Publikationen: Colburn/Heyn (Hgg.) - Adornment in the Ancient Mediterranean World

[Aline Minder]

Titel: Reading a Dynamic Canvas: Adornment in the Ancient
Mediterranean World
Herausgeberinnen: Cynthia S. Colburn; Maura K. Heyn
Ort: Newcastle
Verlag: Cambridge Scholars
Jahr: 2008
ISBN: 9781847184061
Umfang/Preis: 230 S.; £ 34.99


Ausschnitt aus der Rezension von Liza Cleland, University of Edinburgh
(Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2009):

The legacy of early twentieth-century historical clothing studies is
one of authors arguing often about details, while assuming a very
great deal about clothing and adornment. Focus on the
'exceptional' (in the absence of systematic understandings relevant to
each culture) has done the field few favours. Despite later advances,
particularly increasing sophistication of theoretical and cross-
cultural analyses, this legacy still casts a long shadow. Therefore,
it is heartening to see this volume of essays, which is a valuable
attempt to address the peculiar dynamism of adornment as an aspect of
material and social culture. It is even better to see overt and
carefully considered definition and use of comparative assemblages in
doing so, rather than statements on exceptions. Further, the volume as
a whole makes useful approaches to reading dress as a subject of art.
Though the focus of the essays is tight, this enhances their relevance
and utility, rather than detracting in any way from their
contributions to the fields of clothing, material culture and wider
scholarship. Clear arguments reach interesting conclusions, and in
each case context is ably explained for non-specialists. (...)

This final point indicates my only real concern with the volume as a
whole. This is simply that I find these essays making more of a
contribution to the wider field of clothing studies (textiles,
jewelry, grooming; representations and remains) than they themselves
claim or indeed allow. In every case, the closely argued conclusions
could usefully have been extended to wider aspects of scholarship, to
the benefit of both. Instead, underlying assumptions (about the role
and basic nature of adornment, a dynamic canvas to be read) seemed
rather tentative. This is a shame, if only for the fact that this
accessible and useful volume itself deserves to be widely read, by
students as well as researchers, in various fields. In any case, I
should have welcomed an afterword, drawing together the wider issues
both posed and resolved by the essays taken together. But again, this
is perhaps simply reflective of the fact that this is an interesting
volume, which whets the appetite for more from its editors and
contributors.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures
List of Tables
Map of the Aegean and Near East
Introduction
Bodily Adornment and Identity
Cynthia S. Colburn and Maura K. Heyn
Chapter One, Exotica and the Body in the Minoan and Mycenaean Worlds
Cynthia S. Colburn
Chapter Two, The Lady of the Landscape: An Investigation of Aegean
Costuming and the Xeste 3 Frescoes
Anne P. Chapin
Chapter Three, Fabric Patterns as Symbols of Status in the Near East
and Early Greece
Eleanor Guralnick
Chapter Four, Grave Garb: Archaic and Classical Macedonian Funerary
Costume
Alexis Q.Castor
Chapter Five, "Fashioning" Initiates: Dress at the Mysteries
Laura Gawlinski
Chapter Six, Sacerdotal Activities and Parthian Dress in Roman Palmyra
Maura K. Heyn
Chapter Seven, Appearance, Diversity, and Identity in Roman Britain
Judith Rosten
List of Contributors
Index

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2009/2009-01-30.html