Panel 6.5 – Material Records, Consumption and Local Habits in a Proto-global Antiquity


Organiser/Chair:

  • Erich Kistler (Universität Innsbruck)

Panel abstract

Material culture shapes the lives of people, mediates between them and their environment, habitualises behavioural and perceptual patterns – it thus gives substance to cognitive processes. It follows that objects are not passive, timeless containers of specific cultures or of times gone by, but alongside their everyday practical functions things are also conveyors of values and identity whose significances generally also change when the user´s environment is altered. Consumption behaviour in relation to such objects, in ordinary as well as extra-ordinary events, therefore points to significant forms of materialisation in the cultural horizons of human coexistence. It is precisely this that should be revealed in the Antique strata of the Mediterranean area, for the latter to make it possible to draw conclusions about the regimes of behaviour applying at a given time and place that prefigure consumption habits; in this way they afford insights into the situational discourses of values and power in the antique Mediterranean as a proto-global entangled world. Thus, assemblages of archaeological findings can be analysed as materialised interfaces of consumption behaviour at which the local circumstances of coexistence intersect with ‘global’ influences.

 

Paper abstracts

1. Erich Kistler (Institute for Archaeologies)

Consumption habits and and ceramic fingerprints on the Archaic Monte Iato (6th/5th cent. B.C.)
Michael B. Schiffer developed the premise that ritually deposited find ensembles in particular are always structured according to specific "underlying rules or grammars of cultural order". William Walker was finally able to demonstrate that otherwise closed contexts of finds, even if they could not at first sight be identified as ritual deposits, might nonetheless also be material evidence of patterns of historical behaviour. From such a point of view, all deposits became "evidence of sequences of events through which human actors positioned materials in relation to each other".
Based on these perceptions of the processes of formation and transformation of archaeological findings as effects of specific human behaviour, all those sherds that are of little to no importance concerning typological or form aesthetical reasons, obtain scientific significance. By analysing the way these sherds are fragmented, chosen and brought together within one assemblage in one stratum, habitual patterns can be revealed. To filter out those patterns we developed on Monte Iato (Western Sicily) the concept of the ceramic fingerprint.

 

2. Matthias Hoernes (Universität Innsbruck)

No Need to Tighten the Belt: ‘Valuing’ Metal Objects in Reused Tombs in Pre-Roman Apulia
Metalwork, weapons and adornments are often regarded as reflecting status and prestige and serve as a toehold for measuring value and funerary wealth. Until recently ‘value’ in burial archaeology has been gauged predominantly in terms of material and materiality, the distant provenience of an artefact or the raw material, its scarcity in other assemblages, or the sheer abundance of objects deposited in one grave. Complementing these analyses, that conceptualize value mainly through an economic perspective, recent approaches have addressed the ‘biography’, ‘use-life’ or ‘itinerary’ of objects, shifting the focus onto how objects are valued, devalued or revalued in social practices they are embedded in. In my paper I attempt to apply these concepts to reused graves in fifth- and fourth-century Apulia to discuss how metal objects – vessels, fibulae, belts, knives, and weapons – were acted on and engaged with in the course of time. Some objects hint at a prolonged itinerary prior to being deposited in the tomb, but most essentially they underwent several post-depositional stages and practices in which they were manipulated, re-arranged, re-associated with the ‘old’ dead, reused for a newly deceased, or retrieved. Though the diversity of local practices undermines generalizations, the trajectories of metal objects in tombs that are far from being static, closed contexts but multi-stage features may add to a more nuanced understanding of ‘grave goods’ and the dynamics of value.

 

3. Lisa Peloschek (University of Copenhagen)

A shared material culture: Rhodes and the Eastern Mediterranean in the Hellenistic and Roman periods
A Hellenistic and Early Imperial period ceramic assemblage deposited in a building complex in the necropolis of ancient Rhodes exemplifies how local communities responded to external influences prevailing in the Eastern Mediterranean. Due to its excellent strategic position along trade routes and its proximity to the Western coast of Asia Minor, the island of Rhodes was subjected to numerous cultural encounters.
The presentation aims to explore the strategies of ceramic consumption at the so-called “Papachristodoulou-Karika” plot, now being investigated as part of “The Rhodes Centennial Project”. In particular, the spectrum of imported fine wares originating from Pergamon, Ephesos and Knidos will be discussed, contributing to a better understanding of the distribution patterns of these ceramic prototypes. Simultaneously, potential local-regional reproductions - respective derivatives of these diagnostic shapes - will be morphologically and technologically analysed. Supplementary natural-scientific data, obtained by petrographic and geochemical analyses, enables us to detect the compositional variabilities of the ceramics and to trace their region of production with certainty.
Besides gaining insights into the meaning and value of pottery exchange in a supra-regional perspective, the study focuses on human-environment interactions and associated cultural processes on the island of Rhodes, thus documenting the interplay of local and foreign traditions.

 

4. Julia Martin (Freie Universität Berlin)

Clay-made environment. Some aspects of bricks as an element of material culture
The adaptation of the new building material fired bricks into the material culture of several cities in western Asia Minor, mainly in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., shows in some aspects similarities to adaptation processes known from pottery: Instead of being directly imported from Rome, fired bricks were probably produced locally in Asia Minor, imitating their metro-politan antetype and being, on the other hand, altered in order to fit local requirements. Even though this phenomenon can be observed in a number of cities along the western coast of Asia Minor, neither the size of the bricks nor their use were consistent within the province of Asia. In more commonplace private and funeral architecture, as well as in more exceptional public buildings, fired bricks, occasionally along with tiles, were ›consumed‹ as one building material together with stones. Bricks were often used in newly introduced building types, such as bathgymnasia, or in altered structural forms, as for example in the remodelled stage buildings in theatres. In this paper I want to discuss to which degree fired Roman bricks in western Asia Minor can be understood as a facet of local material culture. Thereby, I want to shed light on the question if, and if so, to what extent fired bricks were introduced as a building material in order to answer some needs created by an altered concept of a city’s architectural furnishing.