De-contextualising and Re-contextualising:
Why Mediterranean Archaeology Needs to Get out of the Trench and Back into the Museum
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jmea.v28i2.29533Keywords:
agency, Athenian pottery, context, museums, repatriation, PraxitelesAbstract
University museums currently play a small part in the research of Mediterranean archaeologists. One major reason for this is that Mediterranean archaeology has become overwhelmingly concerned with understanding objects in the context in which they were found. Museums re-contextualise objects. In this paper I argue that, far from this being a problem, it is an opportunity—an opportunity to escape from the tyranny of the last resting place, of only understanding where objects ended their ancient social lives, and to uncover what artefacts did in their working lives. After a discussion of some extreme means of re-contextualising, two case studies are explored where the idiosyncrasies of university museum collections (the presence of replicas and the random selection of artefacts) are exploited to show how fundamental issues in Mediterranean archaeology can be pursued through such collections. In the first case the juxtaposition of plaster casts of three statues ascribed to the same sculptor or workshop is made to yield a distinctive approach to understanding interactions between gods and men that offers insight into Greek theological assumptions. In the second a peculiarly shaped field for decoration on particular Athenian pots is shown to encourage reflection on a particular aspect of human inter-relations and to have implications not simply for the way pots exercise agency and for the attitudes of painters, but for interpersonal relations in the Mediterranean societies that consumed such pottery.
References
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Siapkas, J., and L. Sjögren 2014 Displaying the Ideals of Antiquity: The Petrified Gaze. London: Routledge.
Sparkes, B.A. 1991 Greek Pottery: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Squire, M. 2011 The Art of the Body: Antiquity and its Legacy. London: I.B. Tauris.
Steiner, A. 2007 Reading Greek Vases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stewart, A. 1990 Greek Sculpture: An Exploration. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
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Voss, B. 2012 Curation as research: a case study in orphaned and underreported archaeological collections. Archaeological Dialogues 19: 145-69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1380203812000219
Watson, P., and C. Todeschini 2007 The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities from Italy’s Tomb Raiders to the World’s Greatest Museums. New York: Public Affairs.
Appadurai, A. (ed.) 1986 The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511819582
Beard, M., R.M. Cook, J. Donaldson and H.R. Hurst 1998 Museum of Classical Archaeology Guide to the Cast Gallery. Cambridge: Museum of Classical Archaeology.
Boardman, J. 1995 Greek Sculpture: The Late Classical Period. London: Thames and Hudson.
Brinkmann, V., and R. Wünsche 2004 Bunte Götter: die Farbigkeit antiker Skulptur; eine Ausstellung der Staatlichen Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München in Zusammenarbeit mit der Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Kopenhagen und den Vatikanischen Museen, Rom; Glyptothek München, Königsplatz, 16. Dezember 2003 bis 29. Februar 2004, 15. Juni-5. September 2004. München: Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek.
Cannon-Brookes, P. 1994 Antiquities in the market-place: placing a price on documentation. Antiquity 68: 349-50.
Corso, A. 2004–13 The Art of Praxiteles. 4 vols. Roma: ‘L’Erma’ di Bretschneider.
Gibson, J.J. 1977 The theory of affordances. In R. Shaw and J. Bransford (eds.), Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing, 127-43. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Laurence Erlsbaum Associates.
1979 The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Griffin, J. 1977 The epic cycle and the uniqueness of Homer. Journal of Hellenic Studies 97: 39-53. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/631020
Hoffmann, H. 1977 Sexual and Asexual Pursuit: A Structuralist Approach to Greek Vase Painting. London: Royal Anthropological Institute.
Keane, W. 2014 Rotting bodies: the clash of stances toward materiality and its ethical affordances. The Anthropology of Christianity: Unity, Diversity, New Directions. Current Anthropology 55 (Supplement 10): S312-21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/678290
Kersel, M. 2015 Storage wars: solving the archaeological curation crisis. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 3: 42-54. http://dx.doi.org/10.5325/jeasmedarcherstu.3.1.0042
Knappett, C. 2011 An Archaeology of Interaction: Network Perspectives on Material Culture and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199215454.001.0001
Kurtz, D.C. 1983 The Berlin Painter. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Lamb, W. 1930 Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Great Britain Fascicule 6. Cambridge Fascicule 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1936 Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Great Britain Fascicule 11. Cambridge Fascicule 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leventhal, R.M., and B.I. Daniels 2013 ‘Orphaned objects’, ethical standards, and the acquisition of antiquities. DePaul Journal of Art, Technology, and Intellectual Property Law 23: 339-61.
Mangieri, A.F. 2010 Legendary women and Greek womanhood: the Heroines Pyxis in the British Museum. American Journal of Archaeology 114: 429-45. http://dx.doi.org/10.3764/aja.114.3.429
Miller Bonney, E. 2011 Disarming the snake goddess: a reconsideration of the faience figurines from the temple repositories at Knossos. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 24: 171-90.
Moignard, E. 2006 Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Great Britain Fascicule 22, Aberdeen University Marischal Collection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nicholls, R.V. 1962 Recent additions at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Archaeological Reports for 1961–62, 47-52. London: Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies and British School of Archaeology at Athens.
Nørskov, V. 2002 Greek Vases in New Contexts. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Oakley, J.H. 2004 Picturing Death in Classical Athens: The Evidence of the White Lekythoi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Osborne, R. 1994a Looking on Greek style: does the sculpted girl speak to women too? In I.M. Morris (ed.) Classical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies, 81-96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1994b The economy and trade. In J. Boardman (ed.) The Cambridge Ancient History: Plates to Volumes V and VI: The Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C., new edn., 85-108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2001 Why did Athenian pots appeal to the Etruscans? World Archaeology 33: 277-95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438240120079299
2011 The History Written on the Classical Greek Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2014 Intoxication and sociality: the symposium in the ancient Greek world. In A. McShane and P. Withington (eds.), Cultures of Intoxication. Past and Present Supplement 9: 34-60. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtt028
Reusser, C. 2002 Vasen für Etrurien: Verbreitung und Funktionen attischer Keramik im Etrurien des 6. und 5. Jahrhunderts vor Christus. Zürich: Akanthus.
Ridgway, B.S. 1997 Fourth-Century Styles in Greek Sculpture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Rolley, C. 1999 La Sculpture grecque II. Paris: Picard.
Siapkas, J., and L. Sjögren 2014 Displaying the Ideals of Antiquity: The Petrified Gaze. London: Routledge.
Sparkes, B.A. 1991 Greek Pottery: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Squire, M. 2011 The Art of the Body: Antiquity and its Legacy. London: I.B. Tauris.
Steiner, A. 2007 Reading Greek Vases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stewart, A. 1990 Greek Sculpture: An Exploration. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
Tischbein, J.H.W. 1791 Collection of Engravings from Ancient Vases Mostly of Pure Greek Workmanship: Discovered in Sepulchres in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies But Chiefly in the Neighbourhood of Naples During the Course of the Years MDCCLXXXIX and MDCCLXXXX Now in the Possession of Sir Wm. Hamilton. Naples: W. Tischbein.
Ure, P.N., and A.D. Ure 1954 Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Great Britain Fascicule 12, University of Reading, Fascicle 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Voss, B. 2012 Curation as research: a case study in orphaned and underreported archaeological collections. Archaeological Dialogues 19: 145-69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1380203812000219
Watson, P., and C. Todeschini 2007 The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities from Italy’s Tomb Raiders to the World’s Greatest Museums. New York: Public Affairs.
Published
2016-01-21
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Osborne, R. (2016). De-contextualising and Re-contextualising:: Why Mediterranean Archaeology Needs to Get out of the Trench and Back into the Museum. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 28(2), 241-261. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmea.v28i2.29533
