Bradley, Richard. 2001. Human, animals and the domestication of visual images. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 11(2):261-3.
Watkins, Trevor. 2004. Architecture and 'theatres of memory' in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia. In Rethinking Materiality, edited by Elizabeth DeMarrais et al., pp. 97-106.
Whittle, Alasdair. 2000. 'Very like a whale': menhirs, motifs and myths in the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Northwestern Europe. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10(2):243-59.
Comments to be posted by evening of October 8.
17 comments:
Though Watkins says he does not quite agree with the idea of images as symbols to be read like a book, he is in effect doing the same thing with architecture. For him, architecture is a mode of storing or signifying (as in a symbol) something through the construction and placement of a building. Further, while Watkins explicitly says that “external symbolic storage…is not like a book on a shelf, which can be consulted and brought to the forefront of consciousness now and again” (105), he seems to be treating architecture as such. In other words, he presents buildings as means of storing symbolic information, or as books that are constantly being read. He even uses terms such as ‘layered meanings’ and ‘syntax’, both of which strongly imply architecture as a language to be read in a specific way. I think we could also look at architecture not only as a way to manifest symbolic concepts but also as a technology used to reinforce, manifest or create symbolic or social ideas.
Also, why can we not look at early architecture in a similar way to the cave? As Watkins points out, there is much evidence of ritual behavior involving the dead in elaborately designed structures. Why then, can we not look at these structures as having been treated as if they had a sacred spirit themselves? Could these houses be a form of idol or at least an index which perhaps contains a spirit and prescribes certain behaviors to be performed in it or for it and prohibits others?
My comments focus on the first two lepenski vir images. By its nature, the process of trying to see meaning, agency, or desire in isolated ancient images is very speculative. I am working through this more as a thought exercise than anything else.
The first image has an anthropomorphized face, scales, and no obvious appendages. The union of fish and human is readily apparent here, with the predominant form being fish. The statue’s face seems to convey an expression of surprise, and it almost appears as if the human is trapped within the fish. It reminds me again of the homunculus – there is a person within the fish that makes the fish who it is. It seems to represent the ‘spirit’ of the fish.
To me, this image seems to be calling for help. The anthropomorphic face is juxtaposed against the scaly, appendage-less body. The facial expression could be interpreted as fishlike, and indeed Boric does interpret them like this, but it also appears sad. Giant round eyes and a downturned mouth make it appear somewhat shell-shocked.
The second image is clearly an icon of Sev in his internet form... This figure is much more anthropomorphic than the first one, and except for the lack of legs does not really resemble a fish at all. Had I not read Boric I would not have associated this image with fish. It has a neck and arms and lacks scales. Its large, round eyes and downturned mouth, like those on the first image, invoke a feeling of shocked sadness that seems almost to plead with some invisible object in its field of vision. The figure’s hands grasp its chest, apparently pulling something apart, freeing itself from an unseen captivity. Like that of the first image, the inner spirit of this figure wants to escape.
Of course, interpretations change with context. On the internet the anguish seen in the second image could index Sev’s unhappiness with being unable to set up the class website. In the original context perhaps it represented the consequences of the encounter between farmers and fishers. I think the process of asking all three of these questions ultimately brings us back to Gell. If the index is part of a social network, then the form of its meaning and desires, as well as the effects of its agency, are all related to that social network.
When looking at the images from Lepenski Vir, it should be noted that all of the statues have open mouths. One can’t help but stare at such a carved creature and wait for something to be emitted- a sound, spirit, or spectacle to erupt from the continuously gaping mouth. Why this object, index, signifier, or what have you has such a control over me is quite inexplicable. As a fairly rational person, should I not be more interested in the statue’s representation than in indulging in the false hope of a physical or verbal interaction with it? I wonder, though: am I enamored by the object or its meaning in the context of the society it was once a part of? Do I believe it holds the answers to the past, or that the statue itself is an answer to inquiries relating to the “past life” in which it was created. Furthermore, why these images? As Watkins states, during the Epi-palaeolithic and very early Neolithic periods, humans could “materialize their social institutions” and “built cultural environments [as] a form of external symbolic storage…[and] inhabit a symbolic world at multiple levels” (Watkins 105). So, maybe, if I put myself in the perspective of Watkins, my intrigue in such substantial items could be due to the fact that they are materializations of actual institutions and cultures of long ago.
Sarah E
In my comments, I am also discussing the images at Lepenski Vir, which, to me, seek to create some kind of connection between human and animal. It is interesting to note the differences in the forms and details of the statues in relation to the age of the deceased associated with them, which relate the age of the deceased with the age and development of the fish. I think these images want to establish a connection between the human and the fish in order to stress the importance of the fish on this culture, and perhaps pay homage to the fish due to the heavy reliance on this animal for subsistence. Again, the focus of our discussions related to what images wants tends to focus on the eyes as a means for representing a gateway to the person within, but like other people have noted, the mouth is also heavily emphasized on the statutes, perhaps to only create the relationship with the fish imagery, but maybe also because the mouth of the beluga is so exaggerated and therefore the people creating these images had some important association with the mouth of this particular fish. Also, the mouth serves to create a strong visual association with the fish, and therefore most likely its relationship with humans.
The stone figures from Lepenski Vir are very organic in style, reminding me of the abstract figurative sculptures of Henry Moore. Moore said, “It is only when the sculptor works direct, where there is an active relationship with his material, that the material can take its part in the shaping of an idea.” His interest in natural materials seems important in the creation of his sculpture, and I think that the Lepenski Vir figures also reflect the sculptor’s close relationship with nature. It seems that the rocks themselves played a large role in shaping the images; as prototypes. One can imagine how the shape of a rock could easily resemble something that inspires the sculptor to carve the faces into the rock and even motivated the figures to be placed in the burials in the manner in which they were interred. These figures remind me of river rocks in the way the river can erode rock over time to create surprising shapes. The carving is not deep, and the overall roundness of a rock smoothed by water was left, perhaps supporting theory that these show some sort of fish-people, perhaps referencing the ancestors of the inhabitants of Lepenski Vir. The shallow relief could index the power of water to erode something as durable as stone, or, conversely, the ability of the stone to adapt to abrasive conditions over time by changing shape. Putting aside the materials and the creators of these objects, and focusing on the objects themselves, I cannot help but be pulled in by their large eyes and the melancholy mouths which beg for sympathy from the viewer. These figures remind me of small children that want attention, the large eyes begging for help. The part that really reaches out to me is that besides small or almost nonexistent arms, the figures do not really have any appendages to give them any sense of power, so it seems as though the faces are trapped within the stone, pleading to be released. These images want the ability of motion and the power that appendages give to people, without which we would be as helpless and stationary as a stone.
Watkins describes a change in architecture in the Epi-palaeolithic and Neolithic periods as both being a result of and causing a change in the social structure of those people. It would be interesting to look at the shift in these buildings by following Mitchell and asking what the buildings want. As I was reading about how these structures changed, I thought that what they might want mirrored the wants and changes of the society. For instance, as the society became sedentary the architecture "wanted" to become more permanent and sturdy. As the society became more spiritually inclined the architecture "wanted" to mirror this and therefore included more symbolic features such as deer antlers or other decorations. One building could also want more than one thing throughout its existence. The large construction at Tell Mureybet had many different wants starting with wanting to store food and ending with wanting to be destroyed. Watkins does not make these connections although he is quite aware of the social and symbolic aspects of architecture. I am sure, however, that if Mitchell were to look at the development of these constructions, he would have no doubt that they had wants mirroring the wants of their inhabitants.
Upon first looking at these images from Lepenski Vir, I did not make any animal associations whatsoever - I, too, would never have associated them with fish on my own. To me these images all look like somewhat deformed human infants, as if the people they represent were returned to their original state when they died. This could link in with the human-fish connection -- if the people of Lepenski Vir did not see a clear differentiation between "human" and "animal", as Bradley argues that people in hunting/gathering/fishing societies rarely did, then maybe they at least saw the fish as existing in a more pure and primal state than humans, a state that the humans aspired to return to in death - as if some essence of a human being that they imagined remained after death were something more fluid, more suited to living in the body of a fish in a river than in the body of a human.
On the other hand, the faces of these boulder images do not look at all peaceful to me, not like I would expect them to if they represented some kind of liberation of the soul. The first looks completely blank, while the second and third look mournful and anguished. This does not imply a view of death as something freer or more peaceful than life, nor does it make these images seem like something that people would want to keep in their houses to represent friendly ancestral protectors. Which leads me to contemplate the question of what do these images want -- do they want to morph into some animal state that they cannot fully attain? Are they being kept in houses not as protectors but as a sort of warning?
I think what Whittle fails to mention is the proximity of Neolithic and hunter/gatherer groups. Lewis-Williams claimed that close interaction between Neanderthal and Homo Sapien furthered an 'art revolution' in caves in the south of France. Neolithic groups were in close contact with those in Scandinavia and we see a distinct difference between the art forms. Brittany consists of domesticated animals and axes, while southern Scandinavia consists of therianthropes. Both groups consist of different ideologies that are propagated by close cultural interaction. The Neolithic groups may have wanted to separate their ideas from those of hunter/gatherers by furthering their own views of identity (axes, which are both tools and ritual objects, and control of wild animals) to separate that from shamanism and the non-control of animals.
I'm going to try to be very generous right now with some of the authors we are dealing with this week---
I like Whittle's approach as being deliberately speculative. While this could easily be seen as a cop-out, as dodging any solid position to avoid critique or something of that nature... I think this method can be productive if taken seriously.
Whittle is not necessarily proclaiming the images on La Table des Marchand to be whales- he is opening up the possibility that they were of mythical value to the humans that constructed them.
We should keep this in mind when reading other archaeological work- that of course, we will never really know exactly what happened millenia ago, and that the most dangerous thing we can do is assume that we do. This is a methodological question.
I certainly kept this in the front of my mind while reading Boric. With our preface that this piece was utterly disappointing, I read it with intended generosity. Boric offered us a ‘definition’ of art that one can actually grapple with via Gell, saying that “‘artwork’ should be restricted to those objects that embody complex intentionalities.” (47) This works quite well when thinking about the idol and the image- bringing it back to Mitchell. What does the artwork want? What does the image want?
When thinking about the lepenski fish-man hybrid images and what they want, I couldn’t get away from Boric’s thoughts on the transforming metamorphosing body and the notion that one of the intrinsic qualities of being is growing and changing constantly.
The fishman looks surprised or sort of pained. Perhaps the image is struggling in its embodied state. What about the permanence of being a physical object? Might an object struggle with that? The Homunculus feeling more like a genie trapped in a lamp?
MEGAN
I thought our previous discussion about the corpse being the first idol was particularly interesting when looking at the Watkins article. In it he is talking about architecture as idols and he often mentions burials as part of the structures. However, he mentions the burials in the same way as any other structure on the sites, like the food storage area for example. He seems to ignore the specific implications of the burials though. Watkins doesn't really seem to draw a conclusion from the fact that a food storage facility was in fact turned into a burial when a decapitated head and a dismembered body was thrown in there and burned towards the end of its life. This seems like an obvious example of iconoclasm that he ignores. I also wondered about the example of the limestone pillars with dangerous and predatory images on them. I wonder if there is a connection between the importance of burials and images of animals that possible were feared for causing the death of people. However, Watkins fails to explore any of these possibilities in his article.
Reading Boric, I thought he was saying that one thing the “volatile bodies” depicted on the Lepenski Vir boulders do is index instability. He notes at one point that they “convey...interest...in the instability of form, the transformational character of being, and the forceful potency that lies therein” (64). Although he references Gell early on as an influence, Boric doesn't actually use the language of indices in his analysis. But then I didn't really see the objects in this piece coming through as social players in the way that the agency indexed by Gell's objects allows. That art can be anthropological because of the social relations was a key framing point for Gell's work, so I think that's an important component to consider in discerning what an object does.
I'm realizing that when working from the perspective of archaeological interpretation, I actually have a hard time distinguishing between analyses of what images do and what they mean--it seems like it's in the contemporary life of the image in context that the power of index is something really distinct from meaning, rather than just a matter of semantics. That is, I initially thought Boric was looking at what the images do, but in a way he's suggesting more of what they mean—the differentiation of styles among these socially embodied boulders means that we're dealing with a society concerned with material transformations.
Is there a way to make these images more “active” as doers? I suppose we could see the Lepenski Vir images as not just embodiments of different identities across a lifetime but as reminders of this social fact, in that way allowing them to index an agency that suggests the inescapable facts of aging and death. Many people have commented on the mournful expressions, which do seem to indicate more of an identification with the person rather helplessly subject to some condition than with the enforcing power. While Watkins' terminology like “symbolic representation” leans towards the meaning end of things, in a way the use of architecture as a form of social storage and transmission can also be a way of doing or indexing, to the extent that the “messages” become seen as internal to the material rather than just passing through them.
In his essay on what pictures want, Mitchell notes both the overt or surface desires suggested by the image (ie, Uncle Sam wants...well, you in the military) in addition to what they want in terms of lack, which seems to be the dominant mode of assessing images' desires. So like some others have done, I tried to use that method here. The lizard (?) of Göbekli Tepe seems to want to get down, which brings to mind both the way these images are fixed in the stone, and how by some sort of parallel the domesticated animals (or “domesticated society”) is set in a certain role. But then Watkins notes that the images here depicts wild/dangerous animals, which distinguishes the image from what it represents in a way, recalling Bataille's claim that depiction makes a thing out of the divine (animal). So the images want to be released. This interpretation doesn't seem to fit so well for the Lepenski Vir images; they might also want release from the stone, but perhaps because of their expressions it seems more an issue of some other anguish.
The images from Gobekli Tepe and Lepenski Vir actually shed light on Bradleys article and the ideas he took from Whittle and Cauvin. Bradley talks about how earlier images were often composite human-animal images while later images, after agriculture was developed, show a clear separation between animals and people. The images from Gobekli Tepe with their animalistic nature, even if you cant separate what is the fish form versus the human form, there is an overall confused state to the image. These images definitely go along with Bradley’s idea that perhaps these earlier people didn’t see themselves as entirely separate from animals. These people may have still been becoming aware of their nature that makes them human as they expressed this confliction in their material culture. Bradley looks specifically at the development of agriculture as possibly causing the change to naturalistic animals fully separated from stylized humans. He posits that this may have been because with agriculture and domestication relationships between animals and humans, as having specific purposes, was cemented. I would like to go a step further to say that there may be more to this transition. If the early images show confusion between animality and humanity as the Neolithic people were realizing differences between themselves and the world around them and wondering what exactly it meant then what do the latter images show. Perhaps it is more than just the relationships developed with domestication; it also seems to show how man became man with the mental processes and identity that we still have (although perhaps slightly evolved) today. To bring in an article from a different class in Zoe Crossland’s Death and the Body class we looked at an article by Ruberton that looks at how the archaeological remains of the Narangasett of Rhode Island shows their resistance towards the colonial settlers. She assumes that this huge issue for the Narangasett would have manifested itself in their material culture. I believe that this makes a lot of sense if we look at these idols. Idols as we have been discussing as a possibility help their manufacturers with dealing with the big questions in life: religion, unexplainable phenomena, and more. Perhaps these early idols were manifestations of these early people dealing with the question of who are we and what are these other things that surround us. So this evolution of images shows more than just a transition of economic life style to more complex but also the development of a more complex mind and identity as human beings.
I have to admit, I was really intrigued by Trevor Watkins notion of “theaters of memory” being built into, affecting, and thus later resurfacing from these buildings he’s theoretically proposed stood within some symbolic spatial and temporal realm for the community. This concept sort of reminded me of Gell’s “extended mind”, metamorphosizing into some greater homunculus of the community (thus an evolved prototype perhaps?)—the community within the secular, profane world, and within some spiritual world of Bataille’s “perfect immanence.” With that said, I found it very interesting how these “theaters of memory” appear to open a dialogue between the past (when the object was made) and the present (those observers interacting with the finished object).
Gell certainly analytically incorporates this relationship within his social network of indexes, where the artist through the manufacture of the index affects the audience members interacting with that finished form (and thus the past affecting the present). This notion of memory (and the implication such a word alludes to: experiences that have been internalized, within the homunculus, and persistently accessed by the person containing that memory) and theater (also a word generally associated with the experience of an event and performance of such an event) moves this Gellian connection, I believe, one step further.
This completely exposes my nerdy homunculus, but for those who are familiar with Frank Herbert’s Dune, the first thing that surfaced in my mind, when trying to grasp what Watkins could’ve possibly meant by these “theaters of memory,” was the female religious cult known as the Bene Gesserit. As a part of an initiation ceremony, these women go through some trance-like event (caused by the consumption of the poisonous waters obtained from infant spice worms) during which the Reverend Mother, the head of the cult, passes on all of her memories to the initiate. Through the experiencing of and internalization of these memories, the initiate thus becomes the Reverend Mother incarnate (in a sense, but obviously I’m taking Frank Herbert’s constructed world of Dune to a level I’m sure he would argue against).
From interactions with these indexes, whether they are houses or fish-human hybrid statuettes, the audience is able to experience the life of the inner homunculus (whether that internal homunculus happens to be an external ideology, socio-cultural construct of what is an acceptable “person” or an acceptable “body” within the community, or even a spirit from the underworld), thereby creating a memory of that experience (jumbled up with the memories of that internal homunculus) and thus “becoming” (is affect by) parts of that index’s homunculus. The observer of the now, experiencing and internalizing these memories here or there, is in constant dialogue with the past and thereby “becomes” part of the past (?) (e.g.: the initiate becoming the Reverend Mother). This seems like a fairly productive measure of replicating Culture….
I agree with Jeff in that I wouldn’t have immediately identified the boulders from Lepenski Vir as fish if I hadn’t read Boric, though I think his argument is very convincing (possibly the images represent a fear of death- the faces look horrified and the second and third images hardly look like fish in my opinion). Like Boric, I see the objects serving as a sort of portal between the world of the living and the ancestral/animalistic world. The boulders which lie sit in the middle of the home, and are physically situated with the ancestors buried below the floor. These boulders wanted to remind the residents of Lepenski Vir perhaps of our their own corporeality, as a sort of memento mori (Hodder is referenced as saying that “death dominates the houses of Lepenski Vir and that “the domestication of the death takes place by bringing the dead body into the house” p 50). I like how Boric incorporates Treherne, Giddens and Bourdieu into his interpretation. There is much to be said about the routinezed actions and the impact of such objects as these boulders, which represent death more or less, being situated in the middle of daily life. I think that these boulders, more than anything, wanted to be remembered and remind the residents of Lepenski Vir of their identity, as fishermen and of their lineage.
Becky Laughner
Wow. Watkin's article is excruciatingly badly written. He completely fails to tie in his "evidence" (the description of a series of buildings in the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic with his "theatre of memory" thesis. When he wrote "the idea that I developed here" I wanted to say "Hold on their buddy, you haven't DEVELOPED any idea".
I can, however, see his idea of the theatre of memory through Gell as the way of looking at architecture as an agent, and possibly even a symbolic index. I am skeptical about housing having special symbolic meaning without evidence for careful repetition of architectural design (not just overlapping space). Otherwise, a building is no more a deliberate symbol than a teepee.
This from Fran:
As I settled in to read Whittle's article, I was expecting to be persuaded into thinking that the axe symbol was indeed a whale. Although I remain unconvinced, I think the main point of the article was understood that the carvings on the megaliths were not simply scenes from everyday life, but held symbolic values (as Bradley would agree). This line of thinking also was relevant in the Watkins article. As he argued, architecture could be interpreted as a symbolic space where cultural ideas were designed and reinforced through a shared, communal space. The monoliths from Gobekli Tepe in Turkey not only were used in the construction and marking of these symbolic spaces, but they also held symbolic value in the carvings on the stone themselves. The animals on the monoliths in the photos could represent a creation myth or other narrative. I thought Watkins? concept of humans evolving from nature to nurture to be interesting, that our ancestors were dependent upon nature to help us evolve, and then dependent upon the exchange of cultural ideas as the nurturing of continued evolution. We, as humans, are dependent upon each other for exchange of ideas and methods to survive. The monoliths from Gobekli Tepe allowed early humans to connect with each other during new ways of living through sedentary and domesticated life.
This from Sara R:
I think it is important to recognize a fundamental distinction between asking these questions – what does this object mean, do, want – of objects of our own society and those of a distant time and place. As an archaeologist I do not think we can know the meaning of these artifacts, although we can assign meaning to their images. The inability to know their meaning does not mean that to ask would be a futile project but I don’t think that one should ask about symbolic meaning without first considering what they do and what they want.
Asking what the images do is perhaps the easiest approach from an archaeological perspective in which images have a context. The stone images from both Lepinski Vir and Gobekli Tepe are associated with permanent structures and spaces of human interaction. So the images can be said to communicate. Watkins writes, “the adoption of harvesting, storage and sedentism came at a perfect time to coincide with human cognitive and cultural evolution,” (105) and while I believe that “domestication” and the cognitive/cultural evolution are probably more co-dependant than this phrasing suggests, in the context of a newly sedentary society images as a technology of communication would seem necessary.
Aesthetic and stylistic similarities within each group of images tells me that they want to be read. They wanted to be read in their pasts based on their location, through all the stages of their lifecycle, and they want to be read now, located in our class. We can read in them however, just their desires, we can hypothesize their functions, but we cannot know their symbolic meanings. I speak in plural desires, functions, and meanings because as Boric notes of the boulders, “Their meanings, function and potency were likely refigured through their biographical trajectories intertwined with those of various individuals that belonged to particular buildings at the site during the several centuries of its occupation” (64).
Post a Comment