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A giant lava bubble, over a hundred feet across, explodes violently, extruding ribbons of volcanic glass in the air at the ocean entry in Kalapana, USA
Incantation Bowls from Mesopotamia, c.300-700 CE: these bowls are lined with Aramaic incantations and drawings that show demons being shackled and subdued; they were often buried beneath houses and cemeteries in an effort to capture malevolent spirits
Bowls like this were once produced as magical amulets in parts of Mesopotamia (in what is now Iraq and Iran). As this article explains:
Thousands of similar incantation bowls, also known as magic bowls, were produced in the area of todayās Iraq between the fifth and eighth centuries. Clients used incantation bowls to protect and heal, to frighten off demons and evil spirits, and, in a few cases, to enlist demons to help secure love or money, or to harm adversaries. In addition to the magical texts, scribes sketched drawings of bound and chained demons ā pictorial representations of the spellsā desired effect ā on the bottom of about a quarter of the bowls.
Above: this incantation bowl was commissioned by someone named Gia Bar Imma nearly 1,700 years ago, and it features a Jewish Babylonian Aramaic inscription along with a drawing of two demons wrapped in chains
These bowls were created and used by people of many different faiths. They were typically inscribed with Aramaic text, which appeared in one of three different dialects: Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, Mandaic, or Syriac. Incantations that were written in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic are, of course, attributed to Jewish communities, but the ones in Mandaic are associated with Gnostic Mandaeans, and the ones in Syriac are typically associated with Christians, Manichaeans, or followers of the ancient Babylonian religion.
Above: this bowl is lined with an Aramaic inscription that invokes "the powers of Enoch, the seven planets, and the twelve signs of the zodiac" to protect the home of a man named Pabak bar Kufithai
There are a few incantation bowls that feature Arabic or Persian inscriptions instead, and those examples tend to have Islamic or Zoroastrian motifs. Some bowls are simply inscribed with gibberish:
The largest number of known incantation bowls are written not in Syriac, but in Jewish Aramaic by Jewish scribes (though not necessarily for Jewish clients). Mandaean bowls are the second most numerous, only then followed by bowls in Syriac. A handful of bowls in Arabic and Persian are also known, in addition to bowls ā perhapsĀ 10 perĀ cent ā that can only be called ancient forgeries. These latter are filled with scribbles that mimic cursive writing but are not, in fact, in any language at all; perhaps they were made by illiterate scribes preying on equally illiterate clients.
Above: this bowl features a Mandaic inscription
Incantation bowls provide valuable information about Jewish history, in particular:
The prevalence of Jewish Aramaic bowls are what makes these artefacts so important for Jewish history. They provide the sole piece of epigraphic evidence documenting Jewish language and religion at one of the most important times in Jewish history: the period of the composition of the Babylonian Talmud.
Above: researchers believe that the figure in the center of this bowl is a representation of the demon Lilith, whose likeness and/or name appears on many other incantation bowls
This article also notes:
Generally speaking, the incantations could do a number of things: healing fevers and diseases; guarding from sudden death, injustice, and treachery; and exorcising evil spirits. Similar metal talismans were made around the same time and filled largely the same role. Where they differ is that in many instances the bowls called upon deities or angels to ensnare demons. It is believed from drawings on incantation bowls depicting ensnared creatures that the reason that so many have been found upside-down is that they were intended to be traps for careless or curious demons.
Above: this bowl has a Jewish Babylonian Aramaic inscription that includes the phrase "this cat is bound," and it features a drawing of a demonic cat being restrained
More than 2,000 of these bowls are known to exist, but only a fraction of them have been thoroughly studied.
Above: an illustration from another bowl
Above: two incantation bowls with Jewish Babylonian Aramaic text and drawings that show demons being restrained
Sources & More Info:
Aeon: Magic Bowls of Antiquity
Penn Today: The Stories the Bowls Tell
Bowers Museum: To Catch a Demon: Mesopotamian Incantation Bowls
Jewish Quarterly Review: Magic Formulae and Women's History: Authorship, Agency, and Gender in the Aramaic Incantation Bowls
My Jewish Learning: Magic Bowls
The Librarians: Who Wrote these Ancient Jewish Incantation Bowls?
Penn Museum: Hebrew Bowl
Journal of Late Antiquity: Enslaved People and the Demonic in the Sasanian Empire
my partner was a TA for an intro-to-subject course in grad school. finals week rolls around and the students are required to submit this big module assignment they've had like a month to do for a decent chunk of their grade. if you've submitted everything, you'll see a summary screen with a star beside each module name showing it's been completed.
an hour before the assignment deadline, he receives an email from a student claiming they completed the assignment, but the system is not allowing them to submit. there's an image attached to the email. partner goes to open what he assumes is a screenshot of that summary page.
instead, he sees that the student has taken a photo of their laptop from about 2 feet away, with that page open. strange, but it wouldn't be the first time a college freshman has lacked the tech literacy to take a screenshot. he almost doesn't look twice at it, but he realizes something about it just feels a little bit...off. so he zooms in.
the student had CUT STARS OUT OF CONSTRUCTION PAPER and TAPED THEM TO THEIR LAPTOP SCREEN BESIDE EACH MODULE NAME. you could see where they actually had completed the first couple of modules, but the stars for all the subsequent ones were like, double the size of the first two and exactly as uneven/irregular as you'd expect if you were freehanding them with scissors.
probably would've been quicker and easier to just photoshop them in but no, this student took a refreshingly creative, arts-and-crafts approach to getting an academic misconduct case
The only time a student sent me a photo of their laptop screen was ALSO for purposes of academic dishonesty.
About a year ago, teaching an online World Lit course in summer session. First writing assignment is a short paper requiring one (1) outside source; half the class turns in papers with āAI-hallucinatedā quotations & citations because theyāre just savvy enough to fiddle with the text and get past Canvasās built-in & very-unreliable āAI detectorā but not savvy enough to actually double-check what the computer is telling them. I send out emails to the tune of āif you want credit on the assignment you have to prove this source you quoted actually exists.ā
One student apparently clicks the link in their bibliography for the first time, and is presumably surprised to find the same thing I found: working URL, but the page it goes to is not the article they cited (which 100% does not exist; I checked). Student goes into Inspect Page Source, changes the title of the page to display as the title of the hallucinated article, then sends me an email saying they canāt give me a URL because something something VPN but hereās a photo of their laptop displaying the article in question with the URL bar conveniently cropped out of frame.
They didnāt change the body text of the website, so it was pretty clear what theyād done. And what Iād actually asked them to send me was a PDF, since they were claiming this was an article from an academic journal, and it was a real journal we had institutional access to, so the involvement of a regular website at all was actually a screw-up on the āAIāās part anyway. I eventually went back at the end of the course & gave them partial credit on that assignment (just enough to bump their final grade from a C to a B-minus) for being the only student all summer to put actual mental effort into lying to me ā everyone else just took the ānuh-uhā approach.
So, @werewolf-transgenderism, was your laptop-photo student flummoxed by tech or trying to pull a fast one?
they were doing an assignment (incorrectly) and instead of close reading the dialogue from a film (what they were supposed to do), they decided to just do plot summary of the film and vaguely reference visual elements with no citations or images included in the text. I required them to revise and resubmit with close readings of textual evidence to get credit, and instead of doing literally anything with the written part of the essay, they just took a bunch of photos of the movie playing on their laptop and stuck them in several additional pages at the end of the essay (still no in-text reference to them or any close reading. so it did not do well)
I have students use an editable group tool to submit short writing group writing assignments. Before I have them submit their project to the tool, they have to send me a copy to look over. When they're done, they're supposed to submit the finished thing to the tool (which require them to copy and paste the text and at the most do a bit of reformatting).
This time around a group just posted a screenshot into the editor and saved it. Like. It's technically readable I guess and I never said they could not do that so I left it. But one more thing to tell them they can't do next semester...
Distinct con of being active in an environment with a lot of elderly people, aka church (choir): we have been nonstop singing on funerals for a while now and the next one is incoming.
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Squeezing oc like a stress ball. Throwing oc at the wall like a tennis ball. Dribbling oc on the ground like a basket ball. Whacking oc with a club like golf ball. AND OTHER SUCH ACTIVIES THAT YOU CAN IMAGINE.
By Brooklyn Museum - Spindle without Whorl, whole or Spindle with Cotton Yarn, Fragment. Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved on 2019-11-04.Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83653957
The beginning of twisting fibers from plants or animal coats is difficult to date because they don't fossilize, so we have to rely on trace evidence, such as imprints in mud that did fossilize. We have these of string-like skirts from the Upper Paleolithic that date to about 20,000 years ago. Recent discoveries, though, show that Neanderthals spun cording as well.
Photo of Neanderthal cord from Abri du Maras. M-H. Moncel
The evidence from the Neanderthals was actual fibers that were preserved in a cave in southern France. The fragment was 6mm long and was three bundles of twisted tree fibers twisted together. The most likely usage of the fiber was to be wrapped around a handle of some type or as part of a net bag. This implies many areas of knowledge held by Neanderthals to make the cording including the growth patterns of the trees the fibers came from, spinning, and spinning the resultant thread into a stronger yarn. 'In order to get this fiber, you have to strop the outer bark off a tree to scrape off the innter bark. This is best done in the spring or early summer,' according to Bruce Hardy, co-author of the study of these fibers and professor of anthropology at Kenyon College in Gambler, Ohio.
This spinning was most likely done against the thigh, twisting the fibers as the hand rolls it down the thigh, pinching them, and then bringing them back to the top of the thigh to be twisted more. The product was likely wound around a stick or stone.
By Rama - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49227927
The next step was to spin onto the stick, or spindle, directly, then to create a split or hook in the top of the stick to hold the twisted part on the stick. Exactly when this happened, we don't know, as there are, as yet, no direct remains of this process. What we do have evidence of improved technology is small bone and later metal hooks that replaced the slit or hook cut into wood as well as weights made of stone, wood, metal, clay, or later metal that went on the end of the sticks to keep them spinning longer called spinning whorl. These have been found as early as the Neolithic. The combination of these technological improvements is called the drop spindle and we have artwork depicting spinning from many cultures.
The other item needed to make spinning easier is an item called a distaff, which would hold a prepared bundle of fibers is loosely wrapped onto, which freed the hand that would have previously held the fiber and allowed a larger quantity of fiber to be held at one time. The distaff could be tucked under the arm or into a loop or holder in a belt. Again, since this didn't fossilize, we don't know when it was developed, though it does appear in Bronze Age artwork.
If you're interested in learning to spin, local independent yarn stores are a good place to start. Other places to look are reenactment guilds, fiber craft guilds, or online for spinning classes. The benefit of guilds is in-person help learning and the benefit of companionship and experience.
SAY NO MORE. everyone sit down, grab a drink, and listen to what i like to refer to as "hey what the fuck are we even doing." i will preface this with 4 statements:
I am a terminal hater. I view every claim made in an academic publication with a suspicious squint, which probably influenced my dissertation significantly and definitely influenced my outlook on Attic Late Geometric (henceforth called LG) pottery.
I am specifically a terminal hater of periodization. I love continuity. I love observing the integration of old and new as things gradually change over time. I do not like cutting time up into āneat little boxesā which end up simplifying gradual processes into sharp breaks. I am also already a bit of a hater of Early Iron Age Greek chronology. I would kill Submycenaean in a heartbeat, I think itās stupid as hell (shoutout Papadopoulos et al 2013 btw). So I am even more predisposed to be skeptical here.
I especially hate the idea of definitive statements being applied to a protohistoric period & region like, say, Early Iron Age Attica. like man i think it depends
Either everyone else has been using a totally separate mindset here which I am incapable of having towards pottery analysis or perhaps they've been smoking crack in a corner for almost a hundred years, its really uncertain. Either way this is literally just me. I have tried to find someone else with this specific critique. Nope. Its Just Me. so take that for what you will.
Anyways, here is my beef with the Standard Approach To Late Geometric Attic Pottery Chronology & Development (Abridged) (This was an 8000 word undergraduate dissertation):
So, background context for those of you not emotionally invested in Ancient Greek Pottery Lore - THIS is the standard [big-picture] chronology of Attic Geometric Pottery (from Coldstream 2008, "Greek Geometric Pottery"):
Ignore the top bit (Proto-Attic/PA), he ain't relevant (sorry proto-attic stans). What REALLY matters here is my buddy the Late Geometric - LG I and LG II and all variants therein (LGIa, LGIb, etc). This is the one which I will focus on today, for I find the way it's been framed to be total, utter bullshit.
You may be wondering "how is this utter bullshit? it looks fine!" Well. Well. For that I must backtrack a little to first discuss the Average Approach To Studying Ancient Pots. Due to multiple factors - especially antiquities trafficking, loss of in-situ contexts, antiquarianism - the Pot People have been molded into a strange lovechild between archaeology and art history. Which means that the analysis of pottery production, and of specific vessels is less about where they were found and more about their shape and decoration [ie, if its a fuckin skyphos or not + how Achilles was painted on it]. This isnāt the only way that ancient ceramics are analyzed - thereās also other indicators such as the clay used to make them (which is very useful for pinning its original production site to a particular geographic region, since the chemical composition of clay can be pretty confidently localized) and inscriptions/writing (ie, signatures by the artisan(s) or the usage of regional alphabets). But figural decoration remains the primary focal points for scholarship centered on Athenian pottery, and influences so much of how Attic vessels are analyzed in comparison to one another and how ancient Greek ceramic production is discussed as a whole.
Which, in my humble opinion, is an absolutely fucking absurd way to conceptualize Late Geometric pottery workshops. Athenian workshops in the later Archaic period were centralized around the potters, not painters (Sapirstein 2013, 499-500); a theory that is further supported by the presence of faint inscriptions on red-figure pottery (made before firing) which delineate the position & identity of the figures depicted on the vase (Iozzo, 2018). And while I am hesitant to apply a later organization of production to what is, again, a protohistorical period with no written records, I find it far more plausible to center the production of ceramics around the potters, who are making the fucking vases here, rather than Davison & Coldstreamās focus on painters - who are fulfilling a secondary, and ultimately more specialized/individualized role in the process. Especially since painters in Archaic Athens were also not restricted to a particular workshop (Sapirstein 2014, p. 180-181), so the conception that painters were trained in the kind of centralized way that Davison & Coldstream are theorizing here (moreso Coldstream, Davisonās actually kinda flexible re: workshop organization) seems improbable. Regardless, basing the chronological sequence of vessels according to their decoration alone (in my opinion) seems far less useful than the potential route of how these vases were created.
For example, there was an incredibly interesting study semi-recently which analyzed the proportions of skyphoi cups from the Early Geometric through the LG (Smyrnaios 2017). The reason I find it so fascinating - and so useful as an approach to LG workshops - is because the study noted a consistency in these ratios, generally consistent changes in these ratios over time, and - in the case of two specific Late Geometric skyphoi - there was a clear break from the predominant pattern in favor of a different ratio which was used for only them!! (Smyrnaios 2017, p. 119). This (in my opinion) is WAY MORE useful for the reconstruction of a protohistoric workshop, because you can draw a clear, distinct contrast between how they were produced and the other studied examples. While this is not necessarily definitive in a chronological sense (maybe if you could pinpoint specific transitions in the ratio? but I digress), itās still (again, in my opinion) far more useful than the predominant focus on the style of the painted decoration. Thereās also another interesting study re: wheel-made vs. hand-made Protogeometric pottery (ca. 1000-900BCE) that proposes that differences in production methods were connected to who/where/how an individual potter was trained (RĆ¼ckl & Jacobs, 2016). Thereās so much more potential here re: ceramic production and its just being Ignored (well. Smyrnaios is pretty invested but overall this is a very niche area).
Now, going back to Davisonās graph, you may notice something a bit strange about the chronology of Late Geometric workshops. The style itself - and the entire period - is defined by the Dipylon Workshop - and, more specifically, the painter referred to as the āDipylon Masterā (who, judging by Coldstream 2008, p. 33-35 is maybe also thought of as a potter? but I'll get to that).
You may or may not know the Dipylon Workshop from such hits as:
Athens 804, aka āThe Dipylon Amphoraā[3], and my buddy Athens 192, aka the 'Dipylon Oinochoe.' There's lots of amphorai and oinochoai out there in the world so to me they are simply A804 and A192.
But again, Iām a skeptical bastard. So I got curious. What was the evidence behind this? Who came up with this theory? Where did it come from?
Everyone (Brann 1960, p. 12) (Coldstream 2008, 3) (Davison 1961, p. 6, 23-24) (CouliĆØ 2015, p. 39) kept pointing back to an article by G. Nottbohm as the first to really define the 'Dipylon Master,' describe his style, and attribute works to him. So I go look for Nottbohmās article. and. oh my god stop the fucking train okay
This ^^ is the foundation for how scholarship compares Late Geometric Attic pottery workshops and positions their development. This fuckass article that positions the āDipylon Masterā[4] as the āfirst tangible artist on European soilā who ābreaks through the darkness of the preceding centuriesā and is āone of the greatest manifestations of the Greek spirit and Greek art of all time.ā like. can we all set aside all the decorative analysis this field's been obsessed with for 100+ years and unpack this? like, her framing of the āDipylon Master,ā the fact that she even fucking calls him Ā«Der Meister der Grossen Dipylon-AmphoraĀ», and the field all just adopted that shit too for some fucking reason, just. All of it. Chuck it in the bin for now guys. Please. or. no? weāll just speculate abt which Middle Geometric workshop the āDipylon Masterā came from (Bohen 2017, p. 160-162)? š« š« š« š« please the racism & facism is right fucking there like am i HIGH?
And Nottbohmās methodology has been critically reviewed only once - by Chamoux (1945), who was also afaik the first one to actually respond to the article - butā¦ he doesnāt address the ideological bend to it that taints her methodology? He does make some very good points [5] that honestly just look like he got hit by Apollo's dodgeball, where he's like "Nottbohm's terminology will only encourage people to recreate an artist's personality which is ultimately unverifiable, surely we could be doing something better with our time" (Chamoux 1945, p. 68) (i'm paraphrasing & it's all in french). unfortunately he got proven right and this field refuses to do a u-turn. Chamoux why'd you have to focus on other shit besides Geometric pottery please you were the only one[6] on the right track,,,,
Anyways thatās my take on Late Geometric pottery chronology, development & workshops š i hate the "dipylon master founded it all and was First" idea and i dont give a shit if killing it nukes our current chronological dating of the LG because i think the theory should Die
---
[1.] The reason I consider Geometric pottery as "objectively one of the hardest styles to define a definitive workshop using only figural decoration" is because Geometric art is - as I've noted above - kinda sparse with figural decoration? And when it does appear, it's very linear & abstract. So emphasizing the decoration here, and treating it like definitive proof of a shared producer for two vases, is just. Bizzare to me.
[2.] This is not a dig at the LG style here - I think it fucks severely. My main concern is that so many attempts to categorize LG vessels seem to ignore this element of abstraction altogether - or, worse, treat divergences from it as āa mistakeā (Moore 2007, p. 18), a ācollapseā/disintegration (Coldstream 2008, p. 56), or ādegenerativeā (Brann 1962, 15). This kind of thinking appears in tandem with the concept of Attic(cough Athenian cough) pottery being influenced by Corinth (Coldstream 2008, 56); take from that what you will.
[3.] rip to every other amphora from the hieraian gate cemetery ifg. only One Dipylon Amphora allowed
[4.] the quotation marks i have been using this whole time have been to convey just how much i fucking despise this name and all its shitass loaded baggage that it carries. this is quite an aggressive way to say this now that i think abt it but still im a Hater
[5.] Not including the bit where he tries to use LG battle scenes to date the Iliad. Not touching that with a ten-foot pole. I only care for his critique of Nottbohm ā¤ļø
[6.] this is technically an overexaggeration, Siebert 2010 (p. 311) kinda took up the torch on this one (calling Nottbohm's methodology inadequate lmao) but. i fear its like a tiny corner of french scholarship and the anglophones need to catch the hell up ASAP.
========================================
Sources/Further Reading:
Nottbohm, G.G. (1943) āDer Meister Der Grossen Amphora Im Dipylon,ā JdI 58, pp. 1ā31.
Kahane, P. (1940) āDie Entwicklungsphasen der Attisch-Geometrischen Keramik,ā American Journal of Archaeology, 44(4), pp. 464ā482. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/499959.
Brann, E.T.H. (1962) Late Geometric and Protoattic Pottery: Mid 8th to Late 7th Century B.C. (The Athenian Agora). Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/3601969.
Å tÄpĆ”n RĆ¼ckl and Loe Jacobs (2016) āāWith a Little Help from My Wheelā: Wheel-Coiled Pottery in Protogeometric Greece,ā Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 85(2), p. 297. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2972/hesperia.85.2.0297.
Iozzo, M. (2018) āHidden Inscriptions on Athenian Vases,ā American Journal of Archaeology, 122(3), pp. 397ā410. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.122.3.0397.
Sapirstein, P. (2013) āPainters, Potters, and the Scale of the Attic Vase-Painting Industry,ā American Journal of Archaeology, 117(4), pp. 493ā510. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.117.4.0493.
Sapirstein, P. (2014) āDemographics and Productivity in the Ancient Athenian Pottery Industry,ā in J.H. Oakley (ed.) Athenian Potters and Painters III: Athenian Potters and Painters III. Oxbow Books, pp. 175ā186. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh1djzf.
Moore, M.B. (2007) āATHENS 803 AND THE EKPHORA,ā Antike Kunst, 50, pp. 9ā23.
Whitley, J. (1997) āBeazley as theorist,ā Antiquity, 71(271), pp. 40ā47. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00084520.
Bohen, B. (2017) Kratos & krater: reconstructing an Athenian protohistory. Oxford (GB): Archaeopress Archaeology (Archaeopress archaeology).
#look I don't know shit about anything so I might be so very wrong but everything op says about how the field dates Greek vases sounds insane#especially since you can. apparently. figure out where the clay came from????? why aren't you DOING that
(with apologies to @doloneia for chiming in here)
See, the problem with that approach is that knowing where the clay comes from doesnĀ“t give you a date of when the vase was made - at best it would give you a date of the formation of the claybed (hope thatĀ“s the right word in English). We can approximately tell when a vase was fired via a method called Thermoluminescence dating, but that is VERY approxomate and as far as I know mostly done to fnd modern fakes.
Normally - or at least unless you are a classical archaeologist with a certain training, grumble, grumble - weĀ“d prefer to date by stratigraphy and correlations with historic cultures with calendar systems we can translate into ours. Radiocarbon, if need be, but that is also somewhat imprecise and canĀ“t be done on clay directly (on accont of not being an organic material). Dendrodating - dating by yearrings in trees in wood closely associated with the pottery in question - would be really nice, too.
And for various reasons, almost none of that is an option. Like, we can manage stratigraphic sequences at least for some sites and regions, but thanks to the prolonged fallout from the Bronze Age collapse, we lack secure associations with historic cultures, and wood does really, really not survive well in the Greek climate. On top of that, chronology in the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt is also somewhat shaky during that time.
So we are in a situation, where we can fairly reliably date the last pottery from before the BA collapse (aka the Late Helladic B/C transition) and then nothing, really, until the Middle Geometric period at the earliest. Mostly, if I recall correctly, trading relationships with the Near East start up again at the end of this period around 750 BC and apply therefore mostly to (Attic) Late Geometric. The lengths of style phases before that are estimations.
All of that is before we go into the obsession of dating things down to a decade or two via style, an approach one of my professors called "an exercise in vanity" at one point. The problems with that op has thoroughly pointed out, but there are legitimate obstacles to doing it differently.
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SAY NO MORE. everyone sit down, grab a drink, and listen to what i like to refer to as "hey what the fuck are we even doing." i will preface this with 4 statements:
I am a terminal hater. I view every claim made in an academic publication with a suspicious squint, which probably influenced my dissertation significantly and definitely influenced my outlook on Attic Late Geometric (henceforth called LG) pottery.
I am specifically a terminal hater of periodization. I love continuity. I love observing the integration of old and new as things gradually change over time. I do not like cutting time up into āneat little boxesā which end up simplifying gradual processes into sharp breaks. I am also already a bit of a hater of Early Iron Age Greek chronology. I would kill Submycenaean in a heartbeat, I think itās stupid as hell (shoutout Papadopoulos et al 2013 btw). So I am even more predisposed to be skeptical here.
I especially hate the idea of definitive statements being applied to a protohistoric period & region like, say, Early Iron Age Attica. like man i think it depends
Either everyone else has been using a totally separate mindset here which I am incapable of having towards pottery analysis or perhaps they've been smoking crack in a corner for almost a hundred years, its really uncertain. Either way this is literally just me. I have tried to find someone else with this specific critique. Nope. Its Just Me. so take that for what you will.
Anyways, here is my beef with the Standard Approach To Late Geometric Attic Pottery Chronology & Development (Abridged) (This was an 8000 word undergraduate dissertation):
So, background context for those of you not emotionally invested in Ancient Greek Pottery Lore - THIS is the standard [big-picture] chronology of Attic Geometric Pottery (from Coldstream 2008, "Greek Geometric Pottery"):
Ignore the top bit (Proto-Attic/PA), he ain't relevant (sorry proto-attic stans). What REALLY matters here is my buddy the Late Geometric - LG I and LG II and all variants therein (LGIa, LGIb, etc). This is the one which I will focus on today, for I find the way it's been framed to be total, utter bullshit.
You may be wondering "how is this utter bullshit? it looks fine!" Well. Well. For that I must backtrack a little to first discuss the Average Approach To Studying Ancient Pots. Due to multiple factors - especially antiquities trafficking, loss of in-situ contexts, antiquarianism - the Pot People have been molded into a strange lovechild between archaeology and art history. Which means that the analysis of pottery production, and of specific vessels is less about where they were found and more about their shape and decoration [ie, if its a fuckin skyphos or not + how Achilles was painted on it]. This isnāt the only way that ancient ceramics are analyzed - thereās also other indicators such as the clay used to make them (which is very useful for pinning its original production site to a particular geographic region, since the chemical composition of clay can be pretty confidently localized) and inscriptions/writing (ie, signatures by the artisan(s) or the usage of regional alphabets). But figural decoration remains the primary focal points for scholarship centered on Athenian pottery, and influences so much of how Attic vessels are analyzed in comparison to one another and how ancient Greek ceramic production is discussed as a whole.
Which, in my humble opinion, is an absolutely fucking absurd way to conceptualize Late Geometric pottery workshops. Athenian workshops in the later Archaic period were centralized around the potters, not painters (Sapirstein 2013, 499-500); a theory that is further supported by the presence of faint inscriptions on red-figure pottery (made before firing) which delineate the position & identity of the figures depicted on the vase (Iozzo, 2018). And while I am hesitant to apply a later organization of production to what is, again, a protohistorical period with no written records, I find it far more plausible to center the production of ceramics around the potters, who are making the fucking vases here, rather than Davison & Coldstreamās focus on painters - who are fulfilling a secondary, and ultimately more specialized/individualized role in the process. Especially since painters in Archaic Athens were also not restricted to a particular workshop (Sapirstein 2014, p. 180-181), so the conception that painters were trained in the kind of centralized way that Davison & Coldstream are theorizing here (moreso Coldstream, Davisonās actually kinda flexible re: workshop organization) seems improbable. Regardless, basing the chronological sequence of vessels according to their decoration alone (in my opinion) seems far less useful than the potential route of how these vases were created.
For example, there was an incredibly interesting study semi-recently which analyzed the proportions of skyphoi cups from the Early Geometric through the LG (Smyrnaios 2017). The reason I find it so fascinating - and so useful as an approach to LG workshops - is because the study noted a consistency in these ratios, generally consistent changes in these ratios over time, and - in the case of two specific Late Geometric skyphoi - there was a clear break from the predominant pattern in favor of a different ratio which was used for only them!! (Smyrnaios 2017, p. 119). This (in my opinion) is WAY MORE useful for the reconstruction of a protohistoric workshop, because you can draw a clear, distinct contrast between how they were produced and the other studied examples. While this is not necessarily definitive in a chronological sense (maybe if you could pinpoint specific transitions in the ratio? but I digress), itās still (again, in my opinion) far more useful than the predominant focus on the style of the painted decoration. Thereās also another interesting study re: wheel-made vs. hand-made Protogeometric pottery (ca. 1000-900BCE) that proposes that differences in production methods were connected to who/where/how an individual potter was trained (RĆ¼ckl & Jacobs, 2016). Thereās so much more potential here re: ceramic production and its just being Ignored (well. Smyrnaios is pretty invested but overall this is a very niche area).
Now, going back to Davisonās graph, you may notice something a bit strange about the chronology of Late Geometric workshops. The style itself - and the entire period - is defined by the Dipylon Workshop - and, more specifically, the painter referred to as the āDipylon Masterā (who, judging by Coldstream 2008, p. 33-35 is maybe also thought of as a potter? but I'll get to that).
You may or may not know the Dipylon Workshop from such hits as:
Athens 804, aka āThe Dipylon Amphoraā[3], and my buddy Athens 192, aka the 'Dipylon Oinochoe.' There's lots of amphorai and oinochoai out there in the world so to me they are simply A804 and A192.
But again, Iām a skeptical bastard. So I got curious. What was the evidence behind this? Who came up with this theory? Where did it come from?
Everyone (Brann 1960, p. 12) (Coldstream 2008, 3) (Davison 1961, p. 6, 23-24) (CouliĆØ 2015, p. 39) kept pointing back to an article by G. Nottbohm as the first to really define the 'Dipylon Master,' describe his style, and attribute works to him. So I go look for Nottbohmās article. and. oh my god stop the fucking train okay
This ^^ is the foundation for how scholarship compares Late Geometric Attic pottery workshops and positions their development. This fuckass article that positions the āDipylon Masterā[4] as the āfirst tangible artist on European soilā who ābreaks through the darkness of the preceding centuriesā and is āone of the greatest manifestations of the Greek spirit and Greek art of all time.ā like. can we all set aside all the decorative analysis this field's been obsessed with for 100+ years and unpack this? like, her framing of the āDipylon Master,ā the fact that she even fucking calls him Ā«Der Meister der Grossen Dipylon-AmphoraĀ», and the field all just adopted that shit too for some fucking reason, just. All of it. Chuck it in the bin for now guys. Please. or. no? weāll just speculate abt which Middle Geometric workshop the āDipylon Masterā came from (Bohen 2017, p. 160-162)? š« š« š« š« please the racism & facism is right fucking there like am i HIGH?
And Nottbohmās methodology has been critically reviewed only once - by Chamoux (1945), who was also afaik the first one to actually respond to the article - butā¦ he doesnāt address the ideological bend to it that taints her methodology? He does make some very good points [5] that honestly just look like he got hit by Apollo's dodgeball, where he's like "Nottbohm's terminology will only encourage people to recreate an artist's personality which is ultimately unverifiable, surely we could be doing something better with our time" (Chamoux 1945, p. 68) (i'm paraphrasing & it's all in french). unfortunately he got proven right and this field refuses to do a u-turn. Chamoux why'd you have to focus on other shit besides Geometric pottery please you were the only one[6] on the right track,,,,
Anyways thatās my take on Late Geometric pottery chronology, development & workshops š i hate the "dipylon master founded it all and was First" idea and i dont give a shit if killing it nukes our current chronological dating of the LG because i think the theory should Die
---
[1.] The reason I consider Geometric pottery as "objectively one of the hardest styles to define a definitive workshop using only figural decoration" is because Geometric art is - as I've noted above - kinda sparse with figural decoration? And when it does appear, it's very linear & abstract. So emphasizing the decoration here, and treating it like definitive proof of a shared producer for two vases, is just. Bizzare to me.
[2.] This is not a dig at the LG style here - I think it fucks severely. My main concern is that so many attempts to categorize LG vessels seem to ignore this element of abstraction altogether - or, worse, treat divergences from it as āa mistakeā (Moore 2007, p. 18), a ācollapseā/disintegration (Coldstream 2008, p. 56), or ādegenerativeā (Brann 1962, 15). This kind of thinking appears in tandem with the concept of Attic(cough Athenian cough) pottery being influenced by Corinth (Coldstream 2008, 56); take from that what you will.
[3.] rip to every other amphora from the hieraian gate cemetery ifg. only One Dipylon Amphora allowed
[4.] the quotation marks i have been using this whole time have been to convey just how much i fucking despise this name and all its shitass loaded baggage that it carries. this is quite an aggressive way to say this now that i think abt it but still im a Hater
[5.] Not including the bit where he tries to use LG battle scenes to date the Iliad. Not touching that with a ten-foot pole. I only care for his critique of Nottbohm ā¤ļø
[6.] this is technically an overexaggeration, Siebert 2010 (p. 311) kinda took up the torch on this one (calling Nottbohm's methodology inadequate lmao) but. i fear its like a tiny corner of french scholarship and the anglophones need to catch the hell up ASAP.
========================================
Sources/Further Reading:
Nottbohm, G.G. (1943) āDer Meister Der Grossen Amphora Im Dipylon,ā JdI 58, pp. 1ā31.
Kahane, P. (1940) āDie Entwicklungsphasen der Attisch-Geometrischen Keramik,ā American Journal of Archaeology, 44(4), pp. 464ā482. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/499959.
Brann, E.T.H. (1962) Late Geometric and Protoattic Pottery: Mid 8th to Late 7th Century B.C. (The Athenian Agora). Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/3601969.
Å tÄpĆ”n RĆ¼ckl and Loe Jacobs (2016) āāWith a Little Help from My Wheelā: Wheel-Coiled Pottery in Protogeometric Greece,ā Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 85(2), p. 297. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2972/hesperia.85.2.0297.
Iozzo, M. (2018) āHidden Inscriptions on Athenian Vases,ā American Journal of Archaeology, 122(3), pp. 397ā410. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.122.3.0397.
Sapirstein, P. (2013) āPainters, Potters, and the Scale of the Attic Vase-Painting Industry,ā American Journal of Archaeology, 117(4), pp. 493ā510. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.117.4.0493.
Sapirstein, P. (2014) āDemographics and Productivity in the Ancient Athenian Pottery Industry,ā in J.H. Oakley (ed.) Athenian Potters and Painters III: Athenian Potters and Painters III. Oxbow Books, pp. 175ā186. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh1djzf.
Moore, M.B. (2007) āATHENS 803 AND THE EKPHORA,ā Antike Kunst, 50, pp. 9ā23.
Whitley, J. (1997) āBeazley as theorist,ā Antiquity, 71(271), pp. 40ā47. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00084520.
Bohen, B. (2017) Kratos & krater: reconstructing an Athenian protohistory. Oxford (GB): Archaeopress Archaeology (Archaeopress archaeology).
auto immune disorders happen when the immune system ignores regulatory factors and begins attacking healthy bodily tissues, due to what scientists refer to as "sheer love of the game"
As somebody whose name contains an Umlaut, it always makes me mad when Americans people who donāt use a German keyboard layout just leave out the dots. That is not my name. :(
correct:
Ƥ = ae
ƶ = oe
Ć¼ = ue
(and Ć = ss)
INCORRECT:
Ƥ = a
ƶ = o
Ć¼ = u
Leaving out the dots can actually change the meaning of words. Examples:
schwĆ¼l: muggy, sticky
schwul: gay [homosexual]
Ƥchten: to outlaw
achten: to regard/respect sb./sth.
schƶn: beautiful
schon: already, yet
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Itās not a Discworld joke unless you read it, donāt parse it as a joke, and then carry on with your life for ten years until someone stops you to say something like āItās a pavlovian response because the dog ate a pavlovaā and you scream Terryās name with enough indignant rage you hope it rattles the pillars of the multiverse so wherever his soul is heāll hear it.
#shoutout to the one in Soul Music about the leopard that got thrown out of the circus because it couldn't hear the ringmaster#it was several months after my second or third time reading the book that I clocked it was a Deaf LeopardĀ (via @morkaischosen)
Twurpās Peerage made me throw a book (gently) at a wall.
In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burkeās Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry tookĀ ātwerpā, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u.Ā
The Book of Silly and Annoying People, based on the real thing with a pun on the name thrown in for good measure.
Latinclass ca. 9th grade: the text we had to translate contained the words trans means "on the other side of" or in german it can be translated to "Ć¼ber/ hinĆ¼ber". Also silvas; silvanis means "the forest" or in german "der Wald".
Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be Ć¼ber den Wald
Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Ćberwald
My latin teacher gave me a very weird look as I suddenly facepalmed myself and groaned quietly.
In Carpe Jugulum, Count Magpyr boasts of having helped write the Malleus Maleficarum, along with the Torquus Simiae Maleficarum, the Auriga Clavium Maleficarum, and in fact the entire Arca Instrumentorum.
The Malleus Maleficarum is a very real, very nasty and absolutely batshit insane book from late 15th-century Germany, basically laying out the procedure for catching, torturing, and executing witches. Its title translates to The Hammer of Witches. The other titles are Pratchett's inventions.
Malleus = "hammer"
Torquus Simiae = "monkey wrench"
Auriga Clavium = "bucket of nails"
Arca Instrumentorum = "box of tools"
Can you hear the deer deterrent (high pitched screeching, not the low rumble) in this video? I was on a house tour and was the only one out of dozens of people who could hear it, it drove me insane. Iām assuming itās more audible to younger folks?
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
annaxmalina
izzy806
