An Archaeology of Prehistoric Bodies and Embodied Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean PDF Download

Author: Maria Mina
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1785702912
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
In the long tradition of the archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean bodies have held a prominent role in the form of figurines, frescos, or skeletal remains, and have even been responsible for sparking captivating portrayals of the Mother-Goddess cult, the elegant women of Minoan Crete or the deeds of heroic men. Growing literature on the archaeology and anthropology of the body has raised awareness about the dynamic and multifaceted role of the body in experiencing the world and in the construction, performance and negotiation of social identity. In these 28 thematically arranged papers, specialists in the archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean confront the perceived invisibility of past bodies and ask new research questions. Contributors discuss new and old evidence; they examine how bodies intersect with the material world, and explore the role of body-situated experiences in creating distinct social and other identities. Papers range chronologically from the Palaeolithic to the Early Iron Age and cover the geographical regions of the Aegean, Cyprus and the Near East. They highlight the new possibilities that emerge for the interpretation of the prehistoric eastern Mediterranean through a combined use of body-focused methodological and theoretical perspectives that are nevertheless grounded in the archaeological record.

Author: Nicola Laneri
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 178925521X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The human body represents the perfect element for relating communities of the living with the divine. This is clearly evident in the mythological stories that recount the creation of humans by deities among ancient and contemporaneous societies across a very broad geographical environment. Thus, parts of selected human body parts or skeletal elements can then become an ideal proxy for connecting with the supernatural as demonstrated by the cult of the human skulls among Neolithic communities in the Near East as well as the cult of the relics of Christian saints. The aim of this volume is to undertake a cross-cultural investigation of the role played in antiquity by humans and human remains in creating forms of relationality with the divine. Such an approach will highlight how the human body can be envisioned as part of a broader materialization of religious beliefs that is based on connecting different realms of materiality in perceiving the supernatural by the community of the livings. Case studies on ritual aspects of funerary practices is presented, emphasising the varied roles of body parts in mortuary rituals and as relics. Other papers take a wider look at regional practices in various time periods and cultural contexts to explore the central role of the corpse in the negotiation of death in human culture.

Author: Judith Weingarten
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1803275340
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Robert Koehl has long considered processions to have played an integral role in Aegean Bronze Age societies. Papers concentrate mainly on evidence from Crete, the Cyclades and the Greek mainland, with additional perspectives from abroad, these geographic divisions forming the basic outline of this volume.

Author: Stefanos Gimatzidis
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030725391
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This book studies past economics from anthropological, archaeological, historical and sociological perspectives. By analyzing archeological and other evidence, it examines economic behavior and institutions in ancient societies. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, it critically discusses dominant economic models that have influenced the study of past economic relations in various disciplines, while at the same time highlighting alternative theoretical trajectories. In this regard, the book’s goal is not only to test theoretical models under scrutiny, but also to present evidence against the rationalization of past economic behavior according to the rules of modern markets. The contributing authors cover various topics, such as trade in the classical Greek world, concepts of commodity and value, and management of economic affluence.

Author: Tomasz Gralak
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 180327722X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
This study explores what we as people can do with our bodies, what we can use them for, and how we can alter and understand them. With analysis based on artefacts found in graves, anthropomorphic images, and written sources, it considers the ways in which human groups from the Neolithic to the Migration Period have perceived and treated the body.

Author: Benjamin Collins
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1805394614
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The human body is both the site of lived experiences and a means of communicating those experiences to a diverse audience. Hominins have been culturing their bodies, that is adding social and cultural meaning through the use pigments and objects, for over 100,000 years. There is archaeological evidence for practices of adornment of the body by late Pleistocene and early Holocene hominins, including personal ornaments, clothing, hairstyles, body painting, and tattoos. These practices have been variously interpreted to reflect differences such as gender, status, and ethnicity, to attract or intimidate others, and as indices of a symbolically mediated self and personal identity. These studies contribute to a novel and growing body of evidence for diversity of cultural expression in the past, something that is a hallmark of human cultures today.

Author: Giorgos Papantoniou
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 3038976784
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
This volume examines the applicability of central place theory in contemporary archaeological practice and thought in light of ongoing developments in landscape archaeology, by bringing together ‘central places’ and ‘un-central landscapes’ and by grasping diachronically the complex relation between town and country, as shaped by political economies and the availability of natural resources. Moving away from model-bounded approaches, central place theory is used more flexibly to include all the places that may have functioned as loci of economic or ideological centrality (even in a local context) in the past. Fourteen chapters examine centrality and un-central landscapes from Prehistory to the late Middle Ages in different geographical contexts, from Cyprus and the Levant, through Greece and the Balkans to Italy, France, and Germany.

Author: Diana Stein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000464768
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 790

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Book Description
For millennia, people have universally engaged in ecstatic experience as an essential element in ritual practice, spiritual belief and cultural identification. This volume offers the first systematic investigation of its myriad roles and manifestations in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. The twenty-nine contributors represent a broad range of scholarly disciplines, seeking answers to fundamental questions regarding the patterns and commonalities of this vital aspect of the past. How was the experience construed and by what means was it achieved? Who was involved? Where and when were rites carried out? How was it reflected in pictorial arts and written records? What was its relation to other components of the sociocultural compact? In proposing responses, the authors draw upon a wealth of original research in many fields, generating new perspectives and thought-provoking, often surprising, conclusions. With their abundant cross-cultural and cross-temporal references, the chapters mutually enrich each other and collectively deepen our understanding of ecstatic phenomena thousands of years ago. Another noteworthy feature of the book is its illustrative content, including commissioned reconstructions of ecstatic scenarios and pairings of works of Bronze Age and modern psychedelic art. Scholars, students and other readers interested in antiquity, comparative religion and the social and cognitive sciences will find much to explore in the fascinating realm of ecstatic experience in the ancient world.

Author: Edgar Peltenburg
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1789250226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
The Chalcolithic period in Cyprus has been known since Porphyrios Dikaios’ excavations at Erimi in the 1930s and through the appearance in the antiquities market of illicitly acquired anthropomorphic cruciform figures, often manufactured from picrolite, a soft blue-green stone. The excavations of the settlement and cemetery at Souskiou Laona reported on in this volume paint a very different picture of life on the island during the late 4th and early 3rd millennia BC. Burial practices at other known sites are generally single inhumations in intramural pit graves, only rarely equipped with artifacts. At Souskiou, multiple inhumations were interred in deep rock-cut tombs clustered in extra-mural cemeteries. Although the sites were also subjected to extensive looting, excavations have revealed complex multi-stage burial practices with arrangements of disarticulated and articulated burials accompanied by a rich variety of grave goods. Chief among these are a multitude of cruciform figurines and pendants. This unusual treatment of the dead, which has not been recorded elsewhere in Cyprus, shifts the focus from the individual to the communal, and provides evidence for significant changes involving kinship group links to common ancestors. Excavations at the Laona settlement have furnished evidence suggesting that it functioned as a specialised center for the procurement and manufacture of picrolite during its early phase. The subsequent decline of picrolite production and the earliest known occurrence of new types of ornaments, such as faience beads and copper spiral pendants, attest to important changes involving the transformation of personal and social identities during the first centuries of the 3rd millennium BC, a topic that forms a central theme of this final report on the site.

Author: Catherine Kearns
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501732714
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
New Directions in Cypriot Archaeology highlights current scholarship that employs a range of new techniques, methods, and theoretical approaches to questions related to the archaeology of the prehistoric and protohistoric periods on the island of Cyprus. From revolutions in radiocarbon dating, to the compositional analysis of ceramic remains, to the digital applications used to study landscape histories at broad scales, to rethinking human-environment/climate interrelationships, the last few decades of research on Cyprus invite inquiry into the implications of these novel archaeological methods for the field and its future directions. This edited volume gathers together a new generation of scholars who offer a revealing exploration of these insights as well as challenges to big questions in Cypriot archaeology, such as the rise of social complexity, urban settlement histories, and changes in culture and identity. These enduring topics provide the foundation for investigating the benefits and challenges of twenty-first-century methods and conceptual frameworks. Divided into three main sections related to critical chronological transitions, from earliest prehistory to the development of autonomous kingdoms during the Iron Age, each contribution exposes and engages with a different advance in studies of material culture, absolute dating, paleoenvironmental analysis, and spatial studies using geographic information systems. From rethinking the chronological transitions of the Early Bronze Age, to exploring regional craft production regimes of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, to locating Iron Age cemeteries through archival topographic maps, these exciting and pioneering authors provide innovative ways of thinking about Cypriot archaeology and its relationship to the wider discipline. List of Contributors: Georgia M. Andreou, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Classics, Cornell University Stella Diakou, Postdoctoral Fellow, Archaeological Research Unit, University of Cyprus Maria Dikomitou-Eliadou, Postdoctoral Fellow, Archaeological Research Unit, University of Cyprus David Frankel, Professor Emeritus of Archaeology and History, La Trobe University Artemis Georgiou, Marie Curie Research Fellow, Archaeological Research Unit, University of Cyprus Catherine Kearns, Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Chicago Sturt W. Manning, Goldwin Smith Professor of Classical Archaeology, Cornell University Eilis Monahan, PhD Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University Charalambos Paraskeva, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of History and Archaeology, University of Cyprus Anna Satraki, Director of Larnaka District Museum, Department of Antiquities of Cyprus Matthew Spigelman, ACME Heritage Consultants, Partner