Carl Knappett

Containment practices have been largely overlooked as a set of techniques. When they have received attention, it has largely been a matter of seeing containers as spaces. I argue here that a focus on the temporal dimension of containment can generate a more dynamic understanding of containers as artefacts. One key aspect of this reorientation is a recognition that containment invariably is followed by release, whether anticipated or accidental. In other words, there is a duration to containment. In exploring this question of duration, I turn to an ancient case study, looking at the varying durations incorporated into the design and use of Bronze Age ceramic vessels from the island of Crete in the Aegean. The method entails an integrated approach that inserts the body and its gestures between containers and their contents. With a fuller emphasis on duration as a factor in container design and use, archaeology can reanimate the interdependent containment practices of ancient societies.

This paper presents an archaeological material science study of pottery production and use at the Bronze Age Minoan town of Palaikastro, east Crete, from Middle Minoan IIA to Late Minoan IIIA2 ( c. 1850 to 1300 BC), through petrographic analysis of thin sections and wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. The compositions of 288 archaeological samples are compared with geological references collected from the site and its adjacent hinterland. The results of this study indicate that throughout this period the majority of the archaeological pottery assemblage was probably produced using materials from a small number of geological outcrops local to the town; however, the manner in which these resources were utilised changed significantly over time, particularly between the Proto- and Neopalatial periods.

In scholarship on the Bronze Age Aegean, there is a robust association between palace, town, and state. While this may largely hold for the major centres of Knossos, Phaistos, and Malia, should we expect all sites across the island to conform? The coastal town of Palaikastro, for example, appears to have neither a palace nor a state polity under its control. Robust political institutions must have existed for centuries, giving shape to economic practices well before the appearance of the palaces. These long-lived institutions have recently been glossed as part of a ‘House’ society that characterised Cretan collective action throughout the Bronze Age. I argue here that the settlement’s political organisation followed these lines and constituted a tacit rejection of palatial hierarchies. Moreover, I suggest that palatial hierarchies may have been in tension with these institutions rather than an extension of them. One telling aspect here concerns the moment when the palaces eventually collapse, as sites that aligned themselves with this system seem much less resilient than sites that did not. In a sense, then, the decision to stay the same, taken at the margins of palatial power, is an innovative move.

Despite a close early bond, art history and archaeology have had an uneasy relationship in Aegean prehistoric studies. One could attribute this to the associations between connoisseurship, the art market and looting, such that appreciation of individual works clashed with the fundamentals of archaeological context. At the same time, the field underwent a shift toward more anthropological approaches, as well as the rise of methods less reliant upon artifact assemblages, such as landscape surveys. Yet, art historical study necessarily continues: the extensive corpus of glyptic requires art-historical techniques of analysis, as do other complex iconographies in wall painting, metalwork, relief stone vases, jewelry, and pottery. Still, studies in an art historical mode do not sit comfortably with archaeological approaches. One vantage point, we argue, that has the potential to work between these perspectives is to look at the framing devices employed in ancient art. Some of the more iconic art styles of the Aegean Bronze Age, such as Marine Style, have been taken to exemplify a primitive lack of framing. But there are actually sophisticated devices and motifs across a range of media that serve to frame figurative depictions. While features such as the rocky landscapes in Minoan fresco or the imitation stone slabs at the bases of walls have long been recognized, scholarship has typically cast them as “accessory” or “ornamental.” However, by taking recent work on frames in other periods of Greek art history, we can develop a fuller understanding of the dynamic ways in which such devices served to construct meaning in various kinds of figurative scenes. Through a specific focus on wall paintings, and notably those from Akrotiri on Thera, we show how thinking through frames enables us to combine the archaeological prerogatives of context with an art historical emphasis on figuration and narrative. Comparisons with framing devices in other media, particularly three-dimensional containers in clay, stone, and metal, is also instructive. Finally, we might recognize this recent emphasis on frame and ornament in ancient art history as a particularly fruitful way of working through questions generated by phenomenological inquiry within an iconographic framework.

In this chapter, we outline various approaches to the study of ancient art and what we see as points of articulation between the subdisciplines of archaeology and art history. We review how art and aesthetics have been conceptualized within different paradigms and regional traditions of archaeology, and describe the impact of Alfred Gell's 1998 book Art and Agency. Following recent work by Jakub Stejskal, we argue the notion of aesthetic mandates holds promise for investigating past modes of artistic expression and the institutional or ontological contexts surrounding how artworks were taken up at a number of scales. We also comment on questions of representation and presentation when it comes to teasing apart stylistic universes before concluding with a review of contributions to this volume.

Ancient Art Revisited develops new perspectives on ancient art by weaving together diverse strands within archaeology and art history, exploring it through recent developments in archaeological theory. In order to foster dialogue among various subfields, contributors are drawn from a wide range of domains. Classical archaeology, Aegean prehistory, Near Eastern archaeology, Egyptology, Pre-Columbian South America, and North America are brought together to explore ancient art from multiscalar perspectives and through the lenses of entanglement theory, network thinking, assemblage theory, and other recent theoretical developments. Representing a new wave in research on ancient art, considering both the proximal and distributed operations of artworks, Ancient Art Revisited provides broad and inclusive coverage of ancient art and offers a cohesive approach to a fragmented area of study. This book will be suitable for archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians wishing to understand the latest thinking on ancient art.

Later prehistory in Eurasia is characterised by a suite of radical new technologies that include metallurgy, writing, and the wheel. Their emergence has often been attributed to the dramatically improved efficiencies they offer. This paper argues that instrumental accounts underplay the aesthetic qualities of technical action that have considerable bearing on how technologies emerge. In archaeology, the aesthetics of techniques finds limited recognition. Here, thinking on ‘cultural techniques’ from media theory, the French tradition in the anthropology of techniques, and notions of skill and learning from ecological psychology are combined to develop the aesthetic perspective required for exploring the relationship between technical action, the experience of technological wonder, and the formation of lasting infrastructures. The paper concludes that some emergent technologies create a convergence of different zones of activity, generating the growing infrastructural integration that characterises later Eurasian prehistory.