Raw Histories
Raw Histories

Author: Elizabeth Edwards

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-01-07

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1000181294

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Photographs have had an integral and complex role in many anthropological contexts, from fieldwork to museum exhibitions. This book explores how approaching anthropological photographs as 'history' can offer both theoretical and empirical insights into these roles. Photographs are thought to make problematic history because of their ambiguity and 'rawness'. In short, they have too many meanings. The author refutes this prejudice by exploring, through a series of case studies, precisely the potential of this raw quality to open up new perspectives. Taking the nature of photography as her starting point, the author argues that photographs are not merely pictures of things but are part of a dynamic and fluid historical dialogue, which is active not only in the creation of the photograph but in its subsequent social biography in archive and museum spaces, past and present. In this context, the book challenges any uniform view of anthropological photography and its resulting archives. Drawing on a variety of examples, largely from the Pacific, the book demonstrates how close readings of photographs reveal not only western agendas, but also many layers of differing historical and cross-cultural experiences. That is, photographs can 'spring leaks' to show an alternative viewpoint. These themes are developed further by examining the dynamics of photographs and issues around them as used by contemporary artists and curators and presented to an increasingly varied public. This book convincingly demonstrates photographs' potential to articulate histories other than those of their immediate appearances, a potential that can no longer be neglected by scholars and institutions.

Pacific Presences
Pacific Presences

Author: Lucie Carreau

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9789088905919

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Hundreds of thousands of works of art and artefacts from many parts of the Pacific are dispersed across European museums. They range from seemingly quotidian things such as fish-hooks and baskets to great sculptures of divinities, architectural forms and canoes. These collections constitute a remarkable resource for understanding history and society across Oceania, cross-cultural encounters since the voyages of Captain Cook, and the colonial transformations that have taken place since. They are also collections of profound importance for Islanders today, who have varied responses to their disp.

Style and Meaning
Style and Meaning

Author: Anthony Forge

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9789088904486

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"Anthropology's engagement with art has a complex and uneven history. While material culture, 'decorative art', and art styles were of major significance for founding figures such as Alfred Haddon and Franz Boas, art became marginal as the discipline turned towards social analysis in the 1920s. This book addresses a major moment of renewal in the anthropology of art in the 1960s and 1970s. British anthropologist Anthony Forge (1929-1991), trained in Cambridge, undertook fieldwork among the Abelam of Papua New Guinea in the late 1950s and 1960s, and wrote influentially, especially about issues of style and meaning in art. His powerful, question-raising arguments addressed basic issues, asking why so much art was produced in some regions, and why was it so socially important? Fifty years later, art has renewed global significance, and anthropologists are again considering both its local expressions among Indigenous peoples and its new global circulation. In this context, Forge's arguments have renewed relevance: they help scholars and students understand the genealogies of current debates, and remind us of fundamental questions that remain unanswered. This volume brings together Forge's most important writings on the anthropology of art, published over a thirty year period, together with six assessments of his legacy, including extended reappraisals of Sepik ethnography, by distinguished anthropologists from Austrailia, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom."--Provided by publisher.

Rock Art and Sacred Landscapes
Rock Art and Sacred Landscapes

Author: Donna L. Gillette

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-10-16

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1461484065

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Social and behavioral scientists study religion or spirituality in various ways and have defined and approached the subject from different perspectives. In cultural anthropology and archaeology the understanding of what constitutes religion involves beliefs, oral traditions, practices and rituals, as well as the related material culture including artifacts, landscapes, structural features and visual representations like rock art. Researchers work to understand religious thoughts and actions that prompted their creation distinct from those created for economic, political, or social purposes. Rock art landscapes convey knowledge about sacred and spiritual ecology from generation to generation. Contributors to this global view detail how rock art can be employed to address issues regarding past dynamic interplays of religions and spiritual elements. Studies from a number of different cultural areas and time periods explore how rock art engages the emotions, materializes thoughts and actions and reflects religious organization as it intersects with sociopolitical cultural systems.

The "Ur-Nammu" Stela
The

Author: Jeanny Vorys Canby

Publisher: UPenn Museum of Archaeology

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 9781931707893

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Ur-Nammu was king of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia (southern Iraq) around 2000 B.C. In 1925 a joint expedition from the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the British Museum discovered dozens of fragments of a monument in honor of Ur-Nammu. Because such works have rarely survived, the stela became one of the most famous examples of Near Eastern art, a status it retains today. The stela had been ten feet high with registers in relief of scenes of religious practices on both front and back. By 1927 the best pieces had been restored in Philadelphia into an imagined version of the stela, with plaster filling the gaps. But more than twice as many small or worn pieces were omitted from the restoration and dutifully stored in boxes at the Museum. Jeanny Vorys Canby realized that the early reconstruction had been too hasty, and her meticulous, painstaking reexamination reveals a wealth of new scenes that revise our understanding of the monument. This book includes the justification of the reconstructions, description of the scenes, speculation on the ancient fate of the stela, as well as a description of each piece with photograph and drawing. These vigorous, innovative scenes contradict the long-held view from the old reconstruction that the monument was dull and repetitive. In fact, it is fresh and vibrant, with dynamic scenes peopled by beautifully sculpted actors. Entirely new evidence is presented here in scientific detail, including appendices from Steven Tinney, of the Museum's Babylonian Section, and Tamsen Fuller, conservationist. The book's conclusions will be of major significance to historians, archaeologists, art historians, biblical scholars, and anthropologists working in the ancient Near East and to scholars concerned with institutions of kinship, religion, and everyday life. University Museum Monograph, 110