Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe

Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe investigates commemorative practices in Cyprus, Flanders, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. Offering a broad overview of memorialization practices across Europe and the Mediterranean, individual chapters examine local customs through particular case studies. These essays explore complementary themes through the lens of commemorative art, including social status; personal and corporate identities; the intersections of mercantile, intellectual, and religious attitudes; upward (and downward) mobility; and the cross-cultural exchange of memorialization strategies.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_smemc/1002/thumbnail.jp

Muse, number 50 (2016)

Note from the Editor -- From the Director / Alex W. Barker (Director) -- An Old Nurse from Egypt / Elizabeth G. Wolfson -- Roman Black-Gloss Pottery from the Capitoline Museums at the University of Missouri : A New 3D Scanning Project for Use-Wear Analysis / Marcello Mogetta, Laura Banducci, and Rachel Opitz -- Markings on Silver : The Study of a Byzantine Silver Dish / Amy Welch -- Mysteries and Histories in an Orthodox Triptych / Rebecca Hertling Ruppar -- Fallen Angel : A Case Study in Architectural Ornament / W. Arthur Mehrhoff -- About the Authors -- Acquisitions 2016 -- Exhibitions 2016 -- Loans to Other Institutions 2016 -- Museum Activities 2016 -- Museum Staff 2016 -- Museum Docents 2016 -- Museum Store Volunteers 2016 -- Museum Advisory Council of Students (MACS) 2016 -- Advisory Committee 2016 -- Museum Associates Board of Directors 2016

Unlocking Sacred Landscapes

This Special Issue is the third and final volume in a trilogy of collective peer-reviewed works of the Unlocking Sacred Landscapes research network. It encompasses various approaches both to ritual space and to artefacts relating to ritual practice and cults involving islandscapes (including landscapes and seascapes). The terms ritual and cult are used broadly to include sanctuaries, temples, and churches, as well as the domestic and funerary spheres of life. Although the main focus of the Special Issue is the Mediterranean region, studies related to other regions are included to stimulate wider methodological dialogues and comparative approaches. The time span ranges from prehistory to the recent past, and research includes ethnography and cultural heritage studies. The contributions of the issue deal with historical and culturally driven perspectives that recognise the complexities of island religious systems as well as the active role of the islanders in constructing their own religious identities, irrespective of emulation and acculturation. The authors consider inter-island and island/mainland relations, maritime connectivity of things and people, and ideological values in relation to religious change, as well as the relation between island space and environment in the performance and maintenance of spiritual lives

Stolen Heritage Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Heritage in the EU and the MENA Region

It is a well-known fact that organised crime has developed into an international network including very diverse actors – ranging from the simple ‘grave diggers’ to powerful and wealthy white-collar professionals – that adopt illegal practices like money laundering, fraud and forgery. This criminal system, ultimately, damages and disintegrates our cultural identity and, in some cases, fosters political corruption, terrorism or civil unrest through the transnational and illicit trafficking of cultural property. The forms of ‘ownership’ of Cultural Heritage are often indistinct, and – depending on the national legislation of reference – the proprietorship and trade of historical and artistic assets of value may be legitimate or not. Casual collectors and criminals have always taken advantage from these ambiguities and managed to place on the market items obtained by destruction and looting of museums, monuments and archaeological areas. Thus, over the years, even the most renowned museum institutions might have - more or less consciously – displayed, hosted or lent cultural objects of illicit origin. Ransacking, thefts, clandestine exports and disputable transactions are crimes that primarily affect countries that are rich in artistic and archaeological assets, but such activities do not involve just some countries. This is an international border-crossing phenomenon that starts in given countries and expands to many others. Some are briefly passed through while a handful of powerful and rich ones are the actual destination marketplaces. Drawing from the experience of the conference Stolen Heritage (Venice, December 2019), held in the framework of the H2020 NETCHER (NETwork and digital platform for Cultural Heritage Enhancing and Rebuilding) project, this edited volume focuses on illicit trafficking in cultural property addressing the issue from a multidisciplinary perspective and featuring papers authored by international experts and professionals actively involved in Cultural Heritage protection. The articles included expand on such diverse topics as the European legislation regulating import, export, trade and restitution of cultural objects; ‘conflict antiquities’ and cultural heritage at risk in the Near and Middle East; looting activities and illicit excavations in Italy; the use of technologies to counter looting practices and the publication of unprovenanced items. This collection is meant as a valuable resource to disseminate new results of the research as well as to facilitate a better understanding of the international legislation related to the protection of Cultural Heritage

Mediterranean containerization

The Mediterranean has long played host to unusually intense patterns of maritime-led exchange, involving both products made beyond the basin and local, culturally distinctive goods such as oils and wines that continue to be well-known markers of the region's economies and lifestyles today. Protecting these commodities, and sometimes highly emblematic of them, have been specialised physical packages, of which clay amphoras are perhaps the most well-known early examples. In contrast, modern steel shipping containers, occurring in unusual densities at the Mediterranean pinch-points of globalised trade, represent only a latest phase of this cultural tradition. Mediterranean containers therefore have a continuous history spanning at least five thousand years and one that, worldwide, offers a uniquely long-lived, continuous and detailed record of economic specialisation. Remarkable, then, that there has been as yet so little consideration of this tradition over its full time-span. This paper makes the case for developing a more strongly longitudinal, comparative and cautiously evolutionary perspective on these highly iconic, material forms

Public portraits, private lives: human images on Byzantine and Crusader ceramics from Cyprus

Roman Provinces, Middle Ages and Modern Perio

Interrogating archaeological ethics in conflict zones: cultural heritage work in Cyprus

Much affected by viewing the Yugoslav Wars’ ruins, I resolved to study archaeology in conflict. I wanted to explore archaeology’s role in conflict and archaeologists’ responsibilities in conflict zones; but unable to conduct such work in Kosova/Kosovo, I went to Cyprus. Drawing together professional documentation and public education, professional and community interactions and interviews, and cultural heritage site visits, I researched the destruction of community places, the looting of cultural heritage, and the coping strategies of archaeologists. The key questions of this thesis are: is it legal and ethical to conduct archaeological work in occupied and secessionist territories? How is public knowledge of cultural heritage looting and destruction constructed? What are cultural heritage professionals’ responsibilities for knowledge production during conflict? How ought cultural heritage professionals to combat the looting and illicit trading of antiquities? I have addressed these questions by concentrating upon cultural heritage workers’ narratives of looting and destruction from 1955 until the present in professional discussion and mass education. First, I argue that archaeologists have misinterpreted international law, and through boycotting and blacklisting of rescue archaeology in northern Cyprus, harmed both the profession and the cultural heritage. Second, I argue that cultural heritage workers have been unwillingly coopted, or actively complicit in the conflict, in the production of nationalist histories, and thus nationalist communities, therefore in the reproduction of nationalist conflict. Third, I argue that cultural heritage workers have knowingly contributed to the conflict and its destruction, through their nationalist policies on the paramilitary-dominated illicit antiquities trade. My conclusions are: that an ethical antiquities policy would cut funding to and thereby reduce conflict-fuelling extremist activity; and that, where they have the freedom to practice it, professional and ethical archaeologies of destruction would promote intracommunal and intercommunal peace