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NMC 491S: Mesopotamian Material Culture: “Art”
Thursdays 2pm - 4pm BF 415
Instructor: Anne Porter
Room 420, 4 Bancroft Avenue.
Office hours: email for an appointment
Email:[email protected]
YOU MUST PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE SYLLABUS. STUDENTS ARE
RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL READINGS, ASSIGNMENTS AND DEADLINES.
YOU MUST CHECK YOUR UNIVERSITY EMAIL REGULARLY
Course Description
This class brings together the study of art and artefact with key works in Mesopotamian material
culture from 3000-500 BCE. Along with approaches employed by archaeologists, art historians
and anthropologists, including typology, kinaesthetics, object-agency, and materiality, you will
engage with new approaches to museum display.
Assessment
Three essays @ 15% each. Essays will be submitted Week 3, Week 6, and Week 12.
You will examine your chosen object or group of objects through the lens of three different
approaches to material culture.
Analyze and reconstruct a museum display @ 25% Due date Week 10.
This assignment requires an extracurricular trip to the ROM. Date to be determined. You will
choose a display, and, on the basis of the literature we will read throughout the course, you will
reimagine it. You may present this reimagining any way you would like. The point is to break
with traditional distancing approaches to give the museum-goer a more enriching experience. Be
imaginative. Be radical. Begin with the following readings:
Thomas, J. 2006. Archaeology and Modernity. Routledge. Pp. 1-34.
Peers, G. 2015. Transfiguring Materialities: Relational Abstraction in Byzantium and its
Exhibition. Convivium, 2(2), pp.112-133.
Two class presentations @ 15%
You will research and present the archaeological, historical and scholarly background to the
objects that are your week’s topic.
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ALL ASSIGNMENTS MUST BE SUBMITTED IN HARD COPY, DOUBLE-SPACED, 12
POINT, SINGLE-SIDED. REFERENCING SHOULD BE IN SOCIAL SCIENCE FORMAT
(NAME DATE: PAGE).
Failure to complete all components of the assessment may result in a failing grade.
Failure to properly reference any written work or to acknowledge source material is considered
plagiarism and will result in a failing grade.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism consists of passing off someone else’s work as your own. This may be done in a
variety of ways, including, but not limited to: wholesale copying of another person’s writing;
getting someone else to write your work for you; quoting someone’s words directly within your
own writing but failing to place the quote in quotation marks and/or failing to provide a
reference; failing to provide a reference for someone else’s words that you paraphrase; failing to
acknowledge information or ideas that have come from someone else. Plagiarism is a serious
offence and will be reported. It will be then treated according to school policies and may result in
expulsion. Please see the appropriate web page for the school’s plagiarism policy.
Readings
This is a reading intensive course. You will be expected to discuss the assigned passages. Some
readings are given as a source of information, but some will apply the techniques or theories we
are discussing to a particular subject. Approached critically these sources are also ways of
learning how archaeologists do things and why. For this reason you will be expected to do three
things with the readings: extract information, analyze the structure and implications of the piece,
and break down the argument. Most readings are available online at JSTOR, academia.edu or
researchgate.net. Please consult google scholar. Otherwise they will be posted in Blackboard.
Please pay attention to the directions in the weekly schedule.
Attendance
It is very difficult to pass this class unless you attend class regularly. There are three reasons for
this: one, I will be modeling for you in class the kind of work you are supposed to do for
assignments and exams; two, readings do not replace class content; and three, class discussions,
because they are the practice of analysis, are as important as any other part of the course. Exam
questions are taken directly from class materials and discussions.
Classroom Policies
STUDENTS MAY NOT OPEN THEIR COMPUTERS IN CLASS UNLESS EXPRESSLY
PERMITTED BY INSTRUCTOR. No phones or any other digital media are permitted. Class
may not be recorded unless by prior arrangement with instructor. Wikipedia is not considered an
acceptable source under any situation (so don’t bother consulting it in class). If students persist in
inappropriate use of electronic media, they will be asked to leave the class. Behavior that
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distracts other students will not be permitted. Students are expected to discuss all topics openly
and civilly.
MARCH 13th IS LAST DAY TO DROP CLASS
WEEKLY SCHEDULE
Week 1, Thurs Jan 5th. The social relations of things.
Why do we study material culture – and what is it anyway? What’s the difference between art
and artefact? For that matter, what’s the difference between art history and archaeology when it
comes to studying the past? We review the artworks selected for this course and you will choose
one as the focus of your essay.
Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pp.1-11
Week 2, Thurs Jan 12th. Typing things, tracking things: what are ceramics good for?
Somehow, we can’t quite abandon “pots equal people” After all, if they don’t, what’s the point?
Clearly, we all believe that in some way we can see through pots to the people that made and
used them, and lived in worlds shaped by them. So how do we do better than simplistic
identifications of cultural communities based on pots?
Appadurai, A. 1986. Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value.” Pp. 3-64 in The
Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Arjun Appadurai.
Cambridge University Press.
OR
Kopytoff, I. 1986. The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process. Pp. 64-91 in
The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by A. Appadurai.
Cambridge University Press.
PLUS
Porter, A. 2007. You Say Potato, I Say …Typology, Chronology and the Origin of the Amorites.
Pp. 69-115 in Sociétés humaines et changement climatique à la fin du Troisième Millénaire,
edited by C. Marro and C. Kuzucuoglu. Varia Anatolica XVIII. Paris.
Week 3, Thurs Jan 19th. Things as the biographies of the dead: the cemetery at Ur.
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If things have their own biographies, biographies have their own things. Is there a way we can
learn more about who the dead were through this approach? Or are there too many other factors
also involved?
Hoskins, J. 1998. Biographical Objects. How Things Tell the Story of People’s Lives. London.
Miller, N and H, Pittman, 2015. Puabi's Diadem(s): The Deconstruction of a Mesopotamian
Icon. In From Ancient to Modern: Archaeology and Aesthetics. Princeton University Press,
edited by J. Chi and P. Azara. Princeton.
Week 4, Thurs Jan 26th. Archaeological things: context and the self-referential object
While archaeologists and art historians tend to take very different approaches to objects, maybe
they shouldn’t. Examination of the Warka Vase, the Standard of Ur, and the Great Lyre compel
the question: can you truly understand the significance of an object without knowing its findspot? By the same token, can you truly understand the significance of an object without
understanding the image? But what is the path to understanding the image?
Bahrani, Z. 2002. Performativity and the image: narrative, representation, and the Uruk vase. Pp.
15-22 in Leaving no stones unturned: Essays on the ancient Near East and Egypt in honor of
Donald P. Hansen, edited by
Tanner, J. and R. Osborne. 2007. Introduction: Art and Agency and Art History. Pp. 1-27 in
Art’s Agency and Art History, edited by R. Osborne and J. Tanner. Blackwell.
Week 5, Thurs Feb 2nd. The agency of things: statues of the Early Dynastic.
It seems Mesopotamians certainly believed that things had agency. We think this was the
purpose of the statue collections from Tell Asmar and similar contexts. Or was it? Who do these
statues represent, and how can we understand their function?
Evans, J. 2012. The lives of Sumerian sculpture. Cambridge. Chapter Five.
Winter, I. 2000. The eyes have it. Votive statuary, Gilgamesh’s axe, and cathected viewing in the
Ancient Near East. Pp. 22-44 in Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance, edited by R.
Nelson.
Week 6, Thurs Feb 9th. Making things: how we study cylinder seals.
If an object and/or an image is functional can it be art? How does patronage affect the production
of object/image? Do the people who make the object/image get a say in what goes into it? And if
they don’t, how can what they produce be termed art?
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Cooper, J. 1990. Mesopotamian historical consciousness and the production of monumental art
in the third millennium BC. Pp. 39-51 in Investigating Artistic Environments in the Ancient Near
East, edited by A. Gunter.
Dobres, M-A. 2000. Technology and Social Agency. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 127-164.
Week 7, Thurs Feb 16th. Hybrid things: the Bull-man.
So much – and yet so little – has been read into the image of these two figures. If the figure is
hybrid, so too is the relationship between image and text, history, cosmology and culture.
Costello, S. 2010. The Mesopotamian “Nude Hero”: Context and Interpretations. Pp. 25-35 in
The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography, edited by D. Counts and B. Arnold.
ARCHAEOLINGUA ALAPÍTVÁNY.
Week 8, Thurs Feb 23rd. READING WEEK
Week 9, Thurs Mar 2nd. Giving things: the objects of Naram Sin
There really is no such thing as a free lunch! Divine Kinship and the gifts that keep on giving.
Mauss, M. 1967. The Gift. Norton.
Porter, A. 2014. When the Subject is the Object: Relational Ontologies, the Partible Person and
the Image of Naram-Sin. Pp. 597-617 in Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art, edited
by M. Feldman and B. Brown. De Gruyters.
Week 10, Thurs Mar 9th. The Ninhursag Stele and the phenomenology of things.
In order to understand meaning, function, purpose, and effect, surely we have to understand the
who, where and how of human experience of things. This means reconstructing, and
reconsidering human interaction with things.
Margueron, J-C. Mari TBD
Porter, A. 2012. Akkad and Agency, Archaeology and Annals: Considering Change in Third
Millennium BCE Mesopotamia. Pp. 166-180 in Agency and Identity in the Ancient Near East,
edited by S. Steadman and J. Ross. Equinox.
Week 11, Thurs Mar 16th. Ishtar and the materiality of things
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Materiality has become a broad umbrella concept. It can refer to the physical properties of things
and their effect on people; the embodiment of aspects of the human experience in things; or
things as a nexus for human interaction. Do any of these concepts give us greater insight into
representations of Ishtar, from cylinder seals to the ubiquitous mold-made plaques?
Tilley, C. 2007. Materiality in Materials. Archaeological Dialogues 14/1:16–20.
Ingold, T. 2007. Materials against Materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14 /1: 1–16
Week 12, Thurs Mar 23th. The power of things: efficacy and Old Babylonian plaques
Efficacy is not the same as agency – or is it?
Assante, J., 2002. Sex, magic and the liminal body in the erotic art and texts of the Old
Babylonian period. Pp.27-52 in Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East, edited by S. Parpola
and R.Whiting.
OR
Graff, S.B., 2014. Sexuality, Reproduction and Gender in Terracotta Plaques from the Late
Third-Early Second Millennia BCE. Pp.371 – in Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern
Art, edited by B. Brown and M. Feldman. De Gruyters.
PLUS
Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pp. 6090.
Week 13, Thurs Mar 30th. How do things make us? The Assyrian reliefs.
The use of Assyrian palace reliefs as a form of visual history has long dominated discussions of
this iconic material, as has their role in the evolution of art. But two other approaches help us see
how deeply affective (and I use that word advisedly) they were: practice theory and kinasethesia.
Tilley, C. 2008. Body and Image: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology. Berg. Pp. 15-51.
Thomason, A. 2016. The Sense-scapes of Neo-Assyrian Capital Cities: Royal Authority and
Bodily Experience. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 26(02), pp.243-264.
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