Producing Aegeaness – An Innovation and Its Impact in Middle and Late Bronze Age Syria/Northern Levant

In the second half of the 18th Century BCE Yarim-Lim of Alalakh gave instructions to decorate his palace with wall paintings. Instead of following the inner-Syrian or ‘Mesopotamian’ tradition of al secco painting on dark mud plaster, he decided in favor of a technical and iconographical innovation known from the Aegean, a bright, shiny lime plaster with a griffin as a depiction. Later, similar decorations appeared in palaces and houses in Syria and beyond. My paper analyzes why this technical and social innovation was successful within the local life world. Secondly, it takes a closer look at the impact of the murals by exploring the use and meaning of Aegean-related motifs in the following centuries and the production of a Levantine Aegeanness in different media of expression.In der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts BCE gab Yarim-Lim von Alalakh Anweisung, seinen Palast mit Wandmalereien zu schmücken. Statt innersyrischer oder ,mesopotamischer‘ Tradition von al secco-Malerei auf dunklem Lehmputz zu folgen, entschied er sich für eine technische und ikonographische Innovation der Ägäis, einen hellen, glänzenden Kalkputz mit einer Greifendarstellung. In der Folge treten ähnliche Wandverzierungen in Palästen und Häusern in Syrien und darüber hinaus auf. Mein Beitrag analysiert, warum diese technische und soziale Innovationen in einer lokalen Lebenswelt erfolgreich war. Zweitens werfe ich einen genaueren Blick auf die Auswirkungen der Wandmalereien, indem ich auf die Verwendung und Bedeutung der ,ägäisierenden‘ Motive in den folgenden Jahrhunderten eingehe und die Herstellung einer levantinischen ,Aegeanness‘ in anderen Medien untersuche

The Interplay of People and Technologies

Histories of innovation are prototypical success stories. The advent of the wheel, of writing, printing, the steam engine or computers: where would we be without these path-breaking technological innovations and their global consequences? At least retrospectively, innovations appear as linear, straightforward processes. However, this view is too simplistic. Innovations are not self-evident new elements of life but meet social and technological resistance. In accounts of past innovations, we also often forget that their price is always an irremediable loss of knowledge and practical skills. This collection of essays shows that innovations, both ancient and more recent ones, are located in a network of pre-existing life-worlds. The authors elucidate the wide and often unrecognized impacts of innovations on social structures and cultural practices. Case studies from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, central Europe and the modern world highlight the preconditions and off-ignored secondary effects of innovation. They address the complex social negotiations and the multitude of unforeseen and unplanned changes which accompany the New, rather than focusing on intended changes, which are usually understood as improvements and ways to broaden possibilities for action. Our ultimate goal is to investigate the complex entangle ments of innovations in past and present worlds and deepen our understanding of mechanisms of cultural change

Transmediterranean Knowledge and Minoan Style Reliefs in Tell el Dabca

At Tell el-Qirqafa/cEzbet Helmi, just west of Tell el Dabca in the Eastern Nile delta, a large amount of “Aegean” type wall paintings has been excavated since the beginning of the 1990s. Tens of thousands of lime plaster fragments were dispersed in front of the entrances of two palaces of the Tuthmoside period, palaces F and G, on the eastern bank of the former Pelusiac branch of the Nile. In contrast to other sites with fresco paintings in the Middle East, the findings from Tell el Dabca are..

Transmediterranean Knowledge and Minoan Style Reliefs in Tell el Dabca

At Tell el-Qirqafa/cEzbet Helmi, just west of Tell el Dabca in the Eastern Nile delta, a large amount of “Aegean” type wall paintings has been excavated since the beginning of the 1990s. Tens of thousands of lime plaster fragments were dispersed in front of the entrances of two palaces of the Tuthmoside period, palaces F and G, on the eastern bank of the former Pelusiac branch of the Nile. In contrast to other sites with fresco paintings in the Middle East, the findings from Tell el Dabca are..

Skyrocketing Into the Past – A Plea for a Critical Archaeology

This plea for a critical archaeology begins with Walter Benjamin's reflection on the relationship between the present day and the construction of the past. From there it develops some thoughts about the impact of current political, economic and social interests as well as prevailing Lebenswelten on our views of history. Despite the experiences with German archaeology during the Third Reich, such an approach has received comparatively little attention. Rather, in the postwar period there was a tendency to take refuge in a mostly positivist and thus supposedly apolitical, objective archaeology, which raised decontextualized knowledge production to the status of dogma without exposing it as the result of a modernist ideology or recognizing political praxis in both archaeology and other disciplines. In my opinion the subject of a critical archaeology should be the production of archaeological knowledge and the calling into question of the present-day constructions and categorizations of our late-capitalist, neo-liberal world. It is not about producing better, more reliable knowledge. Rather, it is about the emergence of a critical consciousness with regard to the social foundations of knowledge and the highlighting of new alternative and previously non-dominant discourses. Some examples of spheres of archaeological knowledge production that would be worth investigating are touched upon in order to speak in favor of a critical archaeology that makes these important issues its central task

Can the Postdoc Speak? Ein Erfahrungsbericht aus den Grauzonen universitärer Drittmittelwelten

In ihrem Erfahrungsbericht berichten Nachwuchswissenschaftler/innen über Erfahrungen, bei denen die geltenden Normen einer fairen Behandlung verletzt wurden. Die beschriebenen Normbrüche setzen eine zweite Ebene des Stillschweigens voraus, die die Autoren mit ihrem Bericht durchbrechen. Sie laufen damit Gefahr, mit (indirekten) Sanktionen rechnen zu müssen, die sich gegen sie und nicht gegen die primären Tabu-Brecher wenden, womit die doppelte Verbotsstruktur und der Herrschaftsaspekt von Tabus deutlich wird, in diesem Fall auf das Verbot ihrer Publikation. (HoF/Text übernommen

An interdisciplinary approach to Iron Age Mediterranean chronology through combined archaeological and 14C-radiometric evidence from Sidon, Lebanon.

The construction of the Iron Age Mediterranean chronology began in the Levant based on historical evidence and has been additionally supported in recent decades by means of radiocarbon analysis, although with variable precision and ratification. It is only in recent years that new evidence in the Aegean and the western Mediterranean has opened discussion towards its further acceptance as an authoritative i.e. highly reliable, and widely applicable historiographic network. Altogether, the Mediterranean Iron Age chronology has only undergone minor changes during the last hundred years. The Phoenician metropolis of Sidon in southern Lebanon now provides a new, large and robust dataset obtained through a combination of archaeological and 14C-radiometric analysis of materials from stratified contexts that allow their statistical assessment. The appearance of substantial amounts of pottery of Greek, Cypriot and Egyptian origin together with Phoenician local wares in a long stratigraphy is a benefit for the synchronisation of regional pottery styles and allows wider geographic correlation of relative chronological systems. The close association of the archaeological data with a long series of AMS-14C-dates on short-lived samples provides new evidence for the absolute dating of many of the regional pottery styles that are represented in the stratigraphy of Sidon, and contributes towards a considerable improvement of the Mediterranean chronology

An interdisciplinary approach to Iron Age Mediterranean chronology through combined archaeological and 14C-radiometric evidence from Sidon, Lebanon

The construction of the Iron Age Mediterranean chronology began in the Levant based on historical evidence and has been additionally supported in recent decades by means of radiocarbon analysis, although with variable precision and ratification. It is only in recent years that new evidence in the Aegean and the western Mediterranean has opened discussion towards its further acceptance as an authoritative i.e. highly reliable, and widely applicable historiographic network. Altogether, the Mediterranean Iron Age chronology has only undergone minor changes during the last hundred years. The Phoenician metropolis of Sidon in southern Lebanon now provides a new, large and robust dataset obtained through a combination of archaeological and 14C-radiometric analysis of materials from stratified contexts that allow their statistical assessment. The appearance of substantial amounts of pottery of Greek, Cypriot and Egyptian origin together with Phoenician local wares in a long stratigraphy is a benefit for the synchronisation of regional pottery styles and allows wider geographic correlation of relative chronological systems. The close association of the archaeological data with a long series of AMS-14C-dates on short-lived samples provides new evidence for the absolute dating of many of the regional pottery styles that are represented in the stratigraphy of Sidon, and contributes towards a considerable improvement of the Mediterranean chronology

Editorial: English Version - Deutsche Fassung - Version Français

With the founding of the Center for Mediterranean Studies (ZMS) in 2010 a research institution came into being at Ruhr-Universität Bochum that deals with the history of the Mediterranean region and its contemporary rele­vance across epochs and disciplines. The scientific examination of this area has been subject to continual change in which the ZMS is closely involved through its diverse connections. In discussions of recent years, certain fundamental grounds have been established along which our research and our scientific activities are orientated and which now shall finally find their expression in the newly founded Zeitschrift für Mittelmeerstudien (ZfM). Mit der Gründung des Zentrums für Mittelmeerstudien (ZMS) im Jahre 2010 ist an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum eine Forschungseinrichtung entstanden, die sich epochen- und fächerübergreifend mit der Geschichte des Mittelmeerraumes und ihrem Gegenwartsbezug beschäftigt. Die wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit diesem Gebiet ist einem kontinuierlichen Wandel ausgesetzt, in den auch das ZMS durch seine vielfältigen Vernetz¬ungen eng eingebunden ist. In den Diskussionen der vergangenen Jahre haben sich jedoch auch Grundlinien herausgebildet, an denen sich unsere Forschungen bzw. wissenschaftlichen Aktivitäten orientieren und die schließlich auch in der nun ins Leben gerufenen Zeitschrift für Mittelmeerstudien (ZfM) ihren Niederschlag finden sollen. Avec la fondation du Centre d'études méditerranéennes (ZMS) en 2010, une institution de recherche a émergé à la Ruhr-Universität Bochum qui traite de l’histoire de la région méditerranéenne et de sa pertinence con­temporaine à travers les époques et les disciplines. L’examen scientifique de ce domaine a été soumis à des changements continus auxquels le ZMS est étroitement associé grâce à ses diverses connexions. Les dis­cussions de ces dernières années ont permis d’établir certaines bases fondamentales sur lesquelles s’orientent nos recherches et nos activités scientifiques et qui trouveront finalement leur expression dans la nouvelle Zeitschrift für Mittelmeerstudien (ZfM)

Minoan Archaeology

More than 100 years ago Sir Arthur Evans' spade made the first cut into the earth above the now well-known Palace at Knossos. His research at the Kephala hill as well as contemporary fieldwork at further sites on Crete saw the birth of a new discipline: Minoan Archaeology. Since these beginnings in the first decades of the 20th century, the investigation of Bronze Age Crete has experienced fundamental progress. The impressive wealth of new data relating to the sites and material culture of this Bronze Age society and its impact beyond the island's shores, the refinement of its chronology, the constant development of hermeneutical approaches to social, religious or political issues, and new methods and instruments employed for the exploration and conservation of the archaeological remains have shaped the dynamic trajectory of this discipline for more than a century. In March 2011 - exactly 111 years after the beginning of Evans' work at Knossos - a conference on Minoan Archaeology took place at Heidelberg with the aim to outline current trends and prospects of this scientific field, by setting up an open dialogue between renowned scholars and the young generation of researchers. The present volume brings together most of the papers presented during the conference. They are subsumed under six chapters highlighting current key issues in the study of Bronze Age Crete with a pronounced focus on the broad subject of society