|
The Archaeological Institute of America
Western Illinois Society
CALENDAR OF EVENTS 2012-2013
Click on titles for more details.
Monday, September 17, 2012
“Neo-Assyrian Palaces: Prestige, Power and Propaganda”
Amy E. Barron,
University of Toronto
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
“Agatha
Christie, Archaeology and Alzheimer’s”
Amy E. Barron,
University of Toronto
Monday, October 1, 2012
“Life in Provincia Arabia:
Perspectives from the 2012 Season in Dhiban, Jordan”
Danielle Steen Fatkin,
Visiting Assistant Professor
of History at Knox College
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
“East defeats West: Naval War
and Cross-Cultural Adaptation in Classical Cyprus”
Kristian Lorenzo,
Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Archaeology at Monmouth College
Monday, November 12, 2012 Michael Laughy, Assistant Professor of Classics, Washington and Lee University
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
“The Bold and the Beautiful: Polychroming and Gilding in Antiquity”
Benton Kidd,
Associate Curator of Ancient Art, Museum of Art and Archaeology,
University of Missouri
Wednesday, February 18, 2013 “Bellerophon, Pegasos, and the Chimaera: Myth and Identity in Ancient Corinth” Angela Ziskowski, Assistant Professor of History, Coe College
Monday, March 4, 2013
Monday, March 25, 2013
“Image and Text:
Methodological Preliminaries”
Jason Nethercut,
Visiting Assistant Professor in Classics, Knox College
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 Detailed Descriptions
Monday, September 17, 2012
“Neo-Assyrian
Palaces: Prestige, Power and Propaganda”
Amy E. Barron,
University of Toronto (red.barron@utoronto.ca)
7:30 P.M. in Room (TBA), Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois
In the first millennium BCE the ancient Assyrians built great palaces in
what is now Iraq to serve not just as homes for their kings, but
gathering places for their armies and store houses for their
tribute. They also used the art in their palaces to send messages of
power and prestige to the peoples of their empire and beyond. The images
were carved onto large scale wall reliefs which were beautiful, yet also
intended to educate the viewer on the dangers of failing to obey the
king’s authority. The earliest palaces bore images of the king as
warrior, religious leader and mighty hunter, while later palaces were
adorned with scenes of loyal subjects paying tribute, and disloyal ones
paying the consequences. Friend and foe would have been paraded
past these illustrations on their way to see the king. This illustrated
lecture presents the wonders of
these ancient monuments, the great variety and detail of their
decoration, and their use as political propaganda by the Assyrians.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
“Agatha Christie,
Archaeology and Alzheimer’s”
Amy E. Barron,
University of Toronto (red.barron@utoronto.ca)
7:30 P.M. in the Morgan Room of Poling Hall, Monmouth College, Monmouth,
Illinois
Agatha Christie is known as one of the greatest mystery novelist of the
20th century, but few people also know that she was married
to renowned Mesopotamian archaeologist Max Mallowan. Agatha spent
much of her life living and working on archaeological excavations and
her love of the Middle East and the life she and her husband lived there
is reflected in many of her novels including
Murder on the Orient Express,
Death on the Nile, and
Murder in Mesopotamia.
She herself reflected on how similar the work of an archaeologist and a
detective were and was just as suited to unravelling mysteries in the
field as upon the page of her books. This lecture will examine some of
the archaeological sites that Agatha and Max excavated, as well as how
this work and the mystery novelist’s life were revealed within the pages
of her books. Furthermore, her literary corpus is now being used
to try to unravel the mysteries of the human mind as a University of
Toronto team examine the works for prolific writers for signs of the
onset of Alzheimer’s.
Monday, October 1, 2012
“Life
in Provincia Arabia: Perspectives from the 2012 Season in Dhiban, Jordan”
Danielle Steen Fatkin,
Visiting Assistant Professor
of History at Knox College (dfatkin@knox.edu)
7:30 P.M. in the Morgan Room of Poling Hall, Monmouth College, Monmouth,
Illinois
While Jordan is rightly famous for its great Classical cities, including
Jerash and Petra, less is known about how ordinary people lived. This
lecture shows results from the 2012 excavation season at Dhiban, Jordan,
where current excavations have uncovered the remains of a large late
Roman and Byzantine village (4th-6th century CE). These excavations show
a greater than expected depth of economic and social engagement with the
larger Roman world despite the site's seemingly marginal location at the
far eastern border of the Roman empire.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
“East
defeats West: Naval War and Cross-Cultural Adaptation in Classical
Cyprus”
Kristian Lorenzo,
Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Archaeology at Monmouth College
(kllorenzo@monmouthcollege.edu)
7:30 P.M. in the Morgan Room of Poling Hall, Monmouth College, Monmouth,
Illinois
In 391 B.C. political and territorial tensions between Greeks,
Phoenicians and the Achaemenid empire exploded into combat off the south
coast of Cyprus near the Cypro-Phoenician kingdom of Kition. To
commemorate their naval victory King Milkyaton and the people of Kition
erected a victory monument which I call Milkyaton’s Trophy. Scholars
have suggested five possible forms including a bronze tripod for this
trophy. This talk not only assesses the feasibility of these five forms,
but also examines the textual and physical evidence as well as the
relevant iconography and mythology which allows for a new sixth form, a
bronze statue depicting an armed marine god, Melqart or Ba’al-‘Oz,
riding a hippocampus. Much like the Macdonough memorial, an American
naval victory monument comprised of an obelisk crowned by an eagle,
Milkyaton’s Trophy celebrates both success in battle and reflects
heterogeneous cultural influences.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Michael Laughy,
Assistant Professor of Classics, Washington and Lee University (laughym@wlu.edu)
7:30 P.M. in the Morgan Room of Poling Hall, Monmouth College, Monmouth,
Illinois
Christmas! For many, the very word inspires feelings of joy and fond
childhood memories. For others, to quote Mark Twain, “the approach of
Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent people” who
“give thanks that Christmas comes once a year.” What cannot be argued,
however, is the ubiquity of Christmas: ninety-five percent of Americans
celebrate this holiday, nearly all of whom are familiar with the origin
of Christmas as a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. The story of
this holiday, however, begins well before Christianity; societies have
been celebrating light and birth in the darkest days of winter since the
Stone Age. In this talk, we explore the history of Christmas as told
from the archaeological record. We begin by examining the multiple
origins of Christmas traditions, from the winter solstice celebrations
of the Greeks, Romans, and Norse to the first Christmas celebrations of
early Christians. We then turn to the evolution of our own Christmas
celebrations and traditions, beginning with an examination of the
origins and evolution of Santa Claus. Throughout the lecture, we will
highlight the ways in which archaeology not only enriches our
understanding of the history of Christmas, but also reveals surprising
elements of continuity between ancient and modern traditions.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
“The
Bold and the Beautiful: Polychroming and Gilding in Antiquity”
Benton Kidd,
Associate Curator of Ancient Art, Museum
of Art and Archaeology,
University of Missouri (kiddjb@missouri.edu)
7:30 P.M. Science 102, at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois Though Winckelmann and his contemporaries were aware of ancient polychromy, most eighteenth and nineteenth aesthetes elevated form in sculpture and thus overlooked the surface appearance that had been so important to the ancient aesthetic. Ancient sculptors relied on color to bring their forms to life, but this characteristic was long neglected in art historical scholarship and is often still deemed unattractive to the modern eye. A number of exhibitions and other studies in recent years have furthered our understanding of polychromy and gilding on ancient sculpture. This lecture examines literary evidence (including color and gilding terminology used by the ancients) and compares examples (some little known) of ancient sculpture and painting with sufficient pigment remaining to suggest reconstructions. Additionally, recent evidence for the various uses of gilded surfaces, whether on hair, clothing, flesh, or as an embellishment to architecture, is also included. Polychromy in the form of colored marbles, both for sculpture and architecture, provides insight into the taste for colored surfaces beyond the paintbrush. Finally, further evidence is provided by pigment and gilding analyses from the collections of the Museum of Art and Archaeology.
Wednesday, February 18, 2013 “Bellerophon, Pegasos, and the Chimaera: Myth and Identity in Ancient Corinth” Angela Ziskowski, Assistant Professor of History, Coe College (aziskowski@coe.edu) 7:30 P.M. in the Wells Theatre, Monmouth College, Monmouth, Illinois The myth of the hero Bellerophon played a significant role in the literary and artistic history of Corinth. Bellerophon, one of the only Corinthians mentioned in Homer, was best known for fighting the hybrid Chimaera with the aid of Pegasos. This lecture explores the early popularity of this myth in local art and textual references and argues for the importance of the story to the development of Corinthian identity. The myth connects the city with both the imagined land of Ephyra referenced in the Iliad and to the fountain of Peirene, a prominent landmark in the city. During the sixth century B.C. and later Herakles, another monster-slaying hero from the Peloponnese, usurped facets of Bellerophon’s character in Corinthian vase-painting.
Monday, March 4, 2013 7:30 P.M. in the Morgan Room of Poling Hall, Monmouth College, Monmouth, Illinois Vergil’s Aeneid is a tale of travel and adventure, and the land- and seascape become just as important as the peoples whom the exiled Trojans encounter. Many cartographical and geographical topoi emerge from reading this great epic within the context of Graeco-Roman scientific geography. The Aeneid, in fact, reflects the best cartographic advances of the day and is presented in the same way as other “maps” from ancient Greece and Rome–not in the modern pictural sense but, rather, verbally. Vergil seamlessly incorporates many of the key aspects of ancient geography (topography, climatology, ethnography) to enhance overarching themes of his masterpiece. In this talk, we explore Vergil’s use of narrative maps and how Vergil’s narrative maps compare with the ambit of Greco-Roman cartography. Describing and mapping the world conveyed powerful symbolic resonance, and Vergil’s Aeneid can thus be interpreted
Monday, March 25, 2013
“Image and Text:
Methodological Preliminaries”
Jason Nethercut,
Visiting Assistant Professor in Classics, Knox College (nethercut@gmail.com)
7:30 P.M. in the Morgan Room of Poling Hall, Monmouth College, Monmouth,
Illinois
This lecture explores some of the pitfalls that attend interdisciplinary
approaches to classical antiquity, looking especially at those that
present themselves when one examines the aesthetics of literary and
visual textual narratives. The current resurgence in scholarly
approaches that view antiquity through an interdisciplinary lens is
welcome, especially since it reminds us that texts did not—and do
not—operate in an artistic vacuum. Many recent studies have underscored
the common dynamics inherent in reading images and viewing texts. But in
our search for commonalities, we should not obscure the real differences
that demarcate the visual from the textual. After briefly surveying some
of the complicating factors that are often overlooked in the study of
image and text, this lecture will look at a few test cases from the
walls of Pompeii and literary descriptions of artworks (ekphraseis)
from Latin epic. Through these, the important differences between visual
and verbal art become especially focused, even as they encourage us to
harmonize our approaches to ancient literature and art.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
William Caraher,
Associate Professor of History at the University of North Dakota
(billcaraher@gmail.com)
7:30 P.M. in the Morgan Room of Poling Hall, Monmouth College, Monmouth,
Illinois
For over 1000 years excavators have relied upon dreams to guide them to
hidden treasures, sacred buildings, and lost relics.
St. Helena’s excavations of fragments of the true cross and other
stories of invention inspired later Christian archaeologists to follow
the inspiration of dream to find sacred relics. The practice was
consistent and widespread enough to qualify as a form of Byzantine
indigenous archaeology. In more recent times, excavators as revered as
Anastasios Orlandos and Manolis Andronikos have recognized the influence
of dreams on their own excavations. As Y. Hamilakis and C. Stewart have
shown in their recent work that archaeological dreams played a key role
in the developing Greek national consciousness. They do not, however,
link these modern archaeological dreams explicitly to Byzantine and
Early Christian practices.
In this presentation I will not
necessarily establish an irrefutable connection between modern and
Byzantine dreams or argue for the presence of some unconscious
continuity. Instead, I will sketch the outline of an indigenous
archaeology in Byzantine times and consider how such pre-modern
practices can influence our ideas of archaeological knowledge in more
recent times.
|