rigid, artificial hierarchies. Through deconstructing typologies, this dissertation allows for the methodological substitution of more flexible, "real life" systems of categorization. The second major contribution of this dissertation is to investigate how Hellenistic Babylonian figurines actively participated in social interactions that were organized not only along the lines of Greek vs. Babylonian ethnicity, but also other social roles such as gender, age, class, and profession. In this dissertation, typologies are replaced by a new methodology of investigating "trends" of similarity and difference, which can be used to access object identities and trace entanglements of human-object interaction based on the shifting, mutable affiliations suggested by bundled features of the figurines. I address these methodological and historiographic considerations in Part I of the dissertation. In Part II of this dissertation, these methodological approaches are used to trace the "trends" of similarity in the Hellenistic Babylonian figurines. Figurines are treated as interconnected social actors: through the sharing of particular features, some figurines have closer associations than others; however, no figurines are assigned as part of a set "type". Rather, the shared features of figurines with visual, technological, or contextual similarities are interrogated, in order to determine which assemblages were the most popular, and thus bore widely-accepted meanings. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 each address a different (but interconnected) aspect of the figurine corpus. Chapter 4 contains a discussion of male social roles and gender ambiguities. Chapter 5 contains a discussion of human-figurine interactions conditioned by the materialities of the objects, with particular reference to figurine features that either beckon the human interlocutor into closer interaction or, conversely, discourage tactile and visual engagement. Chapter 6 contains a discussion of the closely entwined visualizations of many female figurines, and the social implications of that cohesive visual ideal. Within each chapter, the interpretation of figurine trends are approached through such theoretically-informed lenses as the social construction of gender, the psychological effect of miniature scale, and the controlling power of the Gaze. This object-agency approach to studying social interactions between humans and figurines in Hellenistic Babylonia leads to the second major contribution of this dissertation: ethnic identities of "Greek" and "Babylonian" may not have been primary, or even particularly important, in all social interactions. The terracotta figurines both generated and reflected new pathways of social meaning-making in Hellenistic Babylonia. In many cases, these figurines were not particularly adherent to earlier, pre-Hellenistic motifs and meanings. Rather, "trendy" figurines tended to have been those that engaged with aspects of both cultural traditions, frequently becoming hybridized in the process. This finding indicates that the scholarly world's focus on determining the political roles, power balances, and social identities of "Greeks" and "Babylonians" in these Hellenistic communities may be misdirected. In the conclusion of this dissertation, I argue that we need to dramatically rethink our understanding of Hellenistic Babylonian cross-cultural interactions by placing less emphasis on the role of ethnicity, and more importance on investigating the social significance of other identity roles. The scholarly contribution of my dissertation is to both begin a broader exploration of identity in Hellenistic Babylonian society, and also to demonstrate how material culture - such as, but not limited to, terracotta figurines - can be used in innovative and theoretically-informed ways to further explore the "hows" and "whys" of identity formation.
Author : Reinhard Pirngruber
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 30,19 MB
Release : 2017-03-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1107106060
This book devises an innovative way to analyse Babylonian commodity price data in its historical context using formal statistical analysis.