Communities of style: portable luxury arts, identity, and collective memory in the Iron Age Levant 9780226105611

Table of contents :
C O N T E N T S
Lisl'o/’IIIustrations ix
Author's Note xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction i
Ivories and Metalworks in a Levantine Context 3
Networks and Communities in the Early Iron Age 6
1 Workshops, Connoisseurship, and Levantine Style{s)
First-M illennium Levantine Ivories 13
Connoisseurship and the Study o f the Ancient Near East 18
Attributing Levantine Ivories 21
The M obility of Style 31
Slippery identities 36
Conclusions 38
2 Levantine Stylistic Practices in Collective Memory 43
The Problem o f Artistic Intent! onality 47
Rendering Animals and the Logic o f Stylistic Practice 51
Habitus in Levantine Style 58Stylistic Practices in Collective M em o ry 64
Late Bronze Age M em ories in the E a rly Iron Age 67
Continuity, Rediscovery, or Invention? 70
Rem em bering a Golden Age 73
Conclusions 77
Creating Assyria in Its Own Image 79
An A ssyrian Court Style Si
Assyrian Representations o f Foreign Item s
The D angerous Other: Booty, Tribute, Gods, and Deportees 91
Foreign Goods in A ssyria 94
S6
Stylistic A ssyrianization 95
A shurbanipal's Garden Scene mo
Assyria and Babylonia 104
Conclusions loS
4 Speaking Bowls and the Inscription o f Identity and Memory ni
Levantine (“ Phoenician"} Metal Bow ls 119
The Inscription o f Identity and M em o ry 116
Drinking and Death 119
Tem porality and Presence 126
The Enchantm ent o f Imagery 128
Conclusions 194
5 The Reuse, Recycling, and Displacement of Levantine Luxury Arts 199
After the Fall: M obility post A ssyrian Em pire 141
Ivory in and around the Assyrian Em pire 146
Secondhand Elites 153
The Booty o f Haza’el o f Damascus 161
Conclusions: Displacements, Values, and M eanings 170
Conclusion 175
Theoretical Considerations 175
Glancing Back, Casting Ahead 177
Notes 183
References 215
Index 243

Citation preview

Communities of Style Portable Luxury Arts, Identity, and Collective Memory in the Iron Age Levant

Marian H. Feldman

T h e U n iv e rsity o f C hicago P re ss C hicago an d London

M arian H. Feldm an is professor o f N e ar E astern studies and a rt h istory at Johns H o p kin s U niversity. The U n iv e rsity o f Chicago Press, C hicago 60637 The U n iv e rsity o f Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2014 b y T h e U n iv e rsity of Chicago All rights re se rv e d . Published 2014. Printed in the U nited States o f Am erica 23 22 21 2 0 19 18 17 16 15 14

1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13; 9 78 -0 -22 6 -10 56 1-1

(doth)

ISB N -13:9 78-0-226-16442-7

(e-book)

DOI: i0.720S/chicago/978o226i64427.ooi.oooi Library o f C on gress C ataloging-in-Publication Data Feldman, M a ria n H., author. C om m unities o f style : portable lu x u r y arts, identity, and collective m em ory in the Iron A ge Levant / M arian H. Feldm an, pages

cm

Includes bibliographical references an d index. ISBN 9 78-0-226-10561-1 (hardcover ; alk alin e paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-16442-7 (e-book)

1. D ecorative arts. A ncien t— M iddle E a s t—History.

Antiquities.

3. Iron age—Middle East.

NK685.M628F45

2. M iddle E a s t -

I. Title,

2014

745.09394—dc23 2014000140 @ This p ap er m eets the requirements o f A N SI/N ISO Z39.48-1992 (Perm anence o f Paper).

For Lisa and Tara

CONTENTS

Lisl'o/’IIIustrations Author's Note

ix

xiii

Acknowledgments

Introduction

xv

i

Ivo ries and Metalworks in a Levantine Context

3

N etw orks and Communities in the Early Iron Age

1

6

Workshops, Connoisseurship, and Levantine Style{s) First-M illennium Levantine Ivories

13

Connoisseurship and the Stu d y o f the Ancient Near East A ttributin g Levantine Ivories Th e M obility o f Style Slip p ery identities Conclusions

2

18

21

31 36

38

Levantine Stylistic Practices in Collective Memory The Problem o f Artistic Intent! onality

47

Rendering Animals and the Logic o f Stylistic Practice H abitus in Levantine Style

58

51

43

Stylistic P ractices in Collective M e m o ry

64

Late B ro n z e Age M em ories in the E a r ly Iron A ge Continuity, R ediscovery, or Inven tion ? R em em bering a G olden Age C onclusions

67

70

73

77

Creating Assyria in Its Own Image An A s s y ria n Court Style

79

Si S6

A ssyrian Representations o f Foreign Item s

The D angerous Other: Booty, T rib u te, Gods, an d Deportees Foreign G oods in A ssyria

94

Stylistic A ssyrian izatio n

95

A sh urban ipal's G arden Scene Assyria an d B abylonia Conclusions

91

mo

104

loS

4 Speaking Bowls and the Inscription o f Identity and M emory Levantine (“ Phoenician"} Metal B o w ls

119

The In scrip tio n o f Identity and M e m o ry D rinking an d Death

Tem porality and Presence

5

116

119 126

The Enchantm ent o f Imagery Conclusions

ni

128

194

The Reuse, Recycling, and Displacement o f Levantine L u xu ry Arts After the Fall: M obility post A ssyrian E m p ire Ivory in and around the Assyrian E m p ire Secondhand Elites

141

146

153

The B ooty o f Haza’el o f Damascus

161

Conclusions: Displacements, Values, an d M eanin gs

Conclusion

175

Theoretical Considerations

175

Glancing B ack, Casting Ahead

Notes

183

References Index

Contents

243

215

177

170

199

ILLUSTRATIONS

Maps 1

Near East and eastern M editerranean, showing sites m entioned in text

2

Greater Levantine region, sh ow ing sites mentioned in text

3

Findspots o f "Flame and Frond ” artifacts

14

55

Color plates (following pageyS) Ivory plaque from A rslan Tash Ivory from Well NN, N orth w est Palace, Nimrud Engraved tridacna shell from Rhodes, Greece Stone cosmetic palette from th e Amman Citadel, Jord an, seventh -sixth centuries BCE Ivory plaque oflioness m au lin g an African, Well NN, N orthw est Palace, Nimrud 6

7

Ivory griffin, SW 37, Fort Shalm aneser, Nimrud Detail o f Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE) reclining on a couch in a garden, Room S’, North Palace, Nineveh

8

Bronze bowl naming A bipat, N orthw est Palace, N im rud

9

Gold bowl inscribed for Yaba, Queens' Tomb II, N im rud

to

Silver bowl naming Epiorw os, son o f Dies, from the T reasu re o f Kourion

11

Gilt silver bowl naming A k e sto r and Timokretes, from the T reasure of Kourion

S ilv e r b ow l fro m the T reasure o f K ourion S ilv e r b ow l

namingE shm un-ya'ad. son o f Ashto, B ernardin i Tomb,

P rae n e ste , Italy

14

S ilv e r b ow l fro m Pontecagnano. Ita ly

15

Gold v e sse l in scribed for Yaba, Q u e e n s'T o m b II, Nimrud

16

R econ stru ction o f ivory-inlaid c h a ir gam m a. Tomb 79, S alam is, Cyprus

17Q, b Iv o r y d jo u r plaques. Tomb 79, S a la m is, C ypru s 18

R eco n stru ctio n o f ivory-inlaid b ed . Tomb 79. Salamis, C yp ru s

19

D etail o f co rn er pieces o f h ead b o ard o f bed. Tomb 79, S alam is, Cyprus

20

B ro n ze cau ld ron with griffin an d sire n attachm ents. Tom b 79, Salamis, C yp ru s

Black and w h ite figures 1.1

"G roup 1" horse-bridle frontlet fro m Well AJ, Northwest Palace, Nimrud

1.2

Iv o ry plaqu e fro m SW 7, Fort S h alm an eser, Nim rud

1.3

Stele fro m Z in cirli, ca. 735-720 B C E

1-4

Detail o f iv o ry fro m SW 7, Fort Sh alm an e se r, Nimrud

1-5

T h ree r e lie f orthostats from Sak ge Gozu, m id-eighth c e n tu ry BCE

1.6

Ivory fro m Well AJ, Northwest P alace, N im ru d

30

1-7

Ivo ry fro m Well AJ, Northwest Palace, N im ru d

30

1.8

Ivo ry fro m the B urn t Palace (South -E ast Palace), Nim rud

33

1-9

B asalt r e lie f orthostat from la te r co n text at Karak, Jordan

39

u

23

23 24 24

2.1Q, b Two v ie w s o f an ivory pyxis, B u rn t Palace (South-East Palace), N im rud 2.2

Ivory gam e box, Enkomi, C yprus, ca. 120 0 BCE

2.3

D iagram o f how parts of an e lep h an t tusk w e re carved fo r a n c ie n t uses

45

46

2.4

D raw in g o f "Flam e and Frond” iv o rie s from Nimrud

53

2.5

C arved basalt orthostat re lie f from T ell H alaf, Syria

54

2.6

Ivory sp h in x, SW 37, Fort Shalm an eser, N im rud

2.7

Detail o f iv o ry flask, Well AJ, N orth w est Palace, Nimrud

2.8

Ivory fro m N orthw est Palace, N im ru d

49

56 57

38

2.9

Ivories from N im rud, Fort S h alm an eser

3-1

R elief o f K in g A shurnasirpal U (883-859 BCE), Northwest Palace (Room B,

3.2

L in ear-style A ssyrian seal im pression o f steatite seal, u n k n o w n provenance,

Panel 19). N im rud

62

82

ninth cen tu ry BCE

85

3-3

A ssyrian -style iv o ry plaque, C entral Palace, Nim rud

3-4

R elief fro m palace o f Sargon II (721-705 BCE), Khorsabad

87 ss

3.53-0 D raw in g o f reliefs showing the Siege o f Lachish, reign o f S e n n ach e rib (704681 BCE), Southw est Palace. N ineveh 3.6

90,91

R e lie f o f Tiglath-Pileser III (744-727 BCE), show ing the capture o f foreign gods in low er register, Nim rud

97

3-7

D raw in g o f detail from relief o f T iglath -P ileser III (744-727 BCE), N im rud

3.8

Stele o f W eather God, Til Barsip (Tell Ahmar, Syria), ninth-eighth centu ries BCE

3-9

99

R e lie f o f Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE) reclining in a garden. Room S', North Palace, N ineveh

Illustrations

loi

9S

3.10

R econstructed series o f re lie fs from Room S', North Palace, Nineveh

3.11

Stele o f Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE) from Babylon

4.1

Bronze b ow l naming M uw azi from burial at Tragana, Greece

4.2

K atu m u w a stele, Zincirli

5.1

Bronze re lie f band from O lym pia, Greece

5.2

Reconstruction of the three sphyrelaton feorai by Borell and Rittig 199S

5.3

Ivo ry c a rv e d with bull from Tow n Wall House 6 , Room 43, Nim rud

5.4

Ivo ry carve d with bulls from Well AJ, Northwest Palace, Nim rud

5.5

Bronze horse-bridle frontlet from the Heraion on Sam os, Greece, ninth ce n tu ry BCE

105

107 114

123 142 143

148 149

162

5.6

D raw in g o f inscribed bronze horse-bridle blinker from Eretria, Greece, ninth

5-7

U nin scribed bronze h orse-bridle blinker from Eretria, Greece, ninth

cen tu ry BCE cen tu ry BCE

Illustrations

163 163

A U T H O R ’ S NOTE

M

any o f the places mentioned in this book have a variety o f ancient and modern names, which are transliterated from the ancient and modern

languages in different ways. For ease of recognition, I have chosen to use the names by which places are most commonly known in English-language scholarship, despite the inconsistencies that sometimes result. For example, at least three ancient names are recorded for the modern site of Tell Ahmar in Syria: the Luwian Masuwari, the Aramaean Til Barsip (also transliterated Til Barsib), and the Akkadian Kar-Shalmaneser (which can also be more faithfully transliterated as Kar-SuImanu-asaredu). I use the most common of these: Til Barsip.

/

..H s '.m

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

N

umerous people and institutions have contributed to the formation of this project, which had a considerable gestation period well before I ever put

pen to paper. The final product is rather different from what I initially set out to do, or at least what I thought I was setting out to do, and that is largely the result of the many stimulating responses and conversations I have had along the way, for which I am most grateful. An ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars, held in 2008-9 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, not only provided me with space and time to work through early conceptual challenges; it also introduced me to a group o f scholars, mostly working in the social sciences, whose research and approaches pushed me in new directions. Most important in this respect was the Agency and Objects Group that met every other week to share researchin-progress and discuss relevant theoretical literature; Glenn Adams, Linda Jack, Karin Knorr Cetina, Seth Landefeld, Keh-Ming Lin, Chandra Mukerji, and Ann Taves. Out of this grew yet another forum in which I was able to test my ideas and gain new insights—the Material World in Social Life Working Group, funded by the University of California Humanities Research Institute for 2010-11: Barry Brown, Kelly Gates, Karin Knorr Cetina, Chandra Mukerji, Gina Neff, Mark Peterson, Benjamin Porter, Fred Turner, and Heghnar Watenpaugh.

Likewise, I am indebted to the close readings and thoughtful feedback frommy UC Berkeley colleagues who participated in the Townsend Center Associate Professor Fellowship Group in spring 2011: Charles Altieri, Kevis Goodman, Jocelyn Guibault, Charles Hirschkind, and Tom Laqueur, The manuscript was completed and sent to press during the summer term o f 2013 under the aegis of a fellowship at the Internationales Kolleg Morphomata at the Universitat zu Kbln, directed by professors Gunter Blam berger and Dietrich Boschung. An early exploration of the ideas presented in chapters t and 2 appears as “The Practical Logic of Style and M em ory in Early First Millennium Levan­ tine Ivories,” in Materiality and Social Practice: Transformative Capacities of Intercultural Encounters, edited by Joseph Maran and Philipp W. Stockhammer, igS-212 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2012), which was first presented as a talk at the stimulating symposium “M ateriality and Practice: Transformative Capacities of Fntercultural Encounters," held at the University o f Heidelberg in March 2010. These two chapters further benefited from a fall 20U graduate seminar at Berkeley on making things in the Iron Age Levant, cotaught with Ben Porter. Part ofehapter 3 appeared as "Assyrian Representations o f Booty and Tribute as a Self'Portrayal o f Empire," in Interpreting Exile: Displacement and Deportation in Biblical and Modern Contexts, edited by Brad E. Kelle, Frank Ritchel Ames, and Jacob L. Wright, 135-50 (Atlanta: Society o f Biblical Literature, 2011), which in turn grew out o f a session on w arfare and the ancient Near East held at the annual conference for the Society o f Biblical Literature in 2009. A conference in April 2011, "Imagined Beginnings; The Poetics and Politics of Cosmogony, Theogony and Anthropogony in the Ancient World," organized by the Center for the Study o f Ancient Religions at the University of Chicago and the Midwest Consortium on Ancient Religions, gave me the opportunity to further flesh out the ideas in chapter 3, Many ideas that appear in chapter 5 had their initial testing ground in a fall 2010 graduate seminar at Berkeley on Greece and the Near East in the Iron Age that I cotaught with Andy Stewart, and I am especially indebted to the views and research done by several of the participants in that class, particularly Chris Bravo, Laure Marest-Caffey, Erin Pitt, and Jessica Stair. Profound thanks and gratitude are also due to students, colleagues, and friends who have shared their own research, read drafts o f the book, or fielded random questions along the way. Among them: Aaron Brody, Brian Brown, My Chau, Whitney Davis, Lynn Swartz Dodd. Eduardo Escobar, Ron Hendel, Gary Holland. Chris Gosden, Crawford Greenewalt, Tim Harrison, Samantha Henneberry, Candy Keller, Stephanie Langin-Hooper, Jake Lauinger, Greg Levine, Ted Lewis, Joseph Maran, Kiersten Neumann, James Osborne. Loren Partridge, Lisa Pieraccini, Carol Redmount, Yael Rice, Chessie Rochberg, Caroline Sauvage, Glenn Schwartz, Philipp Stockhammer, Claudia Suter, Allison Thomason, Niek Veldhuis, Martin Weber, Jackie Williamson, and Irene Winr“ -

\

Acknowledgments

A

A

Susan Bielstein at the University o f Chicago Press has proved to be an unfailing advocate, and I am grateful for her initial and ongoing faith in my work. Of course, such an undertaking as this book could never have been ac­ complished without the support o f my family, and my deepest debt goes first and foremost to James, who bore countless hardships and neglect with humor and goodwill as I pursued its completion. The arrival o f my twin daughters, Lisa and Tara, at the very beginning of the book's inception seemed at first to mean doom for the entire venture, but their presence has in fact turned out to be a keystone for its successful completion. As they keep me focused on my priorities and centered in my outlook, it is to them that I dedicate this volume.

Acknowledgments

I I K. w

* ‘

INTRODUCTION

T

his book presents a story about community formation mediated by art. Or, more accurately, it contains many stories about multiple communities

coming together, overlapping, interacting, and re-forming, through differing relationships between human beings and objects. It explores these processes for the early Iron Age Levant (including present-day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan from circa 1200-600 BCE) and surrounding areas, and focuses on portable luxury arts, in particular ivories and metalworks. This is an especially ripe period for such explorations, as the different cultural regions of the Near East and Mediterranean reimagined themselves in the wake of the collapse of the Bronze Age around 1200/1100 BCE. This study posits these communities

as being in flux both horizontally across space and vertically through time, and argues that their members came together around the material effects of art and style as these were inflected by their special role in collective memory. The artworks at the center o f the study include carved ivory plaques and figures that served as furniture attachments; ivory containers; bronze, gold, and silver decorated bowls; and bronze relief bands and horse bridle ornaments. Generally considered to have been produced in the Levant, they are found widely distributed across the Near East and Mediterranean, but infrequently in the Levant itself. For this reason, they have been studied chiefly in terms o f stylistic classification for the purpose of attribution to specific geographic

locations ofproduction. Here, i first argue that thestylisticevidence destabilizes the one-to-one equation of style-group to worksliop to specific Levantine citystate. Alternative avenues o f in qu iry offer the opportunity to explore the link between art, style, memory, and coinniunity identities during the Iron Age, This study thus brings together the m aterial effects ofart objects, particularly that of style, w ith the human beings w ho made and used them, proposing the power of their entanglem ent in creating and structuring communities of inclusion and exclusion. I use the term rommuriity. and more often its plural, communities, to capture the sense o f a degree and kind o fso cial relations that are not necessarily rigidly organized or bounded, yet can stretch across wide networks of people.' Such communities are understood to be potentially flexible, able to accommodate fluemations in their membership. A s such, they arc not taken to be preexisting, static entities awaiting our discovery o f them in the remains of ancient artifacts. Rather, by means o f a reconsideration of the artworks’ formal and stylistic properties from the perspective o f theiratfectiveness in contextualized social relations, this book explores the w ays in which artistic production, consumption, and appreciation generate community networks, and it argues that artw orks accomplish this through their unique ability to catalyze collective memories. Recent scholarship in ancient history and archaeology has highlighted the central role o f memory (and m em ories)—shared among individuals/people— in cementing social relations and shaping group identity.-* Variously referred to as collective, social, or cultural memory, it forms bonds between those who claim membership, and conversely erects boundaries excluding those who either do not or cannot claim such membership. Despite a recent call in archaeological discussions of m em ory theory to abandon the Durkheimian (through Halbwachs) use of ’’collective" and replace it w ith "social,” I have chosen to retain Halbwachs's original terminology. The recent critique of the term collective derives from what is perceived to be a prior, exclusive interest in "social structures" at the expense o f agency (particularly individual agency).’ This sentiment, however, represents a reaction to the filtering o f Halbwachs and Durkheim through the French structuralists, in particular Levi-Strauss, While Durkheim is not hilly logical in his distinction of categories such as the individual and the collective,'* his successor Halbwachs resolved several of these intellectual ambiguities.’ For Halbwachs, the collective is neither simply the sum o f individual parts, nor a superstructural phenomenon floating above the level of the individual.* Indeed, it is the combination o f individuals, sharing memories through shared experiences, that forms collectives o f communal identity. It is this concrete notion o f people coming together through shared experiences—in my case, through the experience of artistic products—to

Imroduction

generate a sense of community identity that 1 seek to capture in my use of the term collective memory.

Ivories and Metalworks in a Levantine Context Of central importance to the development of scholarship on Levantine ivories and metalworks is the fact that very few actual pieces have been excavated from archaeological sites located within the Levantine region itself. Indeed, the vast num ber of examples has been found at non-Levantine sites, in particular Nimrud in northern Iraq but also locations in Iran, Cyprus, Greece, and Italy. Two questions are therefore paramount before embarking on this inquiry: how can we associate these pieces with a Levantine realm of production and consumption, and if we can do so, can we consider them to have served meaningful roles within Levantine society? In answer to the first question, the overall density of coextensive material rem ains—monumental and small-scale arts of several different media—pro­ vides support for a generally Levantine regional context for the ivories and metalworks of the study. This general sense of belonging together that char­ acterizes so many of these different genres of artworks has served to localize the ivories and metalworks in the Levant from at least the beginning of the twentieth century. Two caveats must be noted, however. First, this proposal does not necessarily mean that all ivories and metalworks with similar visual elements had to be produced and/or consumed within the greater Levantine area. One might readily imagine scenarios where this was not the case, especially once the autochthonous nature of style is challenged. Thus, while on a generalizing level thecorpusherestudiedm aybesaidtobe Levantine (and thereby might have been made somewhere in the Levant), it cannot be assumed that any one particular item w as in actuality made in the Levant. Nonetheless, it can be accepted that these artworks bore the potential to affect human actors in a similar fashion as if they had been physically present in a Levantine social context. Second, placing these items within a Levantine regional context does not necessarily require or enable us to locate production/consumption on a more specific level, such as that o f the city-state—a primary argument of chapter!. One result of my reconsideration of stylistic attribution in chapter i is the necessity of accepting a concept o f the "greater Levant” as a coherent geocultural entity within which we can contextualize the prim ary production and consumption spheres for the material under study in this book. Without imposing hard boundaries around this entity, I see the greater Levant as stretching from the south (generally referred to as the southern Levant) in the modern states o f Israel and Jordan, running along the Mediterranean littoral and w est of the Syrian Desert (including the modern state of Lebanon and

Introduction

western Syria) up to the northern plain of Antioch (in present-day Turkey), and extending northwestward into Cilicia and eastward across the Jabul Plain to the middle and upper Euphrates. The site of Tell Halaf, usually included in definitions o f "North Syria"' because of its architectural carved reliefs and the presence o f several small-scale luxury goods, exists as a geographic oudier— problematic in its own cultural definition, but also serving to problematize our own geocultural notions. It, along with several other sites on the edges of this conceived "greater Levant,” speaks strongly to the lack of sharp or consistent boundaries. Indeed, because I propose to understand the artistic products o f this greater Levant as part o f a networked set of communities of practice, these “exceptions" take on greater weight. As such, we might see Tell H alaf participating in one community bound by practices involved in the production and consumption of carved stone reliefs and ivories similar to those farther to the west, while at other times we might see the site participating in communities connected more to social practices linked to areas to the east, or in more locally inward-looking communities of practice. In the end, part of what this book hopes to accomplish is to question our culture-history classification of this part o f the world, in which geopolitical entities are conceived as abutting containers, each replete with distinct cultural markers.® Locating the artworks within a Levantine production/consumption context then raises the second question: that o f their meaning within sucha sphere. Little has been written about the significance of these works in the social context of the place o f their presumed manufacture. This book seeks to remedy this situa­ tion in part, proposing that those artworks identified generally as Levantine not only can but must be examined first through a Levantine social lens. With that as a basis, inquiries regarding the reception and affect of these artworks outside the Levant can be pursued on a more nuanced level. It is therefore essential to determine that these objects held meaning within the Levant.^ Although most o f the material under study in this book derives from nonLevantine contexts, there are a few finds that allow us to make a good case for their use and meaningfulness w ithin a Levantine social sphere. In considering the Levantine findspots, I have concentrated on those finds that derive from contexts associated with pre- or w eak Assyrian co n tro l.P ieces from Zincirli (ancient Sam’al) located in the modern state of Turkey, Hama (ancient Hamath) and Tell H alaf (ancient Guzana) in the south and east of Syria, Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley, and Kefar Veradim in the Upper Galilee derive from contexts that predate full incorporation into the Assyrian state and provide a general indication o f the place of these objects (bothliterally and in regard to significance) within the early Iron Age greater Levant." These sites at a minimu m establish an elite usage for these types of artworks and demonstrate that they held high value meaning w ithin Levantine community activities. Both the Zincirli and the Hama contexts suggest that luxurious ivories and Introduction

metal objects manufactured in styles we associate with the greater Levantine region were used in settings belonging to the highest elite Levantine groups. The objects appear in structures functionally understood to relate to reception halls, which likely hosted ceremonial banqueting.’^In addition, some contexts at Zincirli (Building L) and Hama (Building IV) seem to have functioned as storerooms in which the equipment used for such gatherings was kept and possibly even minor repairs to it made. That all this activity occurred on the highest elevation of the ancient cities further underlines elite associations for the pieces. Also perhaps to be associated w ith a major public building, Building 338, a fragm entary bronze bowl depicting a frieze of figures was excavated at Megiddo.” At Tell Halaf, ivories and gold ornaments were found in apparently funerary structures; one near the citadel gate and the other directly in front of the socalled Temple-Palace.'"* The prominent location of these burials near the entrance to and at the center of the city’s citadel area, along with their rich burial goods, point to the high social standing of the associated individuals, and more critically to the centrality o f the burials within the socio-politics of preAssyrian Tell Halaf. Another funerary context—this time containing a worked and inscribed bronze bowl—has been excavated from a cave in the southern part o f the Levant at Kefar Veradim.'^ We can, therefore, argue for the potential, in principle at least, for an "in­ digenous” Levantine usage for (most of) the ivories and metalworks comprising the evidence at the core of this book. This usage appears to have included display during ceremonial receptions and deposition in high-status burials, both social contexts that are central for generating collective memory and community identity. That many of the objects in non-Levantine contexts appear to have arrived at these locales through secondary (or even tertiary or greater) means of movement, such as tribute, booty, or opportunistic exchanges, further suggests that some part of their new value derived from their prior privileged status in the Levant. However, that so many o f the pieces we classify, on a stylistic basis, as Le­ vantine (whether North Syrian, Phoenician, or some other designation) derive from archaeological contexts outside the greater Levant has had profound im­ plications for the study of these objects. Most critically, it has concentrated scholarly interest on the project o f attribution to specific region and city-state. This, I argue over the course o f the first two chapters, has revealed challenges to the very attribution project itself, and I suggest reconsidering this project through alternative methodological frameworks, in particular that of practice theory. When viewed through this lens, other questions emerge concerning the role these artworks played in generating social communities—"local” Levantine communities as well as other "non-Levantine" communities—through time and across space. Such concerns include questions relating to collective memory Introduction

and the Late Bronze Age past (chapter z), communities of practice that formed around the production and appreciation of artistic styles (chapter 3). the engagement and entanglement o f human users-viewers with material objects in ritualized settings (chapter#), and the rich diversity o f circulation and reuse (chapter 5).

Networks and Communities in the Early Iron Age More than simply a guide to attribution, style serves to establish and structure communities through the engagement o f human participants with material objects. Style is thus not autochthonous and bound to geography but rather, through its activation of collective memories, constitutive of communities along both spatial and temporal axes. Concentrating on this aspect of style in the first three chapters o f the book, I highlight the early phases o f an art object's life, revolving around issues of production and the social efficacy of style. The first two of these chapters focus on the role of style within the realm of the greater Levantine area itself. Chapter 3 presents a contrasting situation—that of the Assyrian state—for which I pose sim ilar questions. The Levantine ivories have been divided traditionally between so-called Phoenician and North Syrian styles, with an ongoing interest in determining substyles within these two larger classifications. Connoisseurship, as the principal means o f attribution, assumes prominence in this endeavor. In the first chapter, I argue that the ivories' heterogeneous styles, which exist along a continuum rather than divide into discrete groups, present challenges in applying to this body of material traditional connoisseurial approaches derived from studies o f the Italian Renaissance. Comparisons with several other media (carved orthostat reliefs, decorated metal bowls, engraved tridacna shells, and stamped ceramic vessels) map a mobility of style that highlights a pan-Levantine network of skilled practices (and skilled practitioners) instead of a mosaic of bounded independent workshops. In this way, the relationship between human beings, geography, and culture is problematized, and I conclude that we cannot arrange Iron Age Levantine style-groups so that they neatly overlay specific geographic locales at the level of the city-state polity. While geography and place can play a role in community identity, they need not do so in straightforward ways or solely at the level of the political unit. In the early Iron Age Levant, the artistic evidence points to multiple fluid, intersecting, and overlapping networks o f skilled artistic practices. In chapter 2, an alternative w ay of understanding the production and consumption o f artistic styles in the early Iron Age Levant proposes that stylistic traits form a critical component of collective memory, being both the product and the source of shared social practices at the level of creation and apprecia­ tion. From such a perspective, visual similarities between first-millennium Introduction

la n -g i:

Levantine arts and objects from the preceding Late Bronze Age (circa 1600-1200 BCE), which have been noted by scholars for some time, take on heightened meaningfulness in the context o f newly emerging communities o f identity in the Iron Age. A particular continuity of co-occurring animal markings found among Levantine works, primarily in ivory but also on metal objects and carved stone reliefs, supplies a case study. Weaving the artworks into the historical and archaeological context of tradition-building during the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Ages (circa 1200-800 BCE), we can chart a more complicated relationship to the Late Bronze Age past than simply continuing a tradition. The Iron Age arts visually and materially manifested a connection to a past "golden age” through the selection of stylistic traits that were freighted with Late Bronze Age connotations of heroic kingship. In a strikingly different sociopolitical situation from that o f the Levant, the enactment o f a consistendy coherent set of stylistic practices contributed to a sense o f community at the level of the Assyrian imperial court, a situation explored in chapter 3. Concentrating on small details of execution and the ren­ dering o f basic forms, the incredible homogeneity of Assyrian style comes into high relief and provides Assyrian art with its clear sense o f Assyrianness, One particular case study—images of seized foreign items—highlights the "oppo­ sitional" nature o f the Assyrian stylo. This performance o f rigid stylistic homo­ genization was set in opposition to the diversity and flexibility of communities in the Levant. The Assyrian style defined itself chiefly in contrast to others, in sharp distinction from the multitude of intersecting stylistic interconnections found among the contemporary polities of the Levant. The strong, coherent, and consistent official style produced by the Assyrian state contributed to an active strategy for simultaneously maintaining a memory o f conquest over the vanquished Other and neutralizing the Other so it could no longer threaten Assyria. If we consider community membership as potentially fluctuating, we can understand this Assyrian style as providing a materialized identity for those who wanted or were able to be part of the Assyrian courtly community. This courtly community, at least at the level of the rhetorical, was in turn precisely ordered and controlled by the king through the interface o f his visual-artisticmaterial presence in artworks (such as is examined in the garden scene of King Ashurbanipal reclining on a couch) and analogies with cosmogonic myths like Enuma Etish. In the last two chapters, the book shifts its emphasis to the significant community-building potential o f art objects in subsequent phases of humanmaterial engagement, such as ritual use and deposition, secondary inscriptions, reworking, bricoiage, or displacement. Studying specific artworks and their diverse archaeological, social, political, and ritual contexts reveals a variety of entanglements through the differing patterns ofuse following their production. Chapter 4 considers how communities could form around a select group of Introduction

metal bowls that participated in shared memorialization practices o f ritualized drinking and libating. The objects of study—engraved metal bowls typically classified as "Phoenician" that also bear inscriptions on them—circulated around the Near East and Mediterranean during the first centuries of the first millennium. These form a group on the basis of the shared content of their inscriptions, which, despite different languages and scripts, declare possession by a named person. The complex situation of this particular group of bowls permits a glimpse into the ways in which such items operated as a centra! component in the emergence o f new communities in the early Iron Age. The unusual addition on these bowls o f an inscription that names a person activates memories self-consciously. Both the possessive inscriptions and the figured imagery helped to enact and reenact social, familial, and power relations through time. At the same time, community differences take shape through the inscriptions’ distinct linguistic affiliations. Chapter 5 explores the many different ways in which communities could form around displaced artworks, noting that no single explanation fits all cases, and that we must be sensitive to the multiple possibilities for new community formation as objects move through time and space. It traces several case studies of Levantine artworks that circulated in more complicated ways than those proposed in systemwide models o f trade or gift exchange. In addition, different associations of value and meaning can be inferred through a combined analysis of stylistic and technical features, archaeological contexts of deposition, and historical evidence. Through these, stories o f access to and (re)use o f portable luxury goods speak to their ongoing efficacy in social life. The case studies include bronzes found in Greece at pan-Hellenic sanctuaries (reworked bands at Olympia and horse bridle elements at Samos and Eretria), ivories in the Near East, both outside official palatial contexts (in the Town Wall Houses at Nimrud and at Til Barsip) and in them (at Arslan Tash), and refashioned ivories and bronzes from a "royal" tomb at Salamis on Cyprus, Each story, traced in the Levant, Assyria, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, or across these cultural regions, is but one episode in a larger narrative of these objects and the ways in which they generated community identity. The larger narrative derived from the separate stories illustrates the diversity and complexity of interactions and movements in the early Iron Age Near East and Mediterranean. It maps the acquisition o f such luxury portable objects through "state-sponsored” collection of booty and tribute, which could be redistributed within the official sphere through state-sanctioned means such as gifts given in exchange for political loyalty. Yet it also charts unofficial activities such as looting, scavenging, and salvaging that allow for the dissemination o f prestigious elite materials into alternative channels of circulation. In addition, it reveals the different ways in which these materials were used, and in some cases refashioned, for varying purposes o f community formation by multiple cultural groups. In sum, the ntroduction

case studies presented here point to the complicated intertwining of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds. The early Iron Age offers a particularly rich opportunity for examining community identity and collective memory following the disruptions of the Bronze Age collapse. During these early centuries of the first millennium BCE, the Near East and Mediterranean witnessed transformations across multiple fragmented arenas in which new communities emerged, interacted, and re­ formed. The skilled practices of artistic production and appreciation, especially in the realm o f portable luxury arts, served to materialize the processes of collective memory that enabled these transformations. Artistic practices, in particular, contain within them a peculiar efficacy in social life and enable the temporal process of becoming a community. Style—as a central, physical element that engages with people—participates in these processes of collective becoming. Through the consumption of styles and objects, we can see how art constitutes community identity rather than simply reflects it.

Introduction

L

w hile the Group 7. bridle harness is obviously Phoenician in style and form, the Group i examples are more prob­ lematic. The style is heavier and clumsier than the “clas­ sic Phoenician’ Croup z pieces and has more of a Syrian feel. However, the spade-shaped blinkers and hinged frontlets belong to a western tradition of bridle harness rather than the very diifcrent Syrian tradition, with its smaller sole-shaped blinkers and triangular frontlets. —G. Herrmann and Laidlaw 2009,82

CHAPTER 1

Workshops, Connoisseurship, and Levantine Style(s)

H

ow do "in-between" ivories, such as the so-called Group 1 horse bridle frontlets cited above, found in the Northwest Palace at Nimrud, challenge

our attempts at locating places of production for early Iron Age Levantine por­ table luxury arts {fig. 1.1)? How does the in-betweenness o f their stylistic evi­ dence impact the equation of style with workshop/piace of production? Not fitting clearly into either the Phoenician or the North Syrian stylistic groups,

and not forming any coherent stylistic subgroup within these two main clas­ sifications,' the "Group 1" frontlets problematize our application o f the connoisseurial method to first-millennium Levantine ivories. Scholarship on early first-millennium Levantine arts has focused largely on attributional pursuits, because the vast majority of presumed Levantine works has been found outside the area o f the Levant proper. The situation is particu­ larly acute for the ivories; scholars have long recognized that the archaeolog­ ical context in which the largest number o f them were excavated — the Assyrian royal city of Nimrud—was not the place of their cultural source (that is, they

were not produced in an Assyrian style)

In addition,

their large num bers—in the thousands—exMbit a di­ verse array o f visual and formal similarities, which seem to hold out the promise that distinct stylistic groupings might be discerned.’ Although elements such as iconog­ raphy, object genre, and technique have been brought to bear on the question, style (in its many different guises) is considered the most telling with respect to location of manufacture,'' Thus, connoisseurial approaches have long been viewed as a means to assign the ivories to spe­ cific locations of production. Yet, as our connoisseurial precision has increased over the years, the number of complications — of "in-betweens” —has only grown; with the delineation of new stylistically based groups, excep­ tions to these groups have come into focus and require explanation.’ It is these exceptions and in-between ex­ amples that motivate me in this initial chapter to rethink early Iron Age Levantine luxury art production along lines that do not depend on a concept of workshop pro­ duction bound to city-state polity. To do so, it is helpful first to review the scholarship that forms the foundation of studies into early Iron Age Levantine art production, and thus this chapter is largely historiographic. In particular, it reviews the scholarship on Levantine ivories, charting the use of connoisseurship from the mid-nineteenth century onward.® The applica­ tion of this methodology has been central to the study of these arts, and it is therefore worth considering some of its implications and assumptions when applied to Levan­ tine ivories. The close stylistic analysis associated with connoisseurship remains a critical tool, and indeed has allowed scholarship to advance to the point at which we can now address the problem o f exceptions; without the definition o f style groups, those pieces that constitute “in-betweens” would remain intellectually invisible. At the same time, there are assumptions implicit in connois-

j

Chapter One

Fig. 1.1 "Group i" horse-bridle frontlet from Well AJ, Northwest Palace, Nimnid. Baghdad, Iraq Museum, IM 79579. In G. Herrmann and Laidlaw joog, no. 246. Courtesy of The British Institute for the Study oflraq (Gertrude Bell Memorial).

seurship relating to the organization of artistic production that I believe need to be unpacked in order to resolve the issues raised by the exceptions. In particular is the assumption that each Levantine political city-state had its own, stylisti­ cally coherent and independent workshop. I propose instead that the stylistic analysis o f Levantine ivories points away from a geopolitical spatial mapping of the ivories; rather, a lack of clear stylistic boundaries emerges that is suggestive of networked practices rather than isolated production loci.

First-Millennium Levantine Ivories The first ivories (as well as bronzes) were discovered at Nimrud in the 1840s and 1850s, which remains the site of the highest concentration o f ivories to date; thousands have been excavated there over the course o f nearly 150 years of digging, with substantial new corpora discovered in the 1950s and igycs.’ Far smaller quantities o f stylistically related ivories have been found in the greater Levantine area, as well as occasional examples in more distant locales, includ­ ing Hasanlu in northwest Iran, Cyprus, Greece, and Etruria (maps 1 and 2).® It is in fact the diffuse nature of the ivories, in terms of both their stylistic delin­ eations and their distribution patterns, that motivates and continues to chal­ lenge attribution to specific place and time. From the initial perplexity in the mid-nineteenth century, increasingly exacting criteria for sorting and clas­ sifying the ivories have allowed us to make sense of the dizzying number and stylistic diversity o f the material. The classificatory trajectory has moved from gross cultural distinction to more precise regional groupings. This, in turn, has led to ever more careful delineation o f style-groups, which somewhat paradoxi­ cally has revealed a lack of hard boundaries between style-groups at the level of higher resolution. Sir Austen Henry Layard, soon after excavating the first examples in the 1840s, identified the ivories as non-Assyrian.’ His comparative data at tliat time was extremely limited, and he proposed an Egyptian source, though he argued for m anufacture at Nimrud (by captured artisans) specifically for the patron­ age of the Assyrian kings. With the expanding corpus o f comparative materials, later nineteenth-century scholars argued for Phoenician production. In 1912, Frederick Poulsen proposed that the non-Assyrian ivories in fact represented the products o f more than one cultural origin. In a distinction that continues to be accepted today, he divided the Nimrud ivories into two groups, linking those with more Egyptianizing elements to Phoenicia (understood as the central Le­ vantine coastal region, more or less congruent with the modern nation-state of Lebanon) and another group to the carved reliefs of North Syria (which he called Hittite).’^' Poulsen's early work has been expanded subsequently and more sys­ tematically argued by Richard Barnett, Irene Winter, and Georgina Herrmann. Barnett, assigned the task of publishing the ivories from Nimrud owned Workshops, Connoisseurship, and Levantine Style(s)

e (Prdestriaa)

Gordion

MeditfrniKan Artnou Kouhon

DaDia!;aj»

Husay/a

Afap 1 Near East and eastern Mediterranean, showing sites mentioned in text. Map created by Martin Weber; ® Marian H. Feidman 2013.

by the British Museum, formed two main groups of ivories based first of all on archaeological findspot: those excavated by Layard in the 1840s in the North­ west Palace and those excavated in the 1850s by William Rennet Loftus in the so-called Southeast Palace, later renamed the Burnt Palace.” These archaeologi­ cal contexts appeared to Barnett to map over the major stylistic distinctions made by Poulsen, with the Layard ivories being primarily Phoenician and the Loftus group generally Syrian. Within the Loftus group, he further subdivided the ivories into those that lacked Egyptian features, which he attributes "almost certainly to Syrian manufacture," and those exhibiting some Egyptian features, which he nevertheless sees as "by Syrian artists in the Phoenician manner."'^ The "certain Syrian” ivories are characterized, according to Barnett, by the fa­ cial features o f the humans ("an oval face with a flat crown but a high forehead; an usually sharp and prominent nose, a small mouth with pursed lips, and large almond eyes with small pupils") and the rendering of the musculature of the lions and lion-based sphinxes and griffins ("stylized superficially into an ornaChapter One

Map 2 Greater Levantine region, showing sites mentioned in text. Map created by Martin Weber; © Marian H. Feldman 2013.

mental linear pattern merely stressing the curves of the muscles”)-'^ Barnett further proposes that Hama (ancient Hamath) was the principal center of ivory carving in the region, attributing the Loftus ivories to this southern Syrian citystate.'‘‘ Though he admits the difficulty in pinpointing a single city as the loca­ tion for the manufacture of the Layard group of Phoenician-style ivories, he sets forth a rather weak hypothesis to link this collection to Hamath as well, based 15

Workshops, Connoisseurship, and Levantine Style (s)

r on a rereading o f a complicated Egyptian hieroglyphic cartouche found on one of the ivories.'^ Following on Barnett's work, in the 1970s Winter provided more quantifi­ able evidence for the geographic distinction between Phoenician- and North Syrian-style ivories.'” Working from the basic stylistic classification first pro­ posed by Poulsen and then strengthened by Barnett, Winter plotted the findspot locations o f the two ivory groups onto maps o f the Near East and eastern Medi­ terranean. Her resulting distribution maps show a clustering in more north­ erly sites for the North Syrian-style ivories and in more southerly sites for Phoenician-style ivories, thus indicating to Winter a real geographic basis for these stylistic designations. As a correlate to this, the two styles are rarely found at the same site aside from a few examples (Nimrud, Lindos, and Samos), which Winter explains through their specific historical situations.'^ Based on these patterns. W inter argues that Barnett’s attribution of both styles to Hamath can­ not be correct, and moreover that "the two areas operated in reasonably sepa­ rate spheres o f contact and influence."’* Distribution maps are, however, not without their own set of challenges. This is evident, for example, in the way that differences between the two groups get flattened, because each particu­ lar ivory must be assigned "either-or" to one stylistic classification or the other without consideration of degrees o f variation along a spectrum of difference.''' Yet the individual pieces exhibit a high degree of stylistic variability among themselves. The necessity of assigning an ivory to either the North Syrian or the Phoenician stylistic category is therefore unable to account for the subtle graduations along the spectrum from North Syrian to Phoenician (generally un­ derstood as ranging from fewer to more Egyptianizing traits) that mark these ivories—the "in-betweens," Winter confronted this very problem of variability soon after in her anal­ ysis of a series of ivories that exhibits a blending of the two styles within the same piece (plate 1)

These she assigned to the South Syrian region and specifi­

cally to the city-state of Damascus on the basis of ivories found at Arslan Tash, which although located in North Syria include one piece —undecorated —that bears an inscription naming Haza’el, who is taken to be the same Haza’el as the ninth-century Aramaean king of Damascus.^' In this she follows the lead of Bar­ nett, who had previously argued that a group of metal bowls found at Nimrud might be assigned to an Aramaean school of art due to their inscriptions of Ara­ maic personal names.^^ Stylistically, these bowls commingle features that are typically separated between either the North Syrian or the Phoenician styles. Winter, however, sees these bowls as including independent elements of each style rather than truly merging the two styles. The Arslan Tash ivories, on the other hand, display a hybridized integration of Phoenician and North Syrian stylistic traits. Winter argues that this seamless blending of features character­ izing North Syrian and Phoenician ivories perfectly aligns with what one might Chapter One

expect to find in the geographic area between North Syria and Phoenicia. The question o f individual bowls exhibiting elements of both styles side-by-side is not addressed, yet is an intriguing situation that Francesca Onnis has recently studied and that 1 discuss below. With the refinement of the ivories’ stylistic classification into broad re­ gional styles, including a Phoenician, North Syrian, and South Syrian/Intermediate tradition^’ in addition to an Assyrian one, attention has turned to locat­ ing more precise places of production. At this level, the concept of worbhops is usually invoked; these are generally taken to be synonymous with specific politically known city-states.^'* For attributing ivories to individual workshops, Herrmann’s influence has been particularly prominent in her definition of stylegroups, a term she coins and which has specific parameters as she uses it. Stylegroups are drawn from so-called sets of ivories found among the vast collections at Nimrud. For Herrmann, sets o f ivories can be "reassembled" according to "a sim ilarity o f size, shape, style, subject, techniques of fixing and methods of carving," although a set need not share all these criteria.^'* The sets then provide the basis for defining style-groups, which "must be built employing a range of diagnostic criteria, both technical and stylistic."’ *’ These style-groups often serve as the basis for reconstructing singular workshops, which are then associated with specific city-state polities, despite Herrmann’s frequent cautions against equating a stylistically defined group with a geographic locale.^’ With the in­ creasing expansion of specific style-groups (that is, the attribution of more ivo­ ries to already defined style-groups) in addition to the definition of new stylegroups, the problem of exceptions and uncertain attributions has become more evident. Critically, those ivories that don’t fit easily into defined style-groups, or even the larger regional traditions, signal a potential disconnect between equat­ ing artistic style with singular place of production. Thus, as our stylistic criteria have attained more precise articulation, they have revealed the immense sty­ listic variability of these works o f art —a variability that in fact seems to defy a tidy classification. This in turn has begun to destabilize even the long-accepted North Syrian-Phoenician stylistic divide.’ ® At the heart of the intellectual process that attempts to attribute ivories to specific locales of production is the methodology of connoisseurship. Terms such as workshop have long ties to this methodology and are accompanied by certain connotations. It is, therefore, worth considering more closely the meth­ odology o f connoisseurship both in general and with specific reference to these ivories in order to better enunciate some of its attendant assumptions that have colored our expectations, particularly our expectation that individual citystates would foster their own distinct styles of ivory carving. In the following section, I focus first on connoisseurship as it developed as a methodology for the professional discipline ofart historical study. I take connoisseurship to be a sub­ set o f the larger enterprise of stylistic analysis rather than synonymous with it, 17

Workshops, Connoisseurship, and Levantine Style(s)

and I would argue that it is specifically the art historical tradition of connoisseurship, as a narrow form of stylistic analysis interested in attributing date, place, school, and artist, that has most influenced the study o f first-millennium ivories. It is important to note up front that I support the pursuit of stylistic analysis. Problematic, however, is the move from noting visual relationships among works of art to determining independent workshops. Although my primary critique rests with the assumption of independently operating work­ shops tied to individual city-states, this model depends on a modern (postRenaissance) notion of a corporeally defined (and bounded) self within which resides artistic genesis (and genius). My discussion therefore includes both of these components —the workshop and the artist-individual —that are central to the connoisseurial approach.

Connoisseurship and the Study of the Ancient Near East Giovanni Morelli (1816-1891), a nineteenth-century Italian Renaissance scholar, dilettante, and politician, is generally credited with formulating the basic the­ ory of modern art historical connoisseurship, although various forms of con­ noisseurship developed along multiple lines from at least the time o f Vasari in the sixteenth century.^* The method took shape in tandem with studies of Ital­ ian Renaissance paintings, and this derivation has profoundly influenced its approaches and assumptions. At its most basic, connoisseurship is the deter­ mination of school/workshop and artist for particular works of art through a close study o f the works themselves. Morelli’s approach focused attention on particular ways of rendering forms (so-called Crundformen), especially those of the human body, which he argued could reveal an artist's style.^“ Once an artist's style was enumerated, unattributed works could thereby be assigned, Morelli was motivated by a nationalist desire to define and reify “Italian" art for the newly unified nation-state. Attribution of known '‘masterpieces" to "Italian” masters was therefore a necessary first step.’ * He believed that Ital­ ian painting should be organized by regional schools, a useful art historical compromise for unifying a history o f all “Italian” art sewn together from the patchwork o f distinct and often antagonistic city-states. However, Morelli did not consider art to be affected by social or political events; rather, he attributed artistic styles to geographic environment—style as autochthonous.^^ This as­ sumption has been overly influential in subsequent connoisseurial studies, in­ cluding those of the Levantine ivories, in which style is equated one-to-one with geography in an implicit commingling of soil and bloodlines. It is, in fact, this intellectual move that permits a workshop to stand in simultaneously for both a human and a geographk/political entity. The early twentieth-century art historian Bernard Berenson (1S65-1959) ef-

Chapter One

fectively codified the actual practice of connoisseurship.^’ Berenson drew heav­ ily on M orelli’s writings and generally credited the approach to Morelli, but in­ troduced systematic steps for actualizing what in Morelli’s writings had been left rather vague. The most influential element in Berenson's methodology is his clear articulation of the ranked weight of the visual elements used in distin­ guishing, on a first order, the general grouping of a regional and period school, and then on a second order, the characteristics that set specific individual art­ ists (hands) within a school apart from one another. In between schools and art­ ists is the workshop, the locus where a master artist trained and worked with lesser artist-apprentices. The move from school/workshop to hand underlies the seminal (Freudian)’"' concept o f the revelatory power o f unconscious action to signal an individual. Berenson presents the approach thus; As it is impossible to put one’s finger on certain morphological details, the execution of which is invariably different in every painter, we must have the patience to examine all the important details separately, with a view to dis­ covering how likely each is to become a characteristic [of an individual artist], bearing in mind, to start with, that the less necessary the detail in question is for purposes of obvious expression, the less consciously will it be executed, the more by rote, the more likely to become stereotyped, and therefore character­ istic. We will begin with the human figure, considering important details from top to toe.” The practice o f connoisseurship for Italian Renaissance painting, as devel­ oped from Berenson’s model o f Morellian connoisseurship, starts with a corpus of already securely attributed works of art. From this corpus, close examina­ tion o f the visual aspects of the works (with connoisseurs vacillating between whether this practice of visual analysis is "scientific" or "intuitive") allows for the discernment of shared elements that can be understood broadly to be part of a regional school of production (stemming from varying adoptions of the Hege­ lian notion of an artistic spirit unique to every place and period). Then, from among the works of a single school, the characteristic traits of a master (hand) represent differences or divergences from the norm. These are understood to be the outcome o f the peculiar artistic genius of the m aster and only evident in so-called masterpieces. Works produced by students of the master (that is, in his workshop) show related but inferior characteristics. In much ancient Near Eastern art historical scholarship, in the absence of documented or named mas­ ter artists, a blurring between individual artist identities and workshop iden­ tities occurs; a workshop acquires the traits of an individual identity for the purposes ofconnoisseurial attribution. We remain very much the product o f the history o f our fields, and we can

ly

Workshops, Connoisseurship, and Levantine Sly!e(s)

trace a close historical relationship between the emerging field of ancient Near Eastern archaeology and the developing discipline of connoisseurship. The first excavator at Ninirud to find ivories, Sir Austen Henry Layard, later became close friends with —indeed even a disciple o f—Giovanni Morelli, the two sharing in­ terests in both politics and art. The two men appear to have met in the 1850s and maintained an extensive correspondence over the next forty years, with Morelli serving as both an intellectual and a collecting advisor to Layard.’ *'It was Layard who wrote the introduction, in 1892, to the posthumous English translation of Morelli’s Italian Painters, in which Morelli provides his seminal discussion on “principles and method."’’ Layard’s personal connection to Morelli and his ac­ tive participation in the nineteenth-century study of Italian painting in general provide more than just an interesting anecdote about the intersection of the study o f the Nimrud ivories with connoisseurship. They highlight the common parentage o f both the study of the ancient Near East and connoisseurship dur­ ing the nineteenth century. Although today the fields of the ancient Near East (most typically studied through the disciplines of archaeology and philology) and Italian Renaissance painting have diverged almost to the point of being dif­ ferent species, ancient Near Eastern studies, especially that of the arts, is very much a child o f the methodological traditions developed by connoisseurs for the attribution of Italian Renaissance paintings. Although Layard’s relationship w ith Morelli probably began in the 1850s, af­ ter his archaeological work had ended and the first publications of the Nimrud ivories had already appeared, his proclivity for aspects of the connoisseurial method is evident even in his early writings on the Assyrian excavations.” In his 1849 publication, Nineveh and Its Remains, Layard wrote about the ivories from the Northwest Palace at Nimrud, The forms, and style of art, have a purely Egyptian character; although there are certain peculiarities in the execution, and mode of treatment, that would seem to mark the work of a foreign, perhaps an Assyrian, artist. The same peculiarities —the same anomalies,—characterized all the other objects dis­ covered. Several small heads in frames, supported by pillars or pedestals, most elegant in design and elaborate in execution, show not only a considerable acquaintance with art, but an intimate knowledge of the method of working in ivory. . . . In alt these specimens the spirit of the design and the delicacy of the worksmanship are equally to be admired.” Such language is fully in line with that of connoisseurship, including the vague yet significant use of terms such as character(istics), peculiarities, and mode of treatment in deducing attributions (and assessing artistic merit). In his 1902 preface to his revision of the English translation of Franz Theodor Kugler’s Handbuch der Ceschichte derMalerei von Constantin dem Crossen bis auf unsereZeit, chapter One

originally published in 1837 (first English translation by Charles Eastlake in 1S51), Layard summarizes Morelli thus: He has shown that. ., each true school of painting in Italy, like the various dialects of the Italian language, was the spontaneous manifestation—the prod­ uct, as it w ere—of the thoughts, feelings, traditions, and manners of the popu­ lation of that part of the Peninsula in which it rose, and that it retained until it became extinct its general characteristics and types, which are to be traced in the works of all those who belonged to it, however much they may have been affected by influences from without.'*'' It is precisely this scaffolding of assumptions that underlies connoisseurship in general and is latent in a number o f its applications to the first-millennium cor­ pus of Levantine ivories. In particular are the assumptions that first, each pe­ riod and geographic region will possess its own unique artistic identity (style), and second, that the application of connoisseurial techniques for discerning characteristics and types will reveal this artistic identity.

Attributing Levantine Ivories Having traced the close relationship between connoisseurship and the study of Levantine ivories, I turn now to address several compounded problems with using the connoisseurial method to study this corpus o f production. A first re­ lates to the application of a methodology devised for one corpus o f art (Italian Renaissance painting) to the arts o f the early first millennium BCE. While there is nothing inherently wrong with applying a method developed for one period to another, this must be done within the constraints o f how analogous the two historical situations are. In the case of applying to ancient Near Eastern arts connoisseurial methods devised for Renaissance art, there is a fundamental in­ commensurability in terms o f the information available to the analyst of each period. Second, this is exacerbated by a circularity ofargum ent within the very nature o f connoisseurial methods. Here the problem lies not in any gaps in our knowledge but in inherent circularity in the temporal sequence of the attri­ bution process itself. My intention here is not to deny the gains that connois­ seurial research has provided. Rather, 1 wish to shine a spotlight on some of the shortcomings of its theoretical foundations as they affect the study of firstmillennium ivories (and by extension bronzes and other small-scale works), and to suggest that we redeploy its powerful analytic tools (namely stylistic analysis) to questions that derive from quite different philosophical under­ standings of the ways in which humans and the materia! world interact as a social entity. I contend that assumptions latent in the method of connoisseur­ ship predispose us to look for specific spatial patternings, in particular those of Workshops, Connoisseurship,and Levantine Style (s)

bounded groups of ivory production linked to the geopolitical unit of the citystate. When we examine the stylistic evidence of the ivories in the absence of these assumptions, greater interpenetration is apparent, suggestive of more extended networks o f social interaction across the entire Levantine-North Syr­ ian region.

Circularity o f Argument I begin with the second of these issues. According to the connoisseurial method, it is only by determining a priori a list of characteristic traits that we can dis­ tinguish a master, workshop, or school. Because we have no clearly attributable corpus — no ivories can be unequivocally said to be the products of a particu­ lar place — there is no "group of works of undoubted authenticity" from which we can determine the “traits that invariably recur."'*' This fundamental lack of knowledge sets the Levantine ivories apart from the corpus o f Italian Renais­ sance paintings. What distinguishes connoisseurship from close formal and stylistic analysis is the interpretive move that allows a connoisseur to identify a specific artistic hand (the master) or cluster of hands (the master's workshop students) according to the discerned visual traits. Such a move rests on a prior analysis, in which traits (or characteristics) of an artist are visually assembled by the connoisseur using known, verified works of art by that artist. In other words, a connoisseur begins by studying already identified/attributed works in order to then move to unidentified/unattributed pieces. However, for early first-millennium ivories, we have no securely identified artists or workshops (although this is often glossed over by conflating the notion o f a stylistically de­ termined corpus with that of a workshop attributed to a known archaeological city). All attributions of the ivories have been derived solely from an examina­ tion of the ivories' material and stylistic properties. While this is in fact the ideal situation put forward by connoisseurs (see, for example, Berenson s explicit call for the prim acy of evidence from the works of art themselves), it is impossible to execute in actual practice.'*^ As David Ebitz has argued, the connoisseur works in a circular fashion within a paradigm of the cult of artistic personality that conditions his attribution.*^ Such a circularity of argument has already been noted in a few critiques of the study o f Levantine ivories.** In an attempt to circumvent this circular reasoning, scholars have turned to architectural carved stone reliefs, which characterize excavated sites in the region generally understood as North Syria.*^ The logic behind this strategy would seem warranted —the immobility of carved stone reliefs should point to the geographic location of production for all artworks executed in a similar style. For example, Irene Winter identifies among the Nimrud corpus a stylistic subgroup o f North Syrian ivories and, through their stylistic association with

22

Chapter One

Fig. 1.2 Ivory plaque from SW % Fort Shalmaneser, Nim rud (ND 7909}. Baghdad, Iraq Museum. Courtesy o f The B ritis h Institute for the Study of Iraq (Gertrude Bell Memorial). Fig. 1,3 Stele from Z in d rli, circa 735-720 BCE; basalt, height 134 cm. Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen, VA 2995. Photograph: bpk, Berlin / Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen / Photograph by O laf M. Telimer / A rt Resource, NY.

carved stone reliefs from the site of Zincirli, ancient Sam’al in southeastern Turkey, attributes their production to this location (figs. 1.2 and 1 . 3 ) She also identifies close stylistic parallels between the ivories and reliefs from a nearby site, Saktje Gozii (figs. 1.4 and 1.5). Because of the spatial proximity of the two sites, and Zincirli’s larger size, Winter explains the close stylistic similarities between the reliefs from Sak^e Gozu and Zindrli as the result o f close political ties, w ith the assumption that the two centers would have shared a common relief-carving workshop. Yet such stylistic associations generally entail excep­ tions and rough approximations that need to be accounted for. In attributing the ivories to Sam’al, Winter notes that even among the supposed subgroup, stylistic variation exists that might be ascribed to different workshops, leading

23

Workshops, Connoisseurship, and Levantine Style (s)

Fig. 1.4 Detail o f ivory from SW 7, Fort Shalmaneser, Nim rud (ND 7904). Baghdad, Iraq Museum. Courtesy o f The British Institute for the Study o f Iraq (Gertrude Bell Mem orial). fig. 1,5 Three re lie f orthostats from Sakqe Gozii, raid-eighth century BCE; relief, 116 * 265 »12 cm. Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen, VA 00971- Photograph: bpk, Berlin / Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen / Art Resource, NY.

her to suggest the possibility of multiple ivory-carving workshops coexisting at the site, in contrast to a single stone-carving workshop shared between Zincirli and Sak^e Gozil.*^ Complicating the use of carved reliefs in the attribution process are, first, the general heterogeneity of styles found within reliefs at any given site, and second, the stylistic similarities that appear in reliefs found at different sites. Stylistic heterogeneity among reliefs from a single site is typically explained through chronological distinctions, relying heavily on assumptions of evolu­ tionary stylistic development either from cruder to more refined or vice versa.'*® Because there has been little solid external means of dating the reliefs, particu­

chapter One

larly from the earlier (pre-eighth-century) period, the reconstruction of a sty­ listic evolution has served a prim ary function in constructing a chronological development o f the carving tradition. According to this, styles follow on one an­ other in sequential manner, usually viewed as moving to either greater or lesser accomplishment. Yet as Brian Brown points out, "there is no necessary correla­ tion between the style in which an individual piece is executed and its chrono­ logical placement."*'’ Indeed, in at least one instance, the temporal coexistence o f two different artistic styles at the same site has been proposed. Winter, fol­ lowing a suggestion made by Helene Kantor in the 1950s, argues that a series of carved stone reliefs from the site o f Tell Halaf (ancient Guzana) is stylistically influenced by small-scale carved ivories.^'-^ According to Winter, reliefs contain­ ing motifs that had prototypes among the ivories are carved in a more sophis­ ticated and competent style, while reliefs with motifs that did not find models among the ivories exhibit a cruder style. If one accepts this argument, which seems logical, then how does one relate the sculptors of these reliefs (in both styles) to specific workshops? To assign the reliefs to different workshops would imply that one workshop specialized only in motifs found among carved ivo­ ries, and the other specialized only in motifs that were not found among carved ivories — a strange situation to entertain. Yet if one assigns all the reliefs to the same workshop, as seems to make the most sense, it was clearly not a workshop that exerted a singular, homogenous style on its products. In addition to stylistic heterogeneity among reliefs from a single site is the issue o f stylistic connections across sites. As mentioned above, the reliefs from Zincirli have close stylistic comparanda with those found at the site of Sakt, n>i, rilUiil kHiiitilv of, 131;

M.ilatya,69 79

iim I s.

Mallowan, Max. 85 Sri 95,147. raasiio, 1471110.

^iiul i*xUMidi’i.S jiorsoiihoiKl, llH K>, sliiijic

iH!uj'.iftsou wltli, US. liS ui;

sim Is .

2o8n3T, and House 11.146; .iiu! Honse VI

jiid M/.1- ui. Il l, >;oi-iiil iili’ iiiity, l?l'; sp i'c ijl

140

^i>;uitis.iiico ot, 113, ii(j. iji, spiM.i! usi'

Marduk. 103, no, :oon>i9 Maresi Catfey, Ijurc, iSotiny. 107111. ;o 4 10H97

nt, lU). .IS "t.ilkiiiy; iilijoi'is." lui; ifiiipo r.il n.iUirc ot, 12('. in tiuiihs, 121. vessels, dopii lion s't. 130; wine. associiUKin with, iM 2 0 . ,SVt' ii/so iiiseriptioiis

■Mari. 134 Markoe, Cleitii, 33, lo in ig Mar*. Karl, 1931155

Metropolitiiii Musoiiiii of Art. 3fiiiiii,

zoaibs,

/OSIWti

mam'ah. 124,134; Icispii, corinectious w ith, r.V2

Miil.ia, ion

Mas.son, Olivier, 2021127

Middle hronze Age. (an

materiality. 176 77

Milliil'd, Alan, in, i^o. iSA, 2011113

iMazzoni, Stefania, 2S, 53

Millei-. Daniel, 177

Megidde, 4 .34.64 65, B uilding 338 in. 5

Mitanni, 73

memory: and identity, in , 12S, 133; group

Moorey. D R. S., 2,7 2.n

identity, cementing of. 2; and in s c r ip ­

.Msxartgal. Anton. 52, 83, isibiis, K)6iiii

tions, 113; and personhood. 119 . and re ■

Morelli, Giovanni, 19 zi; and Griindforriien

cycling, iSi; and reusing, 181; and temporality, 113

style, 18 Mukisli, 40

mercantilism, 74,76.140

Mnsa^ir, 133

Mesopotamia, 43,96.106,169, 1921119,19511108;

Mycenae. 63,70; L io n Gate at, 1941164.193n93

“cupbearer," title o f in. 12.5; fu n erary ritu als in, 121; heroic pasts of. connections to.

Nabopcilassar, 143

74-75. See also Akkad; A ssyria ; Babylonia;

Nabu; E zid a Tem ple o f (in N im m d), 86

Sumer

Naveh, Joseph, 166, 2iini3S

metal howls, 110; as A ra niae a ii/So uth S yrian,

New Guinea, 40

collective memory, 116,126; and co m ­

N in iru d , 11, 30 , 32.34,76,107.-3,136.160

m unity. 125,130; dating of, 115; decorated

N im ru d bronze bowls, 37-38,116.129-30,135

bowls, 113-14: decorated bow ls, as "artistic

N im ru d ivories, 17, 27,34,44 , 50 , 35--56 . 85-86,

corpus,” 116; decorated and inscribed

94-95,117,168, and contioisseurship, 20;

bowls, as subgroup. 115; decorated and

E g y p tia n izin g elements of, 13; as H it-

inscribed bowls, as sp ecial. 133; d ivin e

titc, 13; Loftus Group, 14-15, 52; as North

drinking, and fertility , association with.

Syrian. 77, i90-9innl33; and Ornate

112-13; drinking and feasting, 119-20,130;

group, 160; as Phoenician. 13-15; as Syr­

enchantment, notion of, 131-33; erasing

ian, 14; Tow n House Houses, 141,146-47,

identification, 129; and identity, 116,125,

150-51.153.171-72 N ineveh, 32, 74.108; sacking of, 145

130; imagery of, 12S-30,132-33; in scrip ­

Nineveh and Its Remains (Layard), 20

tions on, 113,115-16,130; inscriptions, and

N orth Palace (at Nineveh), m , igg nS i, aoongz

decoration, in re la tion to, 131; as Levan­

N o rth Syria. 4,13, i6 ,31-32,35, 38 .41. 55. 60.

of, 112; functionality of, 120-21; group

tine, U5; and libating, 120,133,135- 36 ; memorials, 126; and memory, 125.130; as nonfigurative, 130: as North Syrian, 114; ornamentation on, 116; ow nership of.

247

Neer, R ich ard , 36; style, notion of, ig i-g a n n ia

114; attribution, questions of, 114; and

Index

68, 96,152.179; architectural carved stone reliefs, 22-23 North Syrian: and artworks, 178-79; as terra. 179

N orth Syrian style, 39,59-61, 64-65; Barnettt

Potts, T. F, 1941164

and, 52; characteristics of, 187045; em er­

Poulsen, Frederick, 13-14

gence of. North Syrian artistic produc­

practice theory, 5,41, 43-44, 5l, 66,72

tion, 190-9100133; as steatite corpus, 34; W in te r and, 77 Northw est Palace (at Nim rud), 11,14, 20,32, 56, S6, 94-95,98,101,150,192020,199085;

Qatna, 134 Queens' Tombs (at Nim rud), 116; Tomb I], 115, 12-21; Tomb III, 125, 3021124

Area ZT of, 147; metal bow ls of, 115: "Room o f the Bronzes" in, 119; W ell AJ of, 147

Ras Sham ra-Ugarit. See Ugarit

Nylander, Carl, 112

recycling, 140,153,172.177, 20705; and com ­

Oates, David, 146

Rehni, Ellen, 198079

Oates, Joan, 146, 208037

reuse, 140,172,177,20705; and community, 181;

m unity, 181; and memory, 181

objects: communities, and social practices, 109

and memory, 181

comonunitizing, as process through, 109;

Reyes, A. T., 154

as Phoenician, 112; and power, 112; royal

Riis, Poul

connection between, 112

Rittig, Dessa, 142,145

O ld A kkadian Empire. See A k k a d ia n Em pire Olympia, 8,158; bowls, 115-16,139; bronze

28.52-53

rituals, 18304; alcoholic beverages, and com m unal practices, 122,125,134; as

re lie f bands at, 140-42,144-46,168,171-72,

commemorative, 122,128; as communal,

378; W ell 17,144

136; and identity, 113; vessels, individual

Onnis, Francesca. 17, 32,37-3S

names on, 136

Opheltas, 135

Riva, Corinna, 119,122,124,128,135

Ornate Group ivories; A rchaic sm ile of, 29,

Rollig, Wolfgang, 166,189-9000117

31; and Mona Lisa ivory, 31; pegged w ig

Roman Em pire: and Romanization, 19604

characteristic of, 29-30; in Phoenician

Rupp, David, 154,159-60

tradition, lS8nS2 Osborne, James, 25,40

Sak^e GSzii, 23-25 Salamis, iSo, 199081; d jour plaques at, 156,

Palaeopaphos-Skales: Tomb 49, inscriptions on, 135

at, w ith griffins and sirens, 15S-59; chair

Palestine, 32

gam m a at, 155-57,159-60; dromos at,

Panamuwa I, 204082

154-55,157; Hell-figure plaques at, 157,

Panam uwa II, 123

160; N im ru d ivories, comparisons w ith,

Parrot, Andre, 83,196ml

160; propylaeum at, 155,158; recycling and

Patina, 59. See also ‘Unqi

re furb ishing at, i6o, 172; Royal Tombs at,

Pavlik, Dr. Peter, I94n64

141,154,159-60; Tomb 3 at, 154-55; Tomb 50

Pella, I94n64

at, 154; Tomb 50a at, 154; Tomb 79 at, 141,

personhood: and memory, 119 Phoenicia, 31-32,37-38,41,152,178-79; m er­ cantilism of, 181 Phoenician; inscriptions of. 136; language of, as transregional, 17S; style of, 37,39,6i, 77-78; as term, 179 Phrygia, 169 Pinney, Christopher, 177

153-54,158-60,171 Sain'al, 4, 23,184012, 210-11110135; Round Cheeked and Ringletted style-group in, 188067. See also Z in c irli Samaria, 160,184010,192014; Omrid period palace at, 71 Samos, 8,16, 59, iSi, 2110138; frontlet at, 161, 164-67,169-71,173; frontlet, and in scrip ­

Pitt, Erin, 207m

tion. 166-68; frontlet, as North Syrian

Pontecagnano, 115,121; bow! at. 131; Etruscan

style, 162

tomb at, 127 Poplin, Franijois, 48 Porada, Edith, I97n22 Postgate. N., 2050102

24S

159-60; banqueting rites at, 154; cauldrons

Index

Sargon II, 36, 88, 93-94,108-9, MS, 184012, 19605,199081, 208n56,21111150; stele of, 159-60 Sargon o f Agade, 125, ig6n5

Schloeii.J. tfavid, !36, 204!iS3

t)-,; and slinrcd pr;K'(!CCh, 177; social and

Scigliuzzo, ldcna,37,39.19011125

ccm iiiunial practiceof, 41; and social

SeidI, Ursula, 144.178

practice,

semiotics, 176

hctw ecn, iq'in.jy; stylistic am tin u ity ,

Sennacherib, 89, m, 93- 94.111.159

and practice, as passed on through, y'j; as

Shalmaneser III, 27,93 9 4 .102, 145.152,166 68.

s ty listic in im ilia e , ^1, 81, 95; as term , 80,

199081, 2081156 Shalmaneser IV, 152 Shalniane,ser V. 151 Shamash shami-u^ur, 146 Sliam shi-ilu, 152

n'j: stylisticality, d is tin c tio n

84, ly^, 19 J115'}; visual I'oniis, a.s m im ttiae oi, 44; visual rh etoric.as ideal conveyance of. 103-4; and workshop. 11 style-groups, 31,178; and schools, a.9; and sets o f ivories, 17; as term, ly

Slierratt, Susan, 135-36, 20711143

stylistic m inutiae; and coim oisseurship. 44

Sidon, 38, 2111113

stylistic practices, 60 -bi

Simpson. M ariaiitui Shrove, 19011127

Suiiier. 74 . 5 ef also Mesopotamia

Sin-shar ishkuii, 146

S tip p ilu lu im a 1.6 9

social practice: and w riting , 170

Sutcr, Claudia, 31

social relationships; m aterial exjrression. 50-

Syria, 1, 4, 27,3a, 4 ‘ .

51; "ihiiig s,'’ m utual dependence of. 177

t>5. >53. >87n45'. and

Syri.an-style ivories. 38, 52

Southeast Palace (at N in iru d ), 14, in . See also B urnt Palace

Tall Iktanu, 34

South Syrian style, 38, 59, and style-group, 152

Tekke Tom b J (at Knossos North Cemetery):

Southwest Pal.ice (at N ineveh), 89,1950107. 199081

in scrip tio n of, 127; Shcnia bowl, 134 Tel! Alts, 2nm 48

Sparta. 129

Tell Ahm ar. See T il Barsip

spliyrelota, 1 4 5 . 207117

Tell Basta, 65

spliyrclototi korai, 144

T ell Beit M irsim , 34

Stair. Jessica, 207m

Tell Halaf, 4,25. 52,54-55, (’ 4 - 65 ,70,18431014,

Stewart. Andrew. 207m

1931141,1941164; animal m arkings at, 71-72;

Strathern, M arilyn. 118. 212114

Tem ple-Palace at, 5,71. See also Guzana

Strom, Ingrid. 139,165,169, 2110150

Tell N im rin , 34

Strublc, Eudora, 124,135

Tell Tayinat, 55, 59. 68,167,1841110, 2 iin i3 6

Stucky, Rolf, 32

Tem ple o f Apollo, 141, i6i, 165,167

style, 2, 9, 88; animal m arking s, as manifesta­

Tem ple of die Storm God Tarhunzas at

tion of, 65; art history, 51; artistic identity,

C arcliem ish, 184ml

21; collective becom ing, 59; collective

Thebans, 144

memory, 6,41, 52. 66. 71. to8-9: commu-

Thomason, A llison, 96

t iiiy identity, 61, 63; and connoisseurship.

Thureau-D angin. Francois, 151

44; consumption of. 44, 63; continuity of,

Tiglath -P ileser III, 36,78-79,109,126,151-52,

65-66; cultural practices. 51; and ethnic­ ity, 40; geography and culture, role of in, through autochthonous lin k , 37; and

168,1841110,198073,209n67; Central Pal­ ace of, 86,199081; reliefs of, 96-98.100 T il Barsip ivories. 8.25,71,146,184010, iggnSi,

group identities, 108-9: habitus, as prime

B u ildin g C l at. 141,147.150-51,153; dis­

element of, 61,64,72; knowledge and

placem ent of, 171; m utilation at, 150-51;

action, relationship w ith each other, 44;

North Syrian artistic production, 190-

learned ignorance, and com m unity iden­

91110133; phases of, 148; as secondhand as­

tity, 62; linkages, creating of, 61; manufac­

semblage, 148; styles, dive rsity of, 14S-49

ture, location of, 12; and the Other. So, 95-

Tim okretes, 126,132

96; place, and direct association, wariness

Tragana bowls, 115-16,124,130

of, 40; as practice. 44, 61; and practical

Transjordan. 32

knowledge, 65; production of, 11.44: rhe­

Treasure o f Kourion, 115,120,129,132; super­

torical role of, 109: and shared identity.

249

Tall ar-Ram eh, 34

South Syria, 41,55

Index

natural beings on, 133

tribute (maddattu), 94,150,172; booty, d istin c­

chaeological discovery of, 28; a ttr ib u tio n

tion between, 93; period eye, process

process, difficulty of, 28-29; city-states, as

of, 96

synonym ous with, 17; and connoisseur-

tridacna shells, 32-34

ship, 17-18, 22,26,37; connoisseurship,

Turkey, 1, 4, 59,153, i87n45

m ethodology of, 17-18; craft p ro d u c tio n ,

Turner, Geoffrey, 151

29; hum an and geographic/political

Tutam rau, ig8n6i

entity, as stand in for, 18; individual a r t ­

Tutankham un, 65

ists identities, blurring of, 19; and m a s te r

Tyre, 38,136, 2121U3

artists, 52; and schools, 29; as social, 2 8 29; as spatial, 28-29; style-groups, 56-57;

(Jgarit, 65,134

sty listic heterogeneity, 25-26; as te rm , a s

'U nqi, 40, 59-60,166-67, 2 io -iin n i3 5 . See olso

problem atical, 28, 38; unconscious a c t io n ,

Patina

revelatory power of, 19

U rh ilin a , 2110139 Ya’a, 159 Vance, Eugene, 75,77

Yaba, ii 6 , 120-21,124,126-2S

Van Dyke, Ruth, 66-67

Yaba gold bow l, 134; imagery of, 132-33

Vasari, 18

Yamhad, 40 Y a rim -iim : palace of, 69

W arika, 36

Yazilikaya, 194064

Welkampe, Annette, 156 W icke, D irk, 28,132, i88n67 W inter, Irene, 13,16,22-23, 25, 29, 35,38-40,

B u ild in g K at, 184012; Building L at,

1941164, i97n35; South S y ria n style-group

5; H ila n i I at, 124; H ilani III at, 184012;

traits, 152 workshops, 31,35,187056,188067,1900125; a r­

Index

1900132, 2110136; B uilding]at, 184012;

55, 71, 75, 77, 85,118, i85n4,192ni9,193n4i,

W ittgenstein, Ludwig, I9i-92nni2

250

Z in d rli, 4, 23-25,55, 68,71-72,144,186019.

Katum uw a stele, 122-25. i35i K ila m u w a stele, 31.35. See also Sam'al