Occasional Lecturer/Tutor at School of Classics UCD Early career researcher in the visual and material culture of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean in the early first millennium B.C.
"The cross-cultural phenomenon of the accumulating stone cairn persists to this day in many cultu... more "The cross-cultural phenomenon of the accumulating stone cairn persists to this day in many cultures, as hillwalkers and travellers leave markers of their journey for posterity, through the addition of their own stone to heaps at crossroads’ or on hills or mountains (Muhonen 2012). These cairns signal the way forward for future wayfarers, and can also function as boundary markers and provide a platform for expression of intent or of prayer for protection and guidance through the medium of stone. In Greek antiquity, the practice was explained through an aetiological myth pertaining to the multifaceted and mercurial Olympian god Hermes, in whose very name the stone heap is implicit. In addition to presenting this mythical aition from which the practice is said to have derived in the ancient Greek world, this paper will further elucidate the inextricable relationship of the god and the stone heap from the earliest appearance of his name in Bronze Age Linear B texts. In this paper, I will also explore the physical aniconic manifestation of the god in the heap of stones and in the herm, examining the apotropaic and functional roles of these monuments. Of particular interest will be the archaeological remains of the Nekromanteion- the oracle of the dead- at Epiros in northwestern Greece. This site has yielded evidence of such stone heaps, which, it is likely, allude to the role of Hermes as psychopomp, or guide of souls, in Greek religion.
Jessica Doyle
Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholar
School of Classics, UCD
Scholarly discourses in ancient history, she observes, shape our perceptions and all too frequent... more Scholarly discourses in ancient history, she observes, shape our perceptions and all too frequently conform to Hellenocentric and primordialist narratives that promote the notion that Greek culture and art were inherently and exceptionally superior, and therefore that assimilation and acculturation by other Mediterranean societies were inevitabilities of this Hellenic triumph. The term for this process, 'Hellenization', and the assumptions that lie behind it, argues Martin, reflect the essentialism and chauvinism at the heart of scholarship in classical history. Furthermore, to even speak of distinct, self-identifying and defined 'Greek' and 'Phoenician' cultures in antiquity is, in itself, problematic, and a more holistic, nuanced and theoretically informed approach must be adopted. Towards this end, Martin reconsiders select examples of visual culture, from a variety of contexts, attributed to Greeks and Phoenicians over several centuries in the first millennium B.C. In her Introduction, Martin sets out the four principles that guide her study. The first is that 'barbarians matter'. That is, that groups and peoples like the Phoenicians matter in their own right, and that scholars of ancient history should duly take them as seriously as they do the Greeks and their Hellenic culture. Furthermore, we must exercise more caution in applying convenient etic terminologies indiscriminately to peoples and cultures that defy clear delineation. Her second principle holds that it is incumbent on us as scholars to apply theory in appropriate and responsible manner, acknowledging the reluctance of classical scholarship to unabashedly embrace theory as potentially useful, tiptoeing around it with terminology such as 'approaches' and 'perspectives'. Her third and fourth principles concern the question of identity and its expressions in art: that cultural contact is a significant factor in how identity is expressed artistically, and that it is the visual arts that offer us the most fruitful ground for addressing the question of Phoenician collective identity as an emic reality. The five subsequent chapters, informed by and aligned with these principles, build the case for an appreciation of how contact between cultures has an impact on the visual arts in ways that are best understood when approached via appropriate theories of cultural interaction. Chapter 1 reviews the theoretical landscape as it has developed to date, with regard to art history–both Greek and Phoenician–and ideas of culture, contact and interaction. The primary models employed in this discourse are Orientalizing and Hellenization. It is the latter with which Martin's book is most concerned, and, as mentioned above, it is found to be a problematic concept.
Reviewed by Jessica Doyle, University College Dublin (jessica.doyle@ucdconnect.ie) [Authors and t... more Reviewed by Jessica Doyle, University College Dublin (jessica.doyle@ucdconnect.ie) [Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.] This volume presents the papers delivered at a special meeting of the New York Aegean Bronze Age Colloquium on September 2014, held in memory of Ellen N. Davis who passed away in July of the preceding year. Davis herself was a founding member of the Colloquium, and so the Colloquium and this resulting collection of papers are fitting tributes. Davis' scholarship will be familiar to readers with an interest in the Aegean Bronze Age. She produced seminal works on a range of topics pertaining to the period (a bibliography of her work is usefully provided on pages xv–xvi), and each of the ten papers in this volume builds on, responds to, or otherwise acknowledges Davis' insight and enthusiasm. This is more explicit and focused in some instances (for example, the papers by Weingarten, Wiener, Kopcke, Koehl and Palaima), while in others Davis' broader influence is celebrated (for example, in the contributions by Shank and Jones). The contents are not divided into sections, but are somewhat thematically grouped. The first four papers deal with Aegean metallurgy. Davis' own doctoral dissertation examined the Vapheio Cups and gold and silver ware, and was followed by a number of papers pertaining to the use and provenance of metals in the Bronze Age Aegean. 1 The volume opens with Weingarten's reconsideration of the Gournia silver lobed kantharos (conventionally dated to Middle Minoan IB), a unique vessel that Davis examined early in her career. 2 Frustratingly for Davis, the proposed Anatolian prototypes for this unusual type postdated the Gournia kantharos. Weingarten here makes a convincing case, based on recent discoveries and up-to-date classifications, for a later date for the Gournia cup, thus supporting the role of the Anatolian vessels as inspiration behind the silver kantharos and its ceramic imitations, and offers some suggestions as to the possible purposes of these vessels in their Minoan context. Wiener's offering revisits Davis' early work on Helladic cups in precious metals, most notably those from the Vapheio tholos. Davis proposed that one of the gold Vapheio cups was the work of a Minoan craftsman, the other produced in a Mycenaean workshop. 3 Wiener takes his cue from this insight to examine the significance of the remarkably rich Vapheio tholos, and the importance of Lakonia in the Mycenaean period, particularly regarding relations between Crete and the Mainland, in light of new evidence from the palatial site of Hagios Vasileios. He suggests these pairs of cups were tools in the cultivation of host-guest relations in the tradition of xenia. The third paper, a contribution by Kopcke, re-appraises Davis' view that Transylvania was a major source of gold for Mycenaean Greece which had bronze to offer in exchange. Kopcke defends Davis' view, though is less certain of her argument that Crete could not have been the source for the Shaft Grave gold, urging us to conceive of a wider exchange network incorporating Crete and its Egyptian connections as well as the Carpathian connection. A further paper on northerly connections is offered by Betancourt, Ferrence and Muhly. Citing Davis' interests in Minoan interconnections with northern regions, the authors offer a study of some metal objects from the cemetery at Petras in eastern Crete that indicate Cretan interconnections with the Cyclades and locations further north. The objects studied are small, personal items, of types known from the Cyclades, the Greek peninsula, the Balkans and Anatolia. The authors link this evidence for northerly connections at Petras to the site of Hagia Photia nearby, a site with demonstrably strong Cycladic connections in Early Minoan (EM) I which was deserted in EM II. Petras, they suggest, may have replaced Hagia Photia in EM II as a gateway to the north. The next four papers shift the focus to the visual arts, reflecting Davis' own career, which saw her interests expand, notably into the area of Bronze Age wall-painting and iconography. Christos Doumas offers an exploration of the human experience in Cycladic prehistory as told through the manifestations of the human figure and its many changes across modes and media. Observing the fluctuations in representation between figurine, vase, and fresco, and the favour shown alternately to female and male representation from the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age, Doumas examines the relationship between social change and how the human condition is expressed in Cycladic art. Vlachopoulos' paper invokes Davis' interest in the wall-paintings of Thera, examining the use of colour-contrast and, in particular, purple pigment to enhance the optical effects of a set of non-figurative frescoes from Xeste 3 at Akrotiri. The frescoes, depicting lozenges with rosettes and spirals, are demonstrated by Vlachopoulos to have been rendered in polychromatic combinations that were deliberately selected for illusionistic and aesthetic effect. His paper also includes a discussion of the possible interpretative significance of the rosette in Aegean iconography, and points the way towards further research on the possible relationship between the use of prestigious pigments and the important Goddess and Adorants frescoes in the same complex. Shank's paper retains the focus on Aegean wall-painting, examining the various conventions employed by Minoan artists to represent water in miniature-style frescoes. Basing her observations on familiar examples from Hagia Eirene and Akrotiri, and some less well-known ones from Epano Zakros and Tel Kabri, Shank distils her findings into the identification of six conventions employed in the representation of water by Aegean artists working in the miniature style. Her closing paragraph hints at a further study into this important subject that will investigate the same topic but in the realm of larger-scale wall painting. The eighth paper, by Jones, re-envisages some familiar figures from the Temple Repositories at Knossos, deconstructing Evans' extensive " reconstitutions " of the female faience statuettes that he designated as " Snake Goddesses. " Jones brings to bear her expertise on Minoan female dress to offer new reconstructions of the statuettes HM63 and HM65. 4 Most interestingly, she uses previously misplaced and overlooked
"The cross-cultural phenomenon of the accumulating stone cairn persists to this day in many cultu... more "The cross-cultural phenomenon of the accumulating stone cairn persists to this day in many cultures, as hillwalkers and travellers leave markers of their journey for posterity, through the addition of their own stone to heaps at crossroads’ or on hills or mountains (Muhonen 2012). These cairns signal the way forward for future wayfarers, and can also function as boundary markers and provide a platform for expression of intent or of prayer for protection and guidance through the medium of stone. In Greek antiquity, the practice was explained through an aetiological myth pertaining to the multifaceted and mercurial Olympian god Hermes, in whose very name the stone heap is implicit. In addition to presenting this mythical aition from which the practice is said to have derived in the ancient Greek world, this paper will further elucidate the inextricable relationship of the god and the stone heap from the earliest appearance of his name in Bronze Age Linear B texts. In this paper, I will also explore the physical aniconic manifestation of the god in the heap of stones and in the herm, examining the apotropaic and functional roles of these monuments. Of particular interest will be the archaeological remains of the Nekromanteion- the oracle of the dead- at Epiros in northwestern Greece. This site has yielded evidence of such stone heaps, which, it is likely, allude to the role of Hermes as psychopomp, or guide of souls, in Greek religion.
Jessica Doyle
Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholar
School of Classics, UCD
Scholarly discourses in ancient history, she observes, shape our perceptions and all too frequent... more Scholarly discourses in ancient history, she observes, shape our perceptions and all too frequently conform to Hellenocentric and primordialist narratives that promote the notion that Greek culture and art were inherently and exceptionally superior, and therefore that assimilation and acculturation by other Mediterranean societies were inevitabilities of this Hellenic triumph. The term for this process, 'Hellenization', and the assumptions that lie behind it, argues Martin, reflect the essentialism and chauvinism at the heart of scholarship in classical history. Furthermore, to even speak of distinct, self-identifying and defined 'Greek' and 'Phoenician' cultures in antiquity is, in itself, problematic, and a more holistic, nuanced and theoretically informed approach must be adopted. Towards this end, Martin reconsiders select examples of visual culture, from a variety of contexts, attributed to Greeks and Phoenicians over several centuries in the first millennium B.C. In her Introduction, Martin sets out the four principles that guide her study. The first is that 'barbarians matter'. That is, that groups and peoples like the Phoenicians matter in their own right, and that scholars of ancient history should duly take them as seriously as they do the Greeks and their Hellenic culture. Furthermore, we must exercise more caution in applying convenient etic terminologies indiscriminately to peoples and cultures that defy clear delineation. Her second principle holds that it is incumbent on us as scholars to apply theory in appropriate and responsible manner, acknowledging the reluctance of classical scholarship to unabashedly embrace theory as potentially useful, tiptoeing around it with terminology such as 'approaches' and 'perspectives'. Her third and fourth principles concern the question of identity and its expressions in art: that cultural contact is a significant factor in how identity is expressed artistically, and that it is the visual arts that offer us the most fruitful ground for addressing the question of Phoenician collective identity as an emic reality. The five subsequent chapters, informed by and aligned with these principles, build the case for an appreciation of how contact between cultures has an impact on the visual arts in ways that are best understood when approached via appropriate theories of cultural interaction. Chapter 1 reviews the theoretical landscape as it has developed to date, with regard to art history–both Greek and Phoenician–and ideas of culture, contact and interaction. The primary models employed in this discourse are Orientalizing and Hellenization. It is the latter with which Martin's book is most concerned, and, as mentioned above, it is found to be a problematic concept.
Reviewed by Jessica Doyle, University College Dublin (jessica.doyle@ucdconnect.ie) [Authors and t... more Reviewed by Jessica Doyle, University College Dublin (jessica.doyle@ucdconnect.ie) [Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.] This volume presents the papers delivered at a special meeting of the New York Aegean Bronze Age Colloquium on September 2014, held in memory of Ellen N. Davis who passed away in July of the preceding year. Davis herself was a founding member of the Colloquium, and so the Colloquium and this resulting collection of papers are fitting tributes. Davis' scholarship will be familiar to readers with an interest in the Aegean Bronze Age. She produced seminal works on a range of topics pertaining to the period (a bibliography of her work is usefully provided on pages xv–xvi), and each of the ten papers in this volume builds on, responds to, or otherwise acknowledges Davis' insight and enthusiasm. This is more explicit and focused in some instances (for example, the papers by Weingarten, Wiener, Kopcke, Koehl and Palaima), while in others Davis' broader influence is celebrated (for example, in the contributions by Shank and Jones). The contents are not divided into sections, but are somewhat thematically grouped. The first four papers deal with Aegean metallurgy. Davis' own doctoral dissertation examined the Vapheio Cups and gold and silver ware, and was followed by a number of papers pertaining to the use and provenance of metals in the Bronze Age Aegean. 1 The volume opens with Weingarten's reconsideration of the Gournia silver lobed kantharos (conventionally dated to Middle Minoan IB), a unique vessel that Davis examined early in her career. 2 Frustratingly for Davis, the proposed Anatolian prototypes for this unusual type postdated the Gournia kantharos. Weingarten here makes a convincing case, based on recent discoveries and up-to-date classifications, for a later date for the Gournia cup, thus supporting the role of the Anatolian vessels as inspiration behind the silver kantharos and its ceramic imitations, and offers some suggestions as to the possible purposes of these vessels in their Minoan context. Wiener's offering revisits Davis' early work on Helladic cups in precious metals, most notably those from the Vapheio tholos. Davis proposed that one of the gold Vapheio cups was the work of a Minoan craftsman, the other produced in a Mycenaean workshop. 3 Wiener takes his cue from this insight to examine the significance of the remarkably rich Vapheio tholos, and the importance of Lakonia in the Mycenaean period, particularly regarding relations between Crete and the Mainland, in light of new evidence from the palatial site of Hagios Vasileios. He suggests these pairs of cups were tools in the cultivation of host-guest relations in the tradition of xenia. The third paper, a contribution by Kopcke, re-appraises Davis' view that Transylvania was a major source of gold for Mycenaean Greece which had bronze to offer in exchange. Kopcke defends Davis' view, though is less certain of her argument that Crete could not have been the source for the Shaft Grave gold, urging us to conceive of a wider exchange network incorporating Crete and its Egyptian connections as well as the Carpathian connection. A further paper on northerly connections is offered by Betancourt, Ferrence and Muhly. Citing Davis' interests in Minoan interconnections with northern regions, the authors offer a study of some metal objects from the cemetery at Petras in eastern Crete that indicate Cretan interconnections with the Cyclades and locations further north. The objects studied are small, personal items, of types known from the Cyclades, the Greek peninsula, the Balkans and Anatolia. The authors link this evidence for northerly connections at Petras to the site of Hagia Photia nearby, a site with demonstrably strong Cycladic connections in Early Minoan (EM) I which was deserted in EM II. Petras, they suggest, may have replaced Hagia Photia in EM II as a gateway to the north. The next four papers shift the focus to the visual arts, reflecting Davis' own career, which saw her interests expand, notably into the area of Bronze Age wall-painting and iconography. Christos Doumas offers an exploration of the human experience in Cycladic prehistory as told through the manifestations of the human figure and its many changes across modes and media. Observing the fluctuations in representation between figurine, vase, and fresco, and the favour shown alternately to female and male representation from the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age, Doumas examines the relationship between social change and how the human condition is expressed in Cycladic art. Vlachopoulos' paper invokes Davis' interest in the wall-paintings of Thera, examining the use of colour-contrast and, in particular, purple pigment to enhance the optical effects of a set of non-figurative frescoes from Xeste 3 at Akrotiri. The frescoes, depicting lozenges with rosettes and spirals, are demonstrated by Vlachopoulos to have been rendered in polychromatic combinations that were deliberately selected for illusionistic and aesthetic effect. His paper also includes a discussion of the possible interpretative significance of the rosette in Aegean iconography, and points the way towards further research on the possible relationship between the use of prestigious pigments and the important Goddess and Adorants frescoes in the same complex. Shank's paper retains the focus on Aegean wall-painting, examining the various conventions employed by Minoan artists to represent water in miniature-style frescoes. Basing her observations on familiar examples from Hagia Eirene and Akrotiri, and some less well-known ones from Epano Zakros and Tel Kabri, Shank distils her findings into the identification of six conventions employed in the representation of water by Aegean artists working in the miniature style. Her closing paragraph hints at a further study into this important subject that will investigate the same topic but in the realm of larger-scale wall painting. The eighth paper, by Jones, re-envisages some familiar figures from the Temple Repositories at Knossos, deconstructing Evans' extensive " reconstitutions " of the female faience statuettes that he designated as " Snake Goddesses. " Jones brings to bear her expertise on Minoan female dress to offer new reconstructions of the statuettes HM63 and HM65. 4 Most interestingly, she uses previously misplaced and overlooked
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Papers by Jessica Doyle
Jessica Doyle
Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholar
School of Classics, UCD
jessica.doyle@ucdconnect.ie
"
Book Reviews by Jessica Doyle
Jessica Doyle
Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholar
School of Classics, UCD
jessica.doyle@ucdconnect.ie
"