- Department of Art
The University of Mississippi
P. O. Box 1848
University, MS 38677-1848 - 662-915-1293
Nancy L. Wicker
University of Mississippi, Art and Art History, Faculty Member
- Women in Art, Experimental Archaeology, Early Medieval Archaeology, Numismatics, Scandinavia, Old Norse Literature, and 26 moreRunology, Viking Studies, Art History, Medieval, Old Norse Language, Archaeology, Medieval Archaeology, Old English Literature, Runic inscriptions, Biography of Objects, Death and Burial (Archaeology), Gender Archaeology, Dress and Personal Adornment (Archaeology), Late Antique Art and Archaeology, Ancient Goldsmith Techniques, Roman Age Metall/Goldsmith's Workshops, Stavnsager AD 400-1100, a metal-rich site in eastern Jutland, Gold bracteates, Gudme, Helgö, Uppåkra, Gold Foil Figures (Guldgubbar), Viking Age Scandinavia, Merovingian period, Scandinavia (Archaeology), and Burial Practices (Archaeology)edit
- Dr. Nancy L. Wicker is Professor of Art History at The University of Mississippi. Her research focuses the art of Sca... moreDr. Nancy L. Wicker is Professor of Art History at The University of Mississippi. Her research focuses the art of Scandinavia during the Early Medieval Period, from the Migration Period of the 5th and 6th centuries through the Viking Age, c. 750–1100.
While on sabbatical during the 2016–2017 academic year, she was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center at Research Triangle, North Carolina. During this time, she began focusing on Viking-Age art, which in the past has been dominated by formalistic investigation of abstracted animal-style art. However, Wicker investigates the roles of people in Viking-Age art, investigating patrons and clients who sponsored or purchased the art, artists and artisans who made the works, men and women who used and viewed the objects, and also the humans and anthropomorphic deities who were the subjects depicted in Viking-Age art.
For many years, Wicker has focused on the reception of Roman art by smiths, patrons, and consumers in Scandinavia during the Migration Period (AD 5th–6th century). In particular, she examines how Late Roman medallions inspired stamped golden pendants known as bracteates, which were worn by elite women across northern and central Europe. She has participated in the Getty Foundation Seminar, “The Arts of Rome’s Provinces.”
In addition to her work on bracteates, she has published on gender in archaeology, female infanticide during the Viking Age, Germanic animal-style art, and runic literacy. Her Ph.D. in Ancient Studies from the University of Minnesota included interdisciplinary study of archaeology, art history, and Germanic philology. She has been co-director of an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (HD-51640-13) to develop online integrated access to dispersed digital collections of early medieval artifacts. She has excavated in the U.S., Germany, and Sweden — including at the Viking Age trading center of Birka — and has conducted experiments to reconstruct early medieval jewelry techniques.
Summary of honors, fellowships, and grants
Wicker has been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University in Sweden and is the first woman elected to foreign membership in the Philosophical-historical Section of the Royal Society of Humanities at Uppsala, Sweden. She also was named the first (and only) American chosen for membership in the Sachsensymposion, an international archaeological society. She is one of the very few Americans ever selected to present a paper at the Viking Congress. She was also invited to participate in the on-going project “Reading and Interpreting Runic Inscriptions: The Theory and Method of Runology” at the Centre for Advanced Studies of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo, Norway.
Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Getty Foundation, the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, as well as grants from the American Philosophical Society, the American Numismatic Society, and the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and several Scandinavian sources.
Service to professional societies
Wicker is currently a Co-Chair of the international working party, Archaeology of Gender in Archaeology, and serves on the Runic Advisory Group for the International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions. She has previously served as an Associate Editor of the journal Medieval Archaeology (London), as President of the Society of Historians of Scandinavia, on the Executive Council of The Medieval Academy of America, and on the boards of the International Center of Medieval Art and the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study.
History
Before coming to Oxford, Mississippi, as Chair of the Department of Art, Wicker was Director of the Scandinavian Studies Program and Professor of Art History at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She has participated in archaeological excavations in Germany and Sweden, including the Viking Age trading center of Birka. After completing an undergraduate double major in art history and three-dimensional art studio, she went to the University of Minnesota where she received her M.A. in art history and Ph.D. in interdisciplinary Ancient Studies, with an individualized program encompassing Scandinavia art history, archaeology, and philology.edit
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Recent metal-detector discoveries of two die-identical Migration Period bracteates from the parishes of Scalford and Hoby with Rotherby, both in Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England, may throw light on the use of these objects... more
Recent metal-detector discoveries of two die-identical Migration Period bracteates from the parishes of Scalford and Hoby with Rotherby, both in Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England, may throw light on the use of these objects and the interpretation of the older runic inscription alu. These pieces display an imitation Latin inscription but no runes, along with an image interpreted as a man quaffing a drink from a glass beaker, a figure previously unknown on bracteates. The iconography reinforces a connection between bracteates and beverages and may be construed as a profane representation of hospitality and nourishment.
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Small pendant discs known as Scandinavian gold bracteates are visually impressive indicators of status and identity during the early medieval Mi- gration Period (c. 450–550 CE). Much of the emphasis in bracteate studies has been on... more
Small pendant discs known as Scandinavian gold bracteates are visually impressive indicators of status and identity during the early medieval Mi- gration Period (c. 450–550 CE). Much of the emphasis in bracteate studies has been on typological classification and iconographic interpretation of the pictures, along with decipherment of the inscriptions, yet the sensory impression made by bracteates has been neglected. For decades, archaeologists considered it futile to speculate on the experiential; however, recent research has begun to contend with the materiality of senses and emotions in the past. In this paper, I focus on the both sensory effect of experiencing the pendants and the emotional impact of the objects on those who wore and handled them. Since bracteates are often dis- covered in women’s graves and show evidence of wear on their suspension loops, it is assumed that these objects were actually used in life. A spotlight on agency turns the study of bracteates from an emphasis on typology, iconography, and runology to trace instead the agency and multisensory effects of these objects on people and the effects of people’s actions on these items. This allows an examination of how bracteates were entangled with the senses and emotions of those who made, wore, and gazed upon these small but important objects. I consider what it may have felt like to make, receive, wear, lose, or bequeath a bracteate – or to deposit it into a bog or a grave.
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A cylindrical container at San Isidoro in León is the only Viking object known from the Iberian Peninsula. Here the León piece is compared to other Viking artifacts of similar style and similar materials to place it in its context. The... more
A cylindrical container at San Isidoro in León is the only Viking object known from the Iberian Peninsula. Here the León piece is compared to other Viking artifacts of similar style and similar materials to place it in its context. The cylinder most probably is red-deer antler, and the carving is executed in the late-tenth and early-eleventh-century Viking style called Mammen. The motif on the box is a bird of prey with splayed-out wings and with its head carved three dimensionally looking downward from the top of the cylinder like a gargoyle. The antler body of the object as well as the metal top and bottom are pierced, suggesting that the function of the box may have been to hold aromatic scents. Although Vikings harried the coast of the Iberian Peninsula from the mid-ninth through the twelfth centuries, it is not likely that the piece was a casual loss by a hostile invader. More likely, it was a marriage gift associated with a northern woman who came to Iberia as a bride, a hybrid object made to order for someone who could appreciate the Viking animal style of the ornamentation combined with the exotic use of aromatics unknown in the north.
Corrected version of “The Scandinavian Container at San Isidoro, León, in the Context of Viking Art and Society,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 11:3 (2019): 135–156.
Corrected version of “The Scandinavian Container at San Isidoro, León, in the Context of Viking Art and Society,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 11:3 (2019): 135–156.
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A cylindrical container at San Isidoro in León is the only Viking object known from the Iberian Peninsula. The León piece is compared to other Viking artifacts of similar style and similar materials to place it in its context. The... more
A cylindrical container at San Isidoro in León is the only Viking object known from the Iberian Peninsula. The León piece is compared to other Viking artifacts of similar style and similar materials to place it in its context. The cylinder most probably is red-deer antler, and the carving is executed in the late-tenth and early-eleventh- century Viking style called Mammen. The motif on the box is a bird of prey with splayed-out wings and with its head carved three dimensionally looking downward from the top of the cylinder like a gargoyle. The antler body of the object as well as the metal top and bottom are pierced, suggesting that the function of the box may have been to hold aromatic scents. Although Vikings harried the coast of the Iberian Peninsula from the mid-ninth through the twelfth centuries, it is not likely that the piece was a casual loss by a hostile invader. More likely, it was a marriage gift associated with a northern woman who came to Iberia as a bride, a hybrid object made to order for someone who could appreciate the Viking animal style of the ornamentation combined with the exotic use of aromatics unknown in the North.
See corrected version in The Medieval Iberian Treasury in the Context of Cultural Exchange (Expanded Edition), ed. Therese Martin. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Open Access.
doi 10.1163/9789004424593
See corrected version in The Medieval Iberian Treasury in the Context of Cultural Exchange (Expanded Edition), ed. Therese Martin. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Open Access.
doi 10.1163/9789004424593
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Runic inscriptions on Scandinavian Migration Period gold bracteates have long been considered problematic. Although many of them are readable, only a few are interpretable. One of the major questions about bracteate texts is whether they... more
Runic inscriptions on Scandinavian Migration Period gold bracteates have long been considered problematic. Although many of them are readable, only a few are interpretable. One of the major questions about bracteate texts is whether they are related to the images depicted on the pieces. During the past quarter century, these inscriptions have been interpreted chiefly on the basis of Karl Hauck's identification of the major figure depicted on bracteates as Odin. However, there are other interpretations of the pictures that may also assist our understanding of the texts. This paper examines some of these alternative explanations of bracteate imagery, with particular reference to how the objects were used and by whom, the aim being to arrive at a better understanding of the inscriptions.
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The early medieval smith has sometimes been considered “elusive”. After examining the basis for describing smiths with this word, various possibilities including itinerancy and recycling of metals are proposed that may restrict our... more
The early medieval smith has sometimes been considered “elusive”. After examining the basis for describing smiths with this word, various possibilities including itinerancy and recycling of metals are proposed that may restrict our knowledge about smiths. Our best and most plentiful sources of information about smiths are in fact the objects that they made. Migration Period gold bracteates are presented here as examples by which to investigate various pathways for learning more about smiths, in particular tool marks to trace individual artisans and experimental archaeology to help us understand how smiths worked. In addition, women should not be overlooked for their contributions both as smiths and as patrons. Finally, it is concluded that the smith really is not so elusive – rather, we were perhaps asking the wrong questions and not taking advantage of advances that can be attained through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary investigations.
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Even though Scandinavia is on the geographic periphery of Europe, it was vital to the cultural development of medieval Europe during the Viking Age of the ninth through eleventh centuries. This paper investigates how Scandinavian art... more
Even though Scandinavia is on the geographic periphery of Europe, it was vital to the cultural development of medieval Europe during the Viking Age of the ninth through eleventh centuries. This paper investigates how Scandinavian art counters many of our assumptions about media, religion and iconography, complicating our picture of medi- eval art in the rest of Europe. Scandinavia lacks monumental stone architecture and a manuscript tradition in the early medieval period, and most of the art of this era is pre-Christian and non-figural; instead of familiar Christian iconography, animal-style ornamentation on metal artifacts is the norm. I recommend that the few examples of northern art typically included in surveys of art history be placed in their social context, and I propose additional examples that should be added to such textbooks. I also explore how Scandinavian scholars contributed to methodological studies of classification and how studies of this region provide us with significant models of core/periphery relationships and multicultural interactions. Finally, I point out that Scandinavian art, especially via the Vikings, significantly affected the core of medieval European art and architecture.
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Art of the four-hundred-year period in Scandinavia spanning c. 400 to c. 800 ce begins with the close of the Roman Iron Age and extends into the early Viking Age. Archaeologically, this entire time span is considered part of the Iron Age,... more
Art of the four-hundred-year period in Scandinavia spanning c. 400 to c. 800 ce begins with the close of the Roman Iron Age and extends into the early Viking Age. Archaeologically, this entire time span is considered part of the Iron Age, the final phase of European prehistory that follows the Stone and the Bronze Ages, with reference to the material used for cutting edges of weapons and tools. The art of an earlier phase, c. 400–550, is usually called the Migration Period in Norway and Sweden, while the later period, c. 550–800, is called the Vendel Period in Sweden, after a particular site there, but is referred to as the Merovingian Period in Norway. Using the terms “Migration Period” and “Merovingian Period” highlights contacts of Scandinavia with Germanic peoples on the Continent. In Denmark, the period c. 400–800 is referred to as the Germanic Iron Age, divided into earlier and later phases. In general, the terms “Migration Period” and “Vendel Period” will be used here. For al...
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Published as Nancy L. Hatch
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Research Interests: Archaeology and Folklore
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Published as Nancy L. Hatch
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Published as Nancy L. Hatch
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Grant report (white paper) submitted to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation on the Andvari Iconographic Thesaurus project (January-December 2022). The project team, together with a panel of expert contributors, designed, revised, and... more
Grant report (white paper) submitted to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation on the Andvari Iconographic Thesaurus project (January-December 2022). The project team, together with a panel of expert contributors, designed, revised, and electronically documented the Andvari Iconographic Thesaurus (AIT 1.0), a network of terms and definitions created to describe accurately the iconography of early medieval northern European art (4th to 12th centuries).
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To buy the book please follow Harrassowitz Verlag - https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/Aleksanderia/titel_6748.ahtml
Research Interests: Classical Archaeology, Roman History, Numismatics, Greek Archaeology, Ancient numismatics (Archaeology), and 10 moreRoman numismatics and archaeology, Ancient Roman Numismatics, Roman coins, Coins finds as archaeological artefacts, Ancient Coins, Roman Imperial Coins, Arqueología romana / Roman archeology, Coins, Barbarians and Romans in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, and Roman Archaeology
The Medieval Iberian Treasury in the Context of Cultural Interchange—expanded beyond the special issue of Medieval Encounters from which it was drawn—centers on the magnificent treasury of San Isidoro de León to address wider questions... more
The Medieval Iberian Treasury in the Context of Cultural Interchange—expanded beyond the special issue of Medieval Encounters from which it was drawn—centers on the magnificent treasury of San Isidoro de León to address wider questions about the meanings of cross-cultural luxury goods in royal-ecclesiastical settings during the central Middle Ages. Now fully open access and with an updated introduction to ongoing research, an additional chapter, composite bibliographies, and indices, this multidisciplinary volume opens fresh ways into the investigation of medieval objects and textiles through historical, art historical, and technical analyses. Carbon-14 dating, iconography, and social history are among the methods applied to material and textual evidence, together shining new light on the display of rulership in medieval Iberia.
Contributors are Ana Cabrera Lafuente, María Judith Feliciano, Julie A. Harris, Jitske Jasperse, Therese Martin, Pamela A. Patton, Ana Rodríguez, and Nancy L. Wicker.
Contributors are Ana Cabrera Lafuente, María Judith Feliciano, Julie A. Harris, Jitske Jasperse, Therese Martin, Pamela A. Patton, Ana Rodríguez, and Nancy L. Wicker.
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