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The artifact I have selected is a lightweight and very attractive earthenware vessel of unknown provenance. Its design lends to the idea that it was used by an individual of high social standing, possibly for the consumption of wine or some other beverage. It was most likely wheel-formed given its symmetry and the thinness of the fabric, also indicating skilled craftsmanship.
Continue reading “From the Collections: A turquoise glazed vessel (Serena Alwani)”
This is an ornate bronze lamp, dating back to somewhere between the 12-14th centuries, most likely of Iranian origin. It is clear that the body, handle, base, and lid were cast separately by the presence of the welding marks between each individual part. The handle has a thumb rest at the top, with the figure of a mythical hybrid of a woman and bird, which was in typical fashion of oil lamps from the region of Khorasan. There are intricate geometric designs of a different metal engraved onto the surface of the lamp. These designs are fairly common of Islamic art, which use intricate geometric figures and symmetrical designs. With closer examination, however, one can see the form of a bird hidden in the geometric and linear design on the sides of the lamp. At the top of the lamp is a line of pseudo-Kufic script, which compliments the geometric and linear designs found all over the body and base. Though it is a dark, aged green color now, the lamp at the time of its use would have been a magnificent, gleaming bronze.
Continue reading “From the Collections: A bronze lamp from Khurasan (Zohra Kalani)”
Ceramics has evolved greatly over time, not just technologically but also symbolically and artistically. Although we tend to look at ceramics from a purely art historical lens, archaeologically, ceramics have become a way to examine the process of globalization and the expansion of the global trade networks of the modern era. Demand for these has driven economies and formed identities, while also inspiring imitative traditions, that more often than not, take their own shape and form, developing into a major creative force with new directions. This can be seen when looking at the rise and fall of “China” in the Ottoman Empire.
At the height of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth Century, many Ottoman ceramics were greatly influenced by the import of Chinese porcelains during this time. Iznik wares were typically based on elaborations of themes appearing in Chinese porcelains and were considered a good alternative to expensive imports. From the mid-Fifteenth through Sixteenth century, Iznik was the most important center for high quality ceramic production and distribution. Chinese porcelain was a luxury that only the elite could afford and ceramics were created in their likeness as Ottoman artisans created a uniquely Ottoman style based on their characteristics. Due to their high quality, Ottoman wares were also considered exotic, prestigious oriental wares in and of themselves. They were maintained as a symbol of power relationships such as status, wealth and rank throughout the Empire as the state and elite highly supported the industry during this time. Thus, our current understanding tends to focus on types used by and made for the elite class. Outside this relatively small circle the distribution and manufacturing of ceramics is largely unexplored.
An example of this can be found in the Minassian Collection, which resides in Brown University. Above we find a blue and white ceramic on an earthenware body displaying a floral motif. Cracks seen all over the body can be attributed to the low quality of the firing process, while the centrality and flatness of the design can be attributed to a low quality imitation of Iznik pottery. The unelaborated quality of the design is not consistent, seemingly done quickly by freehand. This was a common practice as tradition and appeal was so great that any quality of Chinese porcelain imitations were considered desirable. Chinese influence was in the concept rather than the detail of the works themselves. The Minassian piece portrays a tightly introverted arabesque style that can be interpreted at any point as a single element or a connected whole. The size and shape of the bowl indicates that it was a decorative element rather than a functionary one. The emergence of low quality pottery emerged due to market demand, where many potters deviated from court styles, adopting more freehand styles, which were sold on the market and exported out. However, towards the end of the Sixteenth century, unable to maintain these high standards due to a decline in state support and patronage, craftsmen found it difficult to obtain supplies, and potters at Iznik began to produce wares in increasingly debased style similar to the one seen below. Production shifted from elite ceramics to wares that became more heavily associated with inexpensive ceramics consumed by middle and peasant classes.
Sources:
Carroll, Lynda. Could’ve Been a Contender: The Making and Breaking of “China” in the Ottoman Empire. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Vol. 3, No. 3 (September 1999), pp. 177-190
Denny, Walter. Blue-and-White Islamic Pottery on Chinese Themes. Boston Museum Bulletin, Vol. 72, No. 368 (1974), pp. 76-99
Among the ceramics in the Joukowsky’s collection is a mostly complete bowl—the entire base and roughly two-thirds of the sides remaining. The bowl is glazed beige with brown details. The inside bottom contains the most complex design. Many spirals about a centimeter in diameter cover the majority of the bottom. Two opposing wisp shapes are left uncovered, and, extrapolating as a little of the original work has been lost to corrosion, 6 disks a little bigger than the spirals are filled in. The design on the inside bottom is roughly radially symmetric, i.e. every slice along the diameter is symmetric with respect to the origin.
Continue reading “From the collections: A broken Islamic bowl (John Ericson)”
This item is a circular terracotta stamp, roughly 13 cm in diameter, possibly for leaving an image upon bread. Cast from a mould, it has a sunken figural image in the center, and a banded rope frame around the central image, with another geometric motif along the outer edge (Fig. 1). When pressed into bread, before the leavened loaf would have risen, a relief design would have been left as indicated by the picture of a cast made from the stamp below (Figure 2). The reverse is crudely molded by hand, with several finger prints remaining, and a small square handle was affixed. The central image shows a large bearded figure being grasped around the midriff by a smaller man who appears to be running. A satyr stands in the background holding what appears to be a club.
Continue reading “From the collections: A bread-stamp (Ian Randall)”
This paper seeks to explore a day in the life of an ancient Greek household at Olynthus, drawing especially heavily upon Nicholas Cahill’s plan of House A vii 4 that includes the artifacts were found in each room. The reconstruction further uses readings about Greek daily life and determines in which rooms of this house certain activities occurred, in order to recreate a potential daily routine for the woman of this household. Specific explanations for these choices can be found in thee footnotes below.
Soon after the sun rises, I wake in my bedroom on this chilly day. I lie in bed and watch the weak sunlight shine in through the small window.[1] My thoughts wander to strange and faraway places: How long would my family live in this house? What would remain when we are gone? Could someone in the future understand how we live based on what objects and architecture remains? However, it is time to rise and start the day, so I send my slave girl to heat water in the flue and prepare my bath in the adjacent bathtub.[2] I walk down the stairs and enter into the kitchen to take my bath using the fragrant oils and perfumes I store there.[3] Once I am finished bathing, my slave girl empties my dirty bath water in the court where it can drain out to the street, while I go back upstairs and retrieve the peplos I will wear today from my wooden clothing chest.[4] It is early spring, so the woolen peplos will keep me warm. I arrange my hair into a plait and awaken my young son and daughter for the day, helping them to get dressed as well.
Since we are all dressed, I am prepared to begin the day. My children and I go downstairs, where my slave girl is tending to the charcoal fire in the flue. The weather is cold because it is still early in the day, so we use the fire in the flue for warmth.[5] The loom on which I have been weaving a piece of cloth to make a new blanket is in the multipurpose room adjacent to the flue. We use this room to store many things, and because it is next to the flue, I can weave my cloth here and remain warm while having enough light to see the detailed pattern I am creating.[6] I sit down to continue weaving the wool as my children play in the pastas. During this time, my slave girl cleans the family’s dirty laundry in the court, hanging up the clothes until they are ready again to be stored. Later into the morning, I finish making my piece of fabric and remove the completed cloth from the loom so that my slave girl can take apart the loom and put it back into storage in this room. I bring the fabric upstairs and put it into the wooden chest where I keep the bedding for my household, where it will remain until I can weave a plain piece of fabric to be the reverse side to the blanket.
It is almost time for our midday meal, and my husband and our slave boy should return home from the market shortly. My slave girl gathers barley from the pithos in the storeroom and tells me that the grains are nearly depleted.[7] I must remember to restock the barley soon, as it is one of the most important components of my family’s diet. Like most families that live in our area on the North Hill, we only have one relatively small primary pithos buried in the storeroom. Because we are located very close to the center of Olynthus and have easy access to the market, we have no need to store a large amount of grain in our house.[8] However, we do keep extra grains at the communal storage on the North Hill, which we keep in the event that there is suddenly a food shortage.[9] My slave girl grinds the barley at the mortar in the kitchen and then kneads the flour into dough, while I add more charcoal to the fire to ensure that it will be strong enough to bake the dough into bread.[10] I go into the kitchen and bring the olive oil and honey to the room in which we will dine. I set the accompaniments to our bread on the wooden table and ensure that all of the cushions to the seats around the room are in place.[11] Because we Greeks take light midday meals, the only preparation I have left to do for lunch is clean the radishes and figs we will eat as well. I take a bowl from the wooden cabinet in the pastas and place the radishes and figs inside it, arranging the bowl on the table in the dining room.[12] My slave girl finishes baking the bread in the flue and brings this to the table as well, just as my husband and our slave boy return home from the market. My husband has brought back an eel that was caught in Lake Kopaïs. This is one of the best loved foods imported to Greece, and I shall cook it later for my husband to serve to the friends he has as guests in the symposium he will host this evening.[13] I call my children to the dining room, and my family and I eat our midday meal together there.
After we finish eating our meal, our two slaves clear the table together, washing the cookware in the court and storing the serving dishes away. My husband goes to retrieve the scales and weights from the multipurpose room in order to prepare for selling this afternoon, bringing them to the shop.[14] In the shop, my family sells a variety of agricultural goods that change depending on the crops that are growing well. Today, my husband will sell olives and grapes, as well as cucumbers, all of which our slave boy will clean before it is sold. After the fire in the flue is extinguished, my children ask me to help them fix one of their toys, a ball made out of a pig’s bladder. I use the ashes to make the ball rounder and the children go to play in the court.[15] Because the sun is now out, I take some wool that my slave girl has just brought in and brush it out in the court. I like to enjoy of all of the light that the court allows to stream into my house, and the wool can be quite dirty, so it is beneficial to brush apart the tangled wool in the open air rather than in one of the enclosed rooms in my house.[16] When I have finished separating the wool, my slave girl begins to spin the wool that I will use to make more cloth.
My house is in need of more water, so I take the hydria from the pastas and go to the fountain house and collect more water for my house, stopping to speak with a few of the other women that I encounter.[17] I bring the hydria back to the pastas and take out a loom from the multipurpose room, which I set up in the court. The weather is pleasant right now because of the sun, but I must complete my work on the loom before nightfall as the cold weather of the night can damage the loom, and it is difficult to move the loom while there is an unfinished piece of cloth on it.[18] Luckily, I am only weaving a small piece of fabric that will become part of the blanket that I am making. While I work, my daughter approaches me with one of her dolls that has lost an arm. I take a break to quickly mend the doll for her, and she returns to playing in the court. My son is here as well, chasing after our family goose.[19] I spend a very pleasant afternoon completing this piece of fabric while watching over my children. Once I have finished working on the cloth, my slave girl takes apart the loom and replaces it into storage.
It is now nearly time for my husband to begin preparing to have his guests over for the symposium tonight, so he brings the scales and weights from the shop back to the multipurpose room for storage. Our slave boy cleans the whole of the anteroom and the andron, ensuring that the colorful walls are bright for the guests. To facilitate this, my husband brings the lamps from the kitchen and sets them up in the andron.[20] In the kitchen, I begin to prepare the Kopaïc eel for my husband to serve tonight, while my slave girl restarts the fire in the flue. She prepares the meal for my children and me, which will include pig, grains cooked into porridge, and pumpkin. This is our main meal, so I like to ensure that my children and I will eat a significant amount. My husband and I mix a great deal more in metal kraters for the men to drink after they have finished eating.[21] I finish cooking the rest of the dishes for my husband’s guests and leave them on the kitchen table for our slave boy to serve. My slave girl brings the dishes to the dining room for my children and me to eat, which we do in the light of the lamp. Once we have finished, I go to help my children wash and prepare for bed as my slave girl cleans up after dinner, and then I head back upstairs to bed myself. So ends another fulfilling day in my house.
[1] The second floor may have contained bedrooms, but no archaeological material remains because wooden beds and bedding would have disintegrated over time.
[2] The flue is room D on Figure 1, identified by ashes and burn marks found on the stone floor. The bathtub was next to the flue, in room C, but has since been removed. Most middle to upper class families in Greece had at least one slave.
[3] The staircase on Figure 2 leads downstairs to the court, which is room I. Two lekythoi were found next to the space the terra cotta bathtub used to be located.
[4] Greeks commonly used wooden chests to store clothing and bed linens.
[5] The flue featured an open air shaft rather than a chimney, so Greeks preferred charcoal fires as it burns with less smoke than wood. Olynthus was cold in the winter.
[6] Room B on Figure 1 contained many assorted household items, including 23 loom weights, and was a storage space as well as multipurpose room.
[7] The storeroom is room G on Figure 1 and was discovered with one pithos inside.
[8] North Hill houses like A vii 4 generally contained one single small pithos in the store room that could hold a month’s worth of grain, whereas houses in the Villa Section were farther from the market and had multiple large pithos, used to store a year’s worth of food.
[9] There is evidence of a communal storage facility dug into the North Hill.
[10] The kitchen is room E on Figure 1 and contained a large stone mortar.
[11] A lekythos was found in the kitchen, and Greeks typically ate bread with olive oil and honey. This room is room A on Figure 1, which was found devoid of artifacts. It is a dining room in this essay as the wooden furniture would have disintegrated over time, and the room is private so the family can eat together in peace.
[12] Many eating and drinking vessels, as well as the metal remnants of a piece of furniture, were found in the pastas.
[13] Eel from Lake Kopaïs was a particular delicacy in Greece.
[14] Two scales and weights were found in room B on Figure 1. The shop is room H on Figure 1, identified because it has an entrance directly into the street. A shattered pithos was discovered here, but it is unclear exactly what kind of trade took place in this room.
[15] A ball is a common toy with which Greek children liked to play.
[16] Greek women typically wove textiles for the household from wool that they
[17] A hydria was found in the pastas. There was no well or water sources at this house. Greek women typically collected the water for the household and used the fountain houses as an opportunity to gossip and have social exchanges with their peers.
[18] The court contained some loom weights and would have had a large amount of light needed to weave, as shown in Figure 3.
[19] Dolls were common toys for Greek children, and the material later disintegrated. Geese were the most common pet for Greek households.
[20] The andron is room K on Figure 1, and the anteroom is room J, identified by the offset doors, rich decor, and close location to the street, as well as the platform in the andron. Lamps were found in the kitchen and would provide a low amount of light at night.
[21] At symposia, Greek men drank wine only after the meal had been eaten. No metal kraters were found in the house, perhaps because the residents fled with these vessels or because they were looted later.
The city of Cordoba has had a long history and the echo of Punic, Latin, Visigothic, and Arabic sounded along the winding streets of its old city before Spanish came to be spoken. The Visigothic city fell to the conquering armies of the Umayyad Caliphate in 711, and became the capital of the new province of al-Andalus some five years later. Much like North Africa, which quickly slipped from the grasp of the Caliphate centered first in Damascus and then Baghdad, Cordoba and al-Andalus broke away in 756 and became the center of something new. Abd al-Rahman, a member of the Umayyad dynasty, fled to the city in that year as the victorious Abbasids demolished what remained of the old caliphate. Al-Rahman established himself in Cordoba, and began the two and a half century history of that city as the glistening capital of a new center of Islamic learning and power.
The Islamic conquests in 7th century, known in Arabic as the fatah, expanded the reach of Islam within the traditional area of the Middle East, but also to North Africa and Central Asia. It is in the modern day Tunisia that one of the most important cities in terms of its religious significance to Islam was established in 670 C.E. by the Arab conqueror Uqba ibn Nafi (Jayyusi, Holod, Petruccioli and Raymond, The City in the Islamic World, 126) on a previous Roman/Byzantine site on the central plain of Tunisia (Figure 1).
Al-Fustat (“the town of the tent”) was established between 640-3, and is frequently discussed in scholarship as the foundational city for modern Cairo. It is significant as the first Islamic city of Egypt and strategic base for the Islamic conquests of North Africa and the Byzantine Empire. Initially founded as a garrison town, it fast became a bustling urban center and was the capital of Egypt for almost 200 years. The nature of settlement of Al-Fustat and its organization reflect both political realities of the mid-7th century, as well as facets of Muslim rule.
Baghdad – Navel of the Universe
We may all know Baghdad as the sprawling city it is today, one known by all and frequented by many. However, the relationship between individual man and urban order, social order and city, varies significantly from century to century. Although we can observe the elements of the city today, its architectural evolution and foundation is important in understanding a city so obviously politically and economically significant, that it has survived until today.
