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2015
Rich ethnobiological study of antiquity is usually constrained by the limitations of the archaeological remains of plants and animals. Sometimes, ongoing tradition, images and texts add a symbolic dimension. Such a study has been done of the Warka Vase, an iconic artifact of Mesopotamia. The lowest of three registers appears to represent the basis of Mesopotamian life: water, plants, and animals. Identification of the water and animals is relatively straightforward. In the absence of serious botanical study, the plants depicted are usually thought to be grain and flax. Analysis of the plant imagery in concert with that of archaic signs, botanical charactistics, and our understanding of Mesopotamian agriculture and tradition shows that the 'grain' is date palm and confirms the other plant as flax. Analysis based on these plant identifications demonstrates the composition of the imagery on the Vase has a gendered and political narrative structure. NOTE: Scholarly paper on this topic is now available online: Miller, Naomi F., Philip H. Jones, and Holly Pittman. 2015. Sign and image: representations of plants on the Warka Vase of early Mesopotamia. University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons, Philadelphia. http://repository.upenn.edu/penn_museum_papers/2
2016 •
The Warka Vase is an iconic artifact of Mesopotamia. In the absence of rigorous botanical study, the plants depicted on the lowest register are usually thought to be flax and grain. This analysis of the image identified as grain argues that its botanical characteristics, iconographical context and similarity to an archaic sign found in proto-writing demonstrates that it should be identified as a date palm sapling. It confirms the identification of flax. The correct identification of the plants furthers our understanding of possible symbolic continuities spanning the centuries that saw the codification of text as a representation of natural language.
Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art edited by Marian Feldman and Brian Brown. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Human, Divine or Both? The Uruk Vase and the Problem of Ambiguity in Early Mesopotamian Visual Arts2014 •
Cultural History of Plants in Antiquity
"The Representation of Plants in the Ancient Near East"2022 •
2018 •
This paper recapitulates the actual use and the degrees of iconization vessels receive in depictions of festive and ritual contexts from the Late Uruk to the Old Babylonian periods. The diachronic perspective reveals partially consistent and partially diverging relations between container shapes and the gender, attire, gesture and posture of the people handling them. It points to the visual importance of purificatory practices and offers a new interpretation of the enigmatic “ball-and-staff” and “pot" motif, which appears frequently in early second millennium cylinder seal iconography.
H. Yilmaz, U. Akkemik, S. Karagoz
IDENTIFICATION OF PLANT FIGURES ON STONE STATUES AND SARCOPHAGUSES AND THEIR SYMBOLS: THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS OF THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN BASIN IN THE ISTANBUL ARCHAEOLOGY MUSEUMThroughout time, plants have been central to human life; plants have provided humans with food, wood, fuel, cosmetics, medicine, and humans have attributed symbolism to plants, including fertility, power, and purity. The Istanbul Archaeology Museum houses many stone statues and sarcophaguses featuring a variety of figures. Among other things, these figures depict fighting, richness, fertility, peace, gods, and plants. Plants are represented as whole trees, cones, leaves, fruits and flowers. These figures help us to understand both the cultural history of these plants and ancient human relationships with plants. The purpose of this study is to identify the genera and species of the plant figures on the stone statues, reliefs and sarcophaguses from the Hellenistic and Roman periods in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum and to discuss their historical importance. To this end, a list was created to record the inventory number, original location where the remains were found, and the age and historical time period of 47 Roman and Hellenistic statues and sarco-phaguses. A total of 24 different types of plants were identified: acanthus leaves, apple, apricot, bay laurel, common grape wine, common fig, a whole eastern plane tree, eggplants, a globe of artichoke, oak leaves and fruits, olive, opium poppy, pear, a cone of umbrella pine, pine leaves and cones, pomegranate, quince, walnut, wheat, strawberry fruit, and date palm leaves, fruit, and stems.
D. Bolger and L. Elder (ed.) The Development of Pre-State Societies in the Ancient Near East: Studies in Honour of Edgar Peltenburg. Oxford. Oxbow Books
Understanding symbols: putting meaning into the painted pottery of prehistoric northern Mesopotamia2010 •
2019 •
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
Plants as material culture in the Near Eastern Neolithic: Perspectives from the silica skeleton artifactual remains at Çatalhöyük2011 •
Investigating plants used for building and craft activities is important for understanding how environments surrounding archaeological settlements were exploited, as well as for considering the social practices involved in the creation and use of plant objects. Evidence for such plant uses has been observed at many Near Eastern Neolithic sites but not widely discussed. Survival may occur in a number of ways, including as impressions in clay, and as charred or desiccated macroremains. Another, less well-known, way in which plant artifacts can be found is as silica skeletons (phytoliths). Formed by the in situ decay of plants, their analysis may tell us about taxa exploited, and locations in which plant artifacts were used or discarded. At Catalhöyük, an abundance of silicified traces of plants used in building materials and for craft activities survive, and are found in domestic and burial contexts. Their analysis demonstrates the routine use of wild plants, especially from wetland areas, for basketry (mats, baskets and cordage) and construction, as well as the secondary use of cereal husk chaff in certain types of building materials. The numerous finds suggest that plant-based containers played an important role as an artifactual class, even after the adoption of early pottery.
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