Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art

Brian A. Brown, Marian H. Feldman

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781501513206
• eBook ISBN: 9781614510352
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Arte general

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.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• List of Illustrations
• Editors‘ Note
• Map 1
• Map 2
• Introduction
• I. Defining the Field
• Archaeology and Politics in Iraq
• Forgeries of Ancient Near Eastern Artifacts and Cultures
• Beyond the East-West Dichotomy in Syrian and Levantine Wall Paintings
• Orientalism and Orientalization in the Iron Age Mediterranean
• II. Technologies and Practices of Artistic Production
• The Historiography of the Concept of „Workshop“ in Ancient. Near Eastern Archaeology: Descriptive Models and Theoret ical Approaches (Anthropology vs. Art History)
• The Impact of the „Portable“: Integrating „Minor Arts“ into the Ancient Near Easter n Canon
• The Influence of the Physical Medium on the Decoration of a Work of Art: A Case Study of the “Phoenician” Bowls
• Impressions of the Contest Scene: Glyptic Imagery and Sealing Practice in the Akkadian Period
• Histories of Cypriot Art through Seal Carving
• III. Text and Image
• Relating Image and Word in Ancient Mesopotamia
• Pictorial Mythology and Narrative in the Ancient Near East
• Art‘s Role in the Origins of Writing: The Seal-Carver, the Scribe, and the Earliest Lexical Texts
• Posthumous Images and the Memory of the Akkadian Kings
• Styles of Pictorial Narratives in Assurbanipal‘ s Reliefs
• IV. Social Identities
• Sexuality, Reproduction and Gender in Terracotta Plaques from the Late Third-Early Second Millennia BCE
• Images and Conceptions of Ideal Feminine Beauty in Neo-Assyrian Royal Contexts, c. 883–627 BCE
• Uniforms and Non-Conformists: Tensions and Trends in Early Dynastic Fashion
• Terracotta Figurines and Social Identities in Hellenistic Babylonia
• The Impressed Image: Glyptic Studies as Art and Social History
• Culture on Display: Representations of Ethnicity in the Art of the Late Assyrian State
• V. Religion, Ritual and Politics
• Human, Divine or Both? The Uruk Vase and the Problem of Ambiguity in Early Mesopotamian Visual Arts
• A Silent Message: Godlike Kings in Mesopotamian Art
• When the Subject is the Object: Relational Ontologies, the Partible Person and Images of Naram-Sin
• Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Violence: Warfare in Neo-Assyrian Art
• The Tell Asmar Hoard and Rituals of Early Dynastic Sculpture
• VI. Making and Defining Space
• A Feast for the Eyes: Depiction and Performance of Ritual within the Sacred Space of Middle Bronze Age Ebla
• The Art of Building a Late Assyrian Royal Palace
• The Assyrian Landscape as Ritual
• Aesthetics of the Natural Environment in the Arts of the Ancient Near East: The Elamite Rock-Cut Sanctuary of Kurangun
• Art of the Achaemenid Empire, and Art in the Achaemenid Empire
• Index