Search Results

Protohistoric Bronze Age Cyprus (ProBA): A Sociohistorical Approach

Bernard A. Knapp

in Prehistoric and Protohistoric Cyprus: Identity, Insularity, and Connectivity

This chapter offers a comprehensive discussion of Protohistoric Bronze Age Cyprus (ca. 1650–1100 BC) and its material record, which is characterized by several striking changes: town centres with ... More

This chapter offers a comprehensive discussion of Protohistoric Bronze Age Cyprus (ca. 1650–1100 BC) and its material record, which is characterized by several striking changes: town centres with monumental architecture; new, socially‐stratified burial practices; first appearance of writing (Cypro‐Minoan); intensification of copper production and development of extensive trade contacts; fortifications and other martial paraphernalia. This transformed material record indicates that Cypriot society was no longer egalitarian, isolated, or village‐oriented but rather had become socially stratified, internationally‐oriented and town‐centred. The successful production and trade of Cyprus's copper resources together with the generation of agricultural surpluses indicate that political authority on the island had become centralized. The key indicators of a stratified, complex society are considered through detailed examination of settlement trends (site hierarchy), socio‐political organization (architecture, mortuary practices, seals, sealings), production and exchange (copper, metals, jewellery, luxury goods, storage facilities, seal impressions), gendered representations (terracotta and metal figurines), mortuary practices (pottery, metal objects, luxury imports), monumentality and memory (architecture, sites), migration, hybridization, and the Aegean ‘colonization’ of Cyprus (pottery, metals and metallurgy, ivories, figurines, seals, architectural features, burials). All these materials typically reveal a mixture of Cypriot, Levantine, and Aegean elements, and are more likely to reflect an amalgam of ideas and influences from all of them rather than proof for an origin (or colonization) from one any single one.Less

VOLKSCONCERTE AND CONCEPTS OF GENRE IN BRAHMS'S VIENNA

Margaret Notley

in Lateness and Brahms: Music and Culture in the Twilight of Viennese Liberalism

By Brahms's time, elaborate metaphors — symphonies as “plain speaking”, symphonic performances as Volksversammlungen — had developed around the genre. This chapter evaluates this patently ideological ... More

By Brahms's time, elaborate metaphors — symphonies as “plain speaking”, symphonic performances as Volksversammlungen — had developed around the genre. This chapter evaluates this patently ideological perspective, which was especially glaring in Vienna, a city where only an elite fraction of the populace could hear orchestral performances of symphonies. Perceptions of deficiencies in symphonies by Brahms, who was considered always to compose in chamber style, are evaluated in light of genre aesthetics in which a political outlook and conception of a genre merge. Ideas about symphonies reflected how the constituency of 19th-century Liberalism chose to regard itself: like the Parliament members elected by a well-to-do minority with voting rights, the select gatherings at Vienna Philharmonic concerts could represent “the people”. Habermas's conclusion that the public sphere was “mere ideology” is pertinent here. Symphonic monumentality and mid-century rejection of Romanticism, as well as the enhanced contemporary significance of slow movements are discussed.Less

‘Mich […] in Variationen […]erzählen’ II: Reconstructing the Author in Zunge zeigen and Mein Jahrhundert

Rebecca Braun

in Constructing Authorship in the Work of Günter Grass

This chapter investigates how a further change in Grass's understanding of authorship can be discerned in the ‘mixed-media’ works Zunge zeigen and Mein Jahrhundert. The starting ... More

This chapter investigates how a further change in Grass's understanding of authorship can be discerned in the ‘mixed-media’ works Zunge zeigen and Mein Jahrhundert. The starting point for discussion is the assertion that Grass's tendency to present his creative abilities in various artistic disciplines results in his expanding the remit of the authorial role. The multiple disciplines introduce a new kind of dialogue to the author's text that goes beyond the construction of the ‘encapsulated’ narrative self of his earlier autofictional pieces. At the same time, the insights gained from Grass's exploration of authorial limitations (as developed in Chapter 4) add a qualification to his self-presentation. In the texts discussed in this chapter, a monumental celebration of authorship is accompanied by an ironic deconstruction of the concept. The specific dynamics between author, narrator, and text combine to question the author's textual centrality even as they would appear to confirm it.Less

‘Er, in dessen Namen ich krebsend vorankam’: Reading the Author in Ein weites Feld and Im Krebsgang

Rebecca Braun

in Constructing Authorship in the Work of Günter Grass

This chapter analyses in detail two late texts, Ein weites Feld (1995) and Im Krebsgang (2002). The key premise is that in displacing his authorial persona into the margins of the text, Grass ... More

This chapter analyses in detail two late texts, Ein weites Feld (1995) and Im Krebsgang (2002). The key premise is that in displacing his authorial persona into the margins of the text, Grass introduces new voices that reinterpret the author's literary and socio-political achievements. The unflattering way in which these voices present the old master—the archivists note his physical decrepitude while Paul portrays him as a nagging old man—adds a considerable deal of humour to the texts. Furthermore, this shift indicates an increasingly ironic approach to authorship. By focusing on how others, readers and budding authors alike, construct the author in line with their image of him, Grass develops a self-conscious aesthetics of replacement. The contradictory pulls towards monumentality and inconsequentiality lie at the heart of these late works, conditioning not just much of the humour and authorial self-presentation within them, but their structural composition.Less

Tracking the Transformations: Population, Intensification, and Monumentality

Patrick Vinton Kirch

in How Chiefs Became Kings: Divine Kingship and the Rise of Archaic States in Ancient Hawai'i

This chapter addresses the evidence for major trends in demography, settlement, economic intensification, specialization, monumental architecture, and other material correlates of sociopolitical ... More

This chapter addresses the evidence for major trends in demography, settlement, economic intensification, specialization, monumental architecture, and other material correlates of sociopolitical transformation. The material evidence of monumentality provides critical evidence regarding the ways in which the Hawaiian elites employed ritual and ideology to increase their control over the political economy, and to legitimate their claims to divine rule. The vast majority of Hawai'i Island's production had to come from intensive dryland field systems. The western half of the archipelago was doubly fortunate: where irrigation and aquaculture could be intensified the most, there were also the richest and largest stocks of marine resources. The emergence of archaic states in Hawai'i was a process rather than an event. Throughout the Protohistoric Period, Hawai'i Island cycled through unification and fission, frequently unable to maintain the overarching control first achieved by 'Umi.Less

Why Do People Build Monuments? Late Archaic Platform Mounds in the Norte Chico

Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer

in Early New World Monumentality

The Norte Chico region witnessed an early florescence of mound construction at more than 30 Late Archaic (3000 to 1800 B.C.) sites in an area of only 1800 sq km. Each of these sites has from 1 to 7 ... More

The Norte Chico region witnessed an early florescence of mound construction at more than 30 Late Archaic (3000 to 1800 B.C.) sites in an area of only 1800 sq km. Each of these sites has from 1 to 7 mounds ranging from 3000 to 100,000 cu m in volume. In looking at the emergence of this complex cultural system, a critical question is how and why these mounds were constructed over many generations. This chapter will examine evidence for the scale of labor involved in mound construction and for (or against) centralized organization of labor.Less

Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault's History of Sexuality†

Lin Foxhall

in Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome

The influence of Michel Foucault's writings on sexuality, especially The History of Sexuality (1978–1986) on subsequent studies of sexuality, gender and the discourses of power and oppression, has ... More

The influence of Michel Foucault's writings on sexuality, especially The History of Sexuality (1978–1986) on subsequent studies of sexuality, gender and the discourses of power and oppression, has been profound. In particular, Foucault has revolutionised the study of the social history of classical antiquity, where, with fifth–fourth century bc Athens, he ultimately decided to begin his investigations. He provides an analytical framework that can be expanded to explore the implications of sex and gender in the whole of social life. Foucault fashioned his analytical ‘techniques’ over a lifetime of archaeology, genealogy and ethics. This chapter presents a feminist critique of his History of Sexuality, and re-evaluates sexuality as a part of personal and political identity through the social acts of constructing gender, whose meanings change with context. It also examines the concepts of time and monumentality, the constitution and political construction of households, and how sexuality is related to socialisation and power.Less

Considering Early New World Monumentality

Robert M. Rosenswig and Richard L. Burger

in Early New World Monumentality

The introductory chapter provides a theoretical overview to the volume. This theoretical perspective includes a brief historical account of the study of monumentality, the idea of approaching ... More

The introductory chapter provides a theoretical overview to the volume. This theoretical perspective includes a brief historical account of the study of monumentality, the idea of approaching monumentality from two temporal scales (initial labor organization and long-term built environment), as well as the rationale for examining these issues comparatively across the three American continents. A review of the contents of each paper is not provided in this introductory chapter but instead themes that run through multiple papers is discussed and their implication explored.Less

Agriculture and Monumentality in the Soconusco Region of Chiapas, Mexico

Robert M. Rosenswig

in Early New World Monumentality

Using the site of Cuauhtémoc in the Soconusco as a starting point, I examine the earliest monumental architecture in Mesoamerica. In 1600 bce, Cuauhtémoc began an 800-year occupation as a local ... More

Using the site of Cuauhtémoc in the Soconusco as a starting point, I examine the earliest monumental architecture in Mesoamerica. In 1600 bce, Cuauhtémoc began an 800-year occupation as a local center; yet it was only during the Conchas phase (900–800 bce) that a 5 m high mound was built at the site. The Conchas phase was also when the regional center of La Blanca was founded and a 25 m mound erected. While ambitious leaders had been competing with each other for centuries, the Conchas phase provides evidence of a new level of social stratification in the Soconusco.Less

Introduction: Perspectives on Musical Monumentality

Alexander Rehding

in Music and Monumentality: Commemoration and Wonderment in Nineteenth Century Germany

Although musical monumentality is expected to entail grand ambitions, it may simply be viewed as a stylistic property whose effects may evoke both positive and negative qualities in such a way that ... More

Although musical monumentality is expected to entail grand ambitions, it may simply be viewed as a stylistic property whose effects may evoke both positive and negative qualities in such a way that music can be either uplifting and inspiring or saddening and distasteful. Monumental music possesses a self-evident nature. This, however, may pose certain challenges and difficulties in determining a stylistic classification for these effects since, despite its relevance, such a taxonomy has yet to be established in the musicological literature. A number of writers like Theodor W. Adorno, Alfred Einstein, and others have provided relatively vague explanations for this monumentality since they may have assumed that their readers are already able to grasp the concept. This chapter illustrates how the self-evidence of musical monumentality challenges the self-understanding of musicology as an intellectual discipline, causes an aesthetic problem, and is undermined by certain ideologies.Less

Gathering for Nine Millennia along the Atlantic Coast and St. Johns River of Northeast Florida

Asa R. Randall and Victor D. Thompson

Leslie Reeder-Myers, John A. Turck, and Torben C. Rick (eds)

in The Archaeology of Human-Environmental Dynamics on the North American Atlantic Coast

Northeast Florida’s wide variety of freshwater and marine biomes supported a diverse array of hunter-gatherer communities over the course of 9000 years. This chapter synthesizes the available ... More

Northeast Florida’s wide variety of freshwater and marine biomes supported a diverse array of hunter-gatherer communities over the course of 9000 years. This chapter synthesizes the available evidence for subsistence, settlement, and ceremony across the region. Whereas there is little evidence for significant changes in the subsistence economy through time, there is abundant evidence for different modes of social interaction and monumentality. A historical approach to this diversity reveals that social gathering at various scales was enabled by the physical and symbolic resources of the region, including existing monuments and objects.Less

Introduction: Emerging Approaches to the Landscapes of the Early and Middle Woodland Southeast

Alice P. Wright and Edward R. Henry

in Early and Middle Woodland Landscapes of the Southeast

The concept of social landscapes provides an integrative and innovative framework for archaeological research in the Early and Middle Woodland Southeast. Landscape archaeology has a diverse ... More

The concept of social landscapes provides an integrative and innovative framework for archaeological research in the Early and Middle Woodland Southeast. Landscape archaeology has a diverse intellectual history and presents certain analytical challenges, but new methodologies and technologies are enabling researchers to tackle questions about interactions among people and their natural and cultural surroundings. As demonstrated by the chapters in this volume (summarized in the introduction), the landscapes of the Early and Middle Woodland periods in the Southeast–long defined by novel and wide-reaching developments in technology, subsistence, interaction, and monumentality–are particularly amenable to such approaches.Less

Reading the Watts Towers, Teaching Los Angeles: Storytelling and Public Art

Monica Barra

in Sabato Rodia's Towers in Watts: Art, Migrations, Development

This chapter examines the Towers within a convergence of several disparate, yet interconnected, discourses about cities, history, monumentality, and public art in order to demonstrate how Simon ... More

This chapter examines the Towers within a convergence of several disparate, yet interconnected, discourses about cities, history, monumentality, and public art in order to demonstrate how Simon Rodia's artwork gestures toward a particular production of space that is distinctly of a place, in general, and particularly Los Angeles. It first considers how narratives about cities and art circulate and interact in a fluid process of becoming within space and through time. Drawing on Italian writer Italo Calvino's work Invisible Cities, it uses the dialogic conversations about cities between the two main characters to begin to open up the possibility of reimagining how a place is collaboratively created through the stories told about it. From here it considers how storytelling as a form of history making is a salient way to think about how we teach and engage the politics of place. Finally, it looks into how embracing a more collaborative and processual approach to understanding urban environments based on narratives and storytelling interfaces with more specific theoretical engagements with the question of urban space.Less

Epitome and Eternity: Some Epitaphs and Votive Inscriptions in the Latin Love Elegists

L. B. T. Houghton

in Inscriptions and their Uses in Greek and Latin Literature

In few (if any) genres of Roman poetry do ‘embedded’ inscriptions appear with such regularity or such prominence as in Latin love elegy. Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, and their elegiac successors all ... More

In few (if any) genres of Roman poetry do ‘embedded’ inscriptions appear with such regularity or such prominence as in Latin love elegy. Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, and their elegiac successors all rank the composition of epitaphs for their own personae and for other inhabitants of their poetic world among their chief literary pastimes — and the same is true of votive inscriptions, of which the genre includes numerous examples. Part of the reason for this may be suggested by Horace's account of the earliest uses of the elegiac couplet at Ars poetica 75-6: versibus impariter iunctis querimonia primum, ¦ post etiam inclusa est voti sententia compos (‘As for unequally-matched elegiac verses, first of all lamentation, and afterwards also the fulfilment of vows, was their content’.) This chapter explores some of the functions performed by these epigraphic interventions in Latin love poetry, concentrating particularly on the ways in which epitaphs and votive inscriptions serve to summarize and epitomize the poetic contexts in which they appear, and on how, by undermining the mimetic character of these embedded inscriptions and/or emphasizing their essential textuality, the elegists set out their claim to the more potent immortality of their literary monuments.Less

From Inscriptions to Literature (and Sometimes Back Again): Some Uses of the Epigraphic Sources in the Ancient Literary Traditions on Delphi

Manuela Mari

in Inscriptions and their Uses in Greek and Latin Literature

Inscriptions were an essential part of the ancient landscape of Delphi, exerting a strong influence over the narratives devoted to the sanctuary by historians and other writers. Inscriptions offered ... More

Inscriptions were an essential part of the ancient landscape of Delphi, exerting a strong influence over the narratives devoted to the sanctuary by historians and other writers. Inscriptions offered a guide to the reconstruction of the past and an exciting way to narrate it. A great deal of information and many reflections on Delphic history and myths, on amphictionic institutions, and on the most remarkable monuments of the site were therefore suggested to the ancient authors by their own skill in reading and interpreting written documents available on the site itself, and by their confidence in the genuineness of such texts. On latter point, there is particular interest in both the polemic between Aeschines and Demosthenes on the possibility of knowing and ‘teaching’ the most ancient history of the sanctuary, and the research carried out by Aristotle and Callisthenes in Delphic archives. Delphi was therefore, in the classical period, simultaneously a place to visit and to go to on a pilgrimage, the focus of many historians' interest, and their ‘library’ and ‘epigraphic museum’. The chapters devoted to Delphi in the works by Herodotus, Strabo, or Plutarch (not to mention Pausanias) were directly inspired by the observation of monuments, buildings, and votive offerings and by the reading of written documents on permanent media. This chapter discusses some of the most interesting examples of this research work taking place in (and concerning) Delphi and demonstrates the extent of intellectual activity excited by the availability of one of the widest ‘epigraphic collections’ of the ancient world.Less

Social Landscapes of Early and Middle Woodland Peoples in the Southeast

David G. Anderson

in Early and Middle Woodland Landscapes of the Southeast

This paper examines how each of the contributors to the volume explores the Woodland social landscape of the Southeast. The discussion examines the many different theoretical and methodological ... More

This paper examines how each of the contributors to the volume explores the Woodland social landscape of the Southeast. The discussion examines the many different theoretical and methodological perspectives, as well as the many different kinds of archaeological evidence, that the individual chapter authors brought to bear on the topic. The papers demonstrate, each in their own way, that landscape history matters in southeastern archaeology. Domestic and ceremonial features like houses and work areas, mounds, earthworks, and plazas, as well as intervening fields, forests, and waterways, should not be thought of as finished creations but as socially constructed and cognized, continually changing settings. Southeastern prehistoric landscapes reflect the history and traditions of the peoples who lived in and shaped them. Landscape can be examined in many ways, and the archaeological case studies offered provide a means to examine how people over large areas were connected, and interacted, during the Woodland period.Less