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Textbook Ebook The Tiny and The Fragmented Miniature Broken or Otherwise Incomplete Objects in The Ancient World S Rebecca Martin All Chapter PDF
Textbook Ebook The Tiny and The Fragmented Miniature Broken or Otherwise Incomplete Objects in The Ancient World S Rebecca Martin All Chapter PDF
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Contents
List of Contributors ix
5. Style as a Fragment of the Ancient World: A View from the Iron Age Levant
and Assyria 99
Marian H. Feldman
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viii i Contents
Index 217
ix
Contributors
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ix
xi Contributors
Contributors j xi
Margaret Cool Root is Professor and Curator Emerita in the Department of the
History of Art and the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan.
The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art (Acta Iranica 19, 1979) was her first major
publication on the Persian Empire. Since then, she has edited numerous thematic
volumes and is engaged in a collaborative project on Persepolis seals. Root has
continued to explore the architecture and sculpture of the Persian Empire, as well
as issues of theory and historiography. Her work has been supported by the John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the
National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Iran Heritage Foundation.
Jaime Vives-Ferrándiz has been Curator at the Museum of Prehistory in València
(Spain) since 2004. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Glasgow in 2012.
His research focuses on the western Mediterranean during the first millennium bce,
and he is especially interested in colonial situations and movements of people and
material culture. He has been field co-director of the excavations at several Iberian
settlements.
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In/Complete
An Introduction to the Theories
of Miniaturization and Fragmentation
S. Rebecca Martin and Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper
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This volume is written in response to what we see as a theoretical turn in the
study of miniature, broken, or seemingly fragmentary objects of the ancient world.
For years, the standard scholarly approach to such objects was to understand them as
incomplete things, whose principal purpose was to serve as a referent to a complete
and often life-sized whole. By this logic, a figurine of a female body should always rep-
resent, in some fashion, a larger-scale woman or feminine concept—whether an eve-
ryday mortal, a goddess, or an abstract notion of fertility (figure 1.1). A herm statue or
a votive leg was understood to abbreviate key parts of the body of a god or an ailing
person but still existed mainly in order to signal complete corporeality. Fractures and
incompletenesses were thought meaningful only through the breaking, destroying,
or refusing to finish the “whole” object. Thankfully, such essentializing and reductive
assumptions are becoming less commonly used, and more commonly questioned.
Anthropologists and archaeologists have paved much of the way forward
in studying the little and broken things of the past as objects in their own right.
Quantitative analysis of figurines, in particular, has progressed far beyond simple
cataloguing and measuring to the complex diagraming of deposition patterns,
mapping of material sources, and technical scanning (using UV, Infrared, and X-ray,
among other mechanisms) of individual artifacts for traces of paint and indications
of wear.1 Rather than treating miniature and fragmentary things as inconsequential,
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2i S. Rebecca Martin and Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper
Figure 1.1 A student intern, Jess Ro. Pfundstein, adjusts a Hellenistic Babylonian figurine
fragment on a display mount in preparation for the exhibition “Life in Miniature: Identity and
Display at Ancient Seleucia-on-the-Tigris” at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Digital image courtesy of Mariah Postlewait, © Mariah Postlewait, 2013.
In/Complete: An Introduction j3
that they are more than simply semiotic icons, signifying by mimetic properties alone.
When a life-sized or whole thing is made in a scaled-down or partial form, when it
is deliberately broken as part of its use, or when it is considered successful in the eyes
of ancient users only if it shows some signs of wear, it challenges our expectations of
representation and wholeness, of what it means for a work of art to be “finished” and
“affective” (chapters 3–4). These objects have a particular command over the viewer,
enticing him or her into personal interactions, demanding specific modes of looking
and touching, and encouraging the displacement of personal identity. The represen-
tational properties of tiny and fragmented things made them external referents to
the world(s) of their users, but their materiality also made them immediate actors
within those ancient social landscapes (chapters 2, 6–7). Approaches that focus on
use and function are important (Tanner 1992, 2006); art history is not just a pur-
suit of meaning. Anthropologically informed methods offer fresh approaches to the
long-held idea that ancient art worked, that all art, no matter how grand or humble,
was made to be used for social and religious purposes. These methods also encourage
us to reflect anew on techniques of art history that are usually taken for granted in
the study of ancient objects, notably the concept of style (chapter 5).
Miniaturization Theory
interaction and bodily intimacy explains why many figurines in the ancient world
(including many presented in this volume) conform easily—in size, shape, texture,
and durability—to the human hand’s ability to touch and grasp.
Through these accommodations to a user’s body, figurines inspire a kind of “en-
chantment” with the idea that a small-scale world could be so easily accessible (Gell
1992, 47).4 The user’s obvious physical dominance over miniatures seduces him or
her into feeling enlarged and empowered (Bailey 2005, 33). Regardless of his or her
status in society, the user can rule and control what Bachelard ([1958] 1994) referred
to as a daydream of a life within a life. This alluring combination of wonderment
and accessibility is crucial to the social function of miniatures. By seeming so avail-
able and endearingly familiar, figurines can present alternate versions of social re-
ality that engage with, but do not precisely reflect, the social milieu in which they
circulate—and yet be accepted as “real.” Within the world of the miniature, complex
lived identities can become simplified and essentialized.
One of the most enduring figurine poses in Mesopotamia presents an adult woman
holding an infant child—a representation of motherhood so reductive in content
5
In/Complete: An Introduction j5
and unified across time that it has been interpreted by scholars as embodying the ab-
stract concepts of fertility and procreation themselves (see, for instance, the examples
in Van Buren 1930, 40–50). Concentrated focus on the mother–infant relation-
ship was possible in figurine form, whereas the biographies and life circumstances of
real Mesopotamian women who happened to be mothers would undoubtedly have
encompassed identities and social relationships beyond the maternal. Bodies can also
become idealized in miniature form—few women, for instance, could live up to the
graceful perfection of a Tanagra figurine (Dillon 2012)—or be reduced to unattrac-
tive parody, as presented in the exaggerated ugliness of “grotesque” figurines from the
Hellenistic era (Higgins 1967, 103). Transitory life stages (such as pregnancy), actions
(such as horse riding or athletic exercise; see c hapter 6), or events (such as ritual ded-
ication; see c hapter 3) are permanently frozen and theatricalized through miniaturi-
zation. What living bodies can only achieve as temporary states becomes eternal and
perfect in the world of the figurine. The intimacy, accessibility, and enchantment of
these objects induces their users to accept objectified social distortions as participants,
role models, and influential agents of change within the real-life social world. The term
“fascination” has been used by one of us (Langin-Hooper 2015)5 to describe this “mu-
tual intimacy of miniature and user, in which each is attracted to, and exercises power
over, the other in a mutually entangled interaction” (for use of the term “entanglement”
to express relationships between persons and things, see especially Hodder 2012).
Theoretical approaches to miniaturization add nuance to the traditional ways in
which miniatures are studied, rather than replacing them. Contextual and formal
analysis, and resulting assessments of figurine function (i.e., miniature object as votive
dedication, children’s toy, fertility aid, or household decoration) still provide valu-
able information about ancient social practices and beliefs. Yet, as informative as such
reconstructions of figurine function are, it is nevertheless important to note that they
are also limited and proximal, often obscuring the inherent plurality of a figurine’s
“purpose” which could change throughout its use-life.6 Miniaturization theory gives
scholars a toolkit for deconstructing prima facie assumptions about the usefulness of
figurines—assumptions that only seem like self-evident explanations because of the
ways in which miniatures seduce and enchant even the scholars who analyze them,
convincing us that their presence and practicality is obvious and natural. Yet, on close
analysis, why would gods be deemed satisfied by receiving a miniature statue of a
person or animal left in their temples, such as with the early Mesopotamian “eye-
idols” at Tell Brak?7 Or why would a woman be pleased by having a miniature dancing
girl decorate her bedroom, as seen at the Hellenistic site of Priene?8 Miniaturization
theory pushes analysis in the direction of these questions, revealing the mechanisms
by which miniature objects operated so convincingly that their use spans almost every
human society at almost every point in history.
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ruveta minulle opettajaksi?"
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(Suomennos rumaniankielestä)
(Suomennos italiankielestä)
(Suomennos italiankielestä)
Mä seisoin rannelmalla
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siks' kuin jo ulapalla
pois häipyi pursikin.
Mä katsoin yhtenänsä,
jo purje poistuikin;
nyt itki ystävänsä
ja itkin minäkin.
Kirj. Fâzil
(Suomennos turkinkielestä)
Kirj. Husnî
(Suomennos turkinkielestä)
(Mukaelma)
Mä tunnen tarhan,
mi tuliruusuin
kukkii, sielut sen hehkuun uupuin.
Ei kerro kieli
sen hurman öitä,
ei täällä lasketa hetkilöitä.
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