Colette Kruyshaar
The semiotics of mundane materials: a case study on ceramics from Hellenistic Halos in Thessaly (Greece)
My PhD study is focused on the role of ceramics in the history of the formation, maintenance, and decline of the community of New Halos, a Hellenistic town in Thessaly (Greece), re-founded sometime after 302 BC by Demetrios Poliorketes. The Dutch and Greek excavations of townhouses, cemeteries, a small shrine, and a city gate with secondary habitation, have brought to light diverse artefact assemblages in multiple settings of consumption, dated to the third and early second centuries BC. In following the symmetrical turn in material culture studies, I embrace the notion that people and things are caught up in networks of relations, in which action does not belong to a person, system, or artefact, but is constantly circulating and transforming. A material approach compels to scrutinise practices in archaeological excavation, finds-processing, and model-building in current Mediterranean archaeology, which clarifies that archaeological interpretation largely depends on how archaeological contexts such as cemeteries, sanctuaries, cities and households are categorised and valued. By adopting this approach I focus on the variation in ceramics morphology and size, fabric, surface treatment and decoration, and on the deconstruction of architectural settings and ceramics assemblages, moving away from fixed and opposing categories such as coarse/fine ware, plain/decorated, local/foreign, urban/rural, common/special, public/private, and diagnostic/non-diagnostic. A detailed account on the reassembly of collections of ceramics, in particular of loom weights, cookware, and tableware leads to surprising new routes of enquiry. This way I believe material semiotics can provide a useful contribution to archaeology as a discipline of things.
Supervisors: Vladimir V. Stissi
My PhD study is focused on the role of ceramics in the history of the formation, maintenance, and decline of the community of New Halos, a Hellenistic town in Thessaly (Greece), re-founded sometime after 302 BC by Demetrios Poliorketes. The Dutch and Greek excavations of townhouses, cemeteries, a small shrine, and a city gate with secondary habitation, have brought to light diverse artefact assemblages in multiple settings of consumption, dated to the third and early second centuries BC. In following the symmetrical turn in material culture studies, I embrace the notion that people and things are caught up in networks of relations, in which action does not belong to a person, system, or artefact, but is constantly circulating and transforming. A material approach compels to scrutinise practices in archaeological excavation, finds-processing, and model-building in current Mediterranean archaeology, which clarifies that archaeological interpretation largely depends on how archaeological contexts such as cemeteries, sanctuaries, cities and households are categorised and valued. By adopting this approach I focus on the variation in ceramics morphology and size, fabric, surface treatment and decoration, and on the deconstruction of architectural settings and ceramics assemblages, moving away from fixed and opposing categories such as coarse/fine ware, plain/decorated, local/foreign, urban/rural, common/special, public/private, and diagnostic/non-diagnostic. A detailed account on the reassembly of collections of ceramics, in particular of loom weights, cookware, and tableware leads to surprising new routes of enquiry. This way I believe material semiotics can provide a useful contribution to archaeology as a discipline of things.
Supervisors: Vladimir V. Stissi
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