KOINE
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KOINE

Mediterranean Studies in Honor of R. Ross Holloway

Derek Counts, Anthony Tuck, Anthony Tuck

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KOINE

Mediterranean Studies in Honor of R. Ross Holloway

Derek Counts, Anthony Tuck, Anthony Tuck

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About This Book

The Oxford English Dictionary defines koine as 'a set of cultural or other attributes common to various groups'. This volume merges an academic career over a half century in breadth and scope with an editorial vision that brings together a chorus of scholarly contributions echoing the core principles of R. Ross Holloways own unique perspective on ancient Mediterranean studies. Through broadly conceived themes, the four individual sections of this volume (I. A View of Classical Art: Iconography in Context; II. Crossroads of the Mediterranean: Cultural Entanglements Across the Connecting Sea; III. Coins as Culture: Art and Coinage from Sicily; and IV. Discovery and Discourse, Archaeology and Interpretation) are an attempt to capture the many and varied trajectories of thought that have marked his career and serve as testimony to the significance of his research. The twenty-four papers (plus four introductory essays to the individual sections, biographical sketch and main introduction) contain recent research on subjects ranging from the Kleophrades Painter to the Black Sea, Sicilian Coinage and archaeology in modern Rome.

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Publisher
Oxbow Books
Year
2009
ISBN
9781782973645
Topic
Storia
SECTION IV
INTRODUCTION
Discovery and Discourse:
Archaeology and Interpretation
Derek B. Counts and Anthony S. Tuck
Two graduate students busied themselves clearing an area at the base of a massive Bronze Age wall in preparation for an architect’s rendering. From high atop a hill to the east, Holloway’s words rolled forth in a deep baritone, narrating a story of pirates, heroes, and epic battles that breathed life into those very walls his graduate students sought to render in sterile ink. From a commanding place within the island fortress of Ustica, Ross Holloway was performing the duty of many field archaeologists as he presented the archaeological discoveries of the site to students visiting from the local grade school. But unlike those for whom these tasks are tiresome distractions from the rigors of daily life in the field, Holloway had captivated these children in wide-eyed, rapt attention. A fieldtrip that began in the bored minds of twelve-year-olds ended with a true sense of the grandeur of the past.
It many respects, it is fitting that a section entitled, Discovery and Discourse: Archaeology and Interpretation should be the final one of this volume. As laid out in this volume’s introduction, questions of the physical history of the past begin with the processes of excavation, lead us down the pathways of analysis, interrogation, discussion, and eventually, return to the field to test our conclusions and beliefs against the inevitability of new discovery. So much of Holloway’s career has followed this cycle. Within the context of five decades of academic production, Holloway’s contributions to field archaeology (most notably the elucidation of southern Italian and Sicilian material culture) stand at the forefront. His bibliography (Cova, this volume) is packed with interim reports from the field, synthetic discussions of finds and context, and comprehensive and prompt publications of final results. Indeed, these contributions were recognized by the Archaeological Institute of America when, in 1995, it awarded Holloway its most prestigious award, the Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement. In conferring this honor, the AIA directly acknowledged the significance of Holloway’s research, his breadth of scope, and his unwavering dedication to archaeological fieldwork and discourse. The following is an excerpt from the citation:
Through [his] excavations, Prof. Holloway has revolutionized the study of Italian prehistory. Carbon 14 dates obtained by him at Buccino (1967–1974) and La Muculufa (1982–1987) have pushed back the beginning of the Early Bronze Age in Italy and Sicily at least 500 years, from the late third/early second millennium to the early or mid-third millennium. His work at Buccino revealed the earliest dated bronze weapons from the Italian peninsula. That at La Muculufa discovered the earliest clearly identified regional sanctuary of Bronze Age Sicily. His book, Italy and the Aegean: 3000–700 B.C., published in 1981, has proven to be a prophetic guide to the rethinking of this field. His current excavations at Ustica have uncovered what may be the best-preserved Middle Bronze Age town of the region and have found the first stone sculpture of the area, attributed to the second millennium B.C. (published in R. R. Holloway and S. Lukesh, Ustica I: Excavations of 1990 and 1991). Ross Holloway has also examined later periods in Italy through his excavations at Satrianum (1966–1967). This work marked the first concerted effort to study a native Lucanian center and provided evidence for the relationship of this area to the coastal Greek cities of both the sixth and fourth centuries B.C. Several complete and prompt publications have resulted from these excavations, including Satrianum: The Archaeological Investigations Conducted by Brown University in 1966 and 1967 (1970), Buccino: The Eneolithic Necropolis of San Antonio. Discoveries Made in 1968 and 1969 (1973), and La Muculufa: The Early Bronze Age Sanctuary. Excavations of 1982 and 1983 (1990) (American Journal of Archaeology 100, 1996, 338).
While Holloway’s excavations and publications have garnered him an international reputation, his dedication to the field (which he himself traces back to an early stage in life, see Allen in this volume) has extended beyond his own research and scholarly output. As co-founder of the Association for Field Archaeology (AFFA) and long-time editorial board member of its prestigious Journal of Field Archaeology, Holloway was actively involved in the early efforts to establish classical archaeology as an academic discipline in the United States (see especially, Holloway 1983b), necessarily independent from its traditional ‘parent’ disciplines of classics and art history. Moreover, his ardent belief that classical archaeology demanded specialized, unique training at the undergraduate and subsequent graduate levels led to the creation of Brown University’s Center for Old World Archaeology and Art (and recently rededicated as the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World). Founded in 1978, roughly a decade after the establishment of similar programs at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley, the Center was among the early pioneers of independent, degree-granting, interdisciplinary programs in classical archaeology and art in the United States.
An insistence on the artifact, its context, and the elucidation of its place in a wider history have always punctuated Holloway’s research. His recognition of archaeological scholarship as a constant interplay or dialogue between the excavator, the scientist, the historian, the philosopher and even the prophet has resulted in a body of research that transforms the objects of the past into history. The papers in this section encapsulate the processes of discovery and discourse that mark the career of a field archaeologist.
The six contributions to this volume’s final section each reflect different facets of a career of exploration, discovery, consideration and discussion. Lukesh’s article overviews the history of Holloway’s excavations at the Bronze Age Sicililian site of Ustica and highlights Holloway’s role in bringing this critical body of material to the attention of audiences often unaware of the remarkable complexity of social and commercial interaction between the Eastern and Central Mediterranean during this dynamic period. Joukowsky’s comprehensive presentation of her fascinating excavations at the Nabataean site of Petra begins, like Lukesh, where all archaeological inquiry must, in the field. Not only does her detailed account of the discoveries at the site reflect Brown University’s longstanding commitment to the sponsorship of field projects, it also reminds us that well known sites can still yield startling revelations when re-examined with new techniques of excavation and documentation.
The spirit of rigorous reinterpretation of our academic assumptions is on display in two additional contributions to this section. Barletta expands her groundbreaking work on the origins of the Greek architectural orders by drawing on comparisons that reach far beyond the Greek world. In so doing, she not only adds considerable strength and nuance to her previous arguments, but also reminds us that evidence in support of our ideas need not always come from predictable sources. Van Keuren and Gromet’s article examines Roman marble sarcophagi, which have been documented and studied by antiquarians and scholars for centuries. Nevertheless, through a careful application of isotopic and iconographic analysis, the authors provide essential commentary for both the material production and economic marketing of such sarcophagi, a process that yields some surprising results. This willingness to employ a range of archaeometric techniques in the service of traditional archaeological and art historical questions echoes Holloway’s own longstanding willingness to reach out to other fields and employ new analytical techniques to advance our knowledge of the field.
Finally, the contributions of Kampen and Dyson remind us that discovery inspires and directs discourse, which in turn often yields new discoveries. Turning to one of the most famous statues of the Classical world, the Aphrodite of Knidos, Kampen’s article draws upon feminist theory to consider the gendered perspective of women in ancient sanctuaries as fundamentally different from that of men. Dyson’s contribution, fitting in its position at the end of this volume, considers not merely the ancient monumentality of the Ara Pacis, but also the political implications of the modern architectural framing of a pivotal element of Augustan propaganda. Both Kampen and Dyson apply approaches that shed light on the motivations of the past, as well as reveal to us how our view of antiquity shapes the ways we understand the world today.
While each of these essays offers intriguing new evidence and fresh ideas for consideration and debate, they also reflect the fact that the questions that frame the discipline of archaeology begin in the field and must always return to it. Holloway’s work continues, not only though his own scholarship, but through the myriad of students, friends, and colleagues whose own thinking is continually ignited through the example of his passion for the field and his remarkable curiosity of intellect. Holloway’s work will continue for generations yet to come, inspired by his vision of and commitment to the principle that the field archaeologist stands as an indispensable partner in the inquiries of history.
17
Infinite Attention to Detail: A Slice of Sicily in the Third and Second Millennia BCE
Susan S. Lukesh
More than four thousand year ago, a master craftsman surveyed the painted cups and vessels produced by a workshop and community of artisans in the river valley. This was a workshop less of a specific physical space, although that was certainly required, and more of shared design information across the community of potters and painters. Many of the objects were uniquely painted, others echoed patterns painted on similar pots, and still others attempted to replicate the master’s own work; none could achieve the originality and technique his pots displayed. Many of the painted motifs reflected the glorious woven baskets and woven cup holders hanging from hut roofs and common rooms. The pots from the workshop and others like them would find their way to the regular gathering of communities at the head of the salty river, upland from the sea, below the limestone cliffs where the ancestors rested their bones; others were used to hold unguents and other precious materials. Some of the vessels might well have come from another community closer to the setting sun where minerals used for lustral practices were harvested and traded. In the same community the production of pots was organized among a number of painters for each pot. The master potter might know that his vessels would eventually be broken but could not know that one of them would be painstakingly reconstructed from hundreds of fragments during long winter nights four thousand years later to serve as proof of the talents, capabilities, and achievements of these people. With knowledge of the related pots, people millennia later would begin to appreciate the complexity and sophistication of this federation of communities in southern Sicily and would turn to study artisan colleagues farther west on the island.
West toward Agrigento and north to Caltanissetta there were other groups of people related to the master and his fellow craftsmen. In this area families joined other families in small communities, and the relationships grew into federations. They built and lived in villages of huts with stone foundations; used everyday pottery of cups, jars, and mixing craters and bowls; created and used intricately decorated painted pottery, cups, large storage vessels, and the ubiquitous footed pot; and traded among themselves. They had bone tools, loom weights, and spindle whorls that argue for weaving and manufacture of clothing. Their periodic gatherings, apparently for religious ceremonies, were quite possibly tinged with commercial purposes. When travelling long distances toward the breaking sun some wore a bone-carved amulet suspended from a cord around their necks as a token of identification in a world where people were bound by ties of guest-friendship even if thousands of mile away.
At the site of La Muculufa, the probable home of our master potter and vase painter, the gathering place faced east. Behind it were towering limestone bluffs in whose rock-cut chamber tombs the people and their ancestors were interred. These chamber tombs were prepared well before death by a small group of people whose job it was to cut tombs, and, in a climate in which the body was reduced to a skeleton in a short period of time, they allowed easy reuse of the space for a new body as old bones and grave goods were swept aside. Bronze was known to them although precious enough that it was closely guarded and little of it left behind. Their remains are largely some whole pots and broken pottery, chipped stone tools and a burned bone plaque, the latter clear testimony of travels far beyond Sicily. At La Muculufa the high craftsmanship of the master artist and other artists attempting to replicate his work and the evidence of multiple hands on pots from the group in the Agrigento areas, along with the evidence of sulphur extraction and refining, speak of complex organizations more suggestive of later times or more eastern Mediterranean peoples. West of La Muculufa, Monte Grande, Grotta Ticchiara, Piano Vento, and Ciavolaro in the Agrigento area are some of the recently excavated sites from which we can begin to reconstruct the way of life representative of this group of sites belonging to the Castelluccian culture, which takes its name from a site southwest of Syracuse excavated by the great Paolo Orsi before 1900.
Centuries later descendents of these people had an elaborate nexus of trading relationships and warehouses specifically designed for commercial purpose. Experience with sulphur mining and the commerce associated with it had propelled them to far more elaborate and long-range trading opportunities such as manufacture, sale, and transport of copper ingots. One community (I Faraglioni di Ustica) on another Bronze Age site, though...

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