Le maschere più antiche

Presentano buchi sui bordi, probabilmente per essere indossate, forse anche per attaccarci una 'capigliatura', o forse solo per appenderle. Mettono un po' paura, con le grandi occhiaie e le smorfie irreali o feroci. Sono scavate nella pietra calcarea, perché sono maschere dell'età della pietra. Sono con ogni probabilità le maschere più antiche a noi note: sono una dozzina, tutte provenienti dalla medesima zona collinare d'Israele. Si pensa che rappresentino gli spiriti degli antenati e siano state usati in culti e cerimonie che li riguardassero. Saranno esposte dall'uncici Marzo all'undici settembre all'Israel Museum di Gerusalemme.

Face to Face: 

The Oldest Masks in the World 

at The Israel Museum 


The Israel Museum brings together for the first time a rare group of 9,000-year-old stone masks, the oldest known to date, in a groundbreaking exhibition opening in March. Culminating nearly a decade of research, Face to Face: The Oldest Masks in the World showcases twelve extraordinary Neolithic masks, all originating in the same region in the ancient Land of Israel. 
On view from March 11 through September 13, 2014, the exhibition marks the first time that this group will be displayed together, in their birthplace, and the first time that the majority of them will be on public view. 
Originating from the Judean Hills and nearby Judean Desert, the twelve masks on view each share striking stylistic features. Large eye holes and gaping mouths create the expression of a human skull. Perforations on the periphery may have been used for wearing them, for the attachment of hair, which would have given the masks a more human appearance, or for suspending the masks from pillars or other constructed forms. 
Based on similarities with other cultic skulls of ancestors found in villages of the same period, the masks are believed to have represented the spirits of dead ancestors, used in religious and social ceremonies and in rites of healing and magic. By recreating human images for cultic purposes, the early agricultural societies of Neolithic times may have been expressing their increasing mastery of the natural world and reflecting their growing understanding of the nature of existence. 

Neolithic masks were carved out of limestone some 9,000 years ago by Stone Age people [Credit: Israel Antiquities Authority. Exhibited at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem] 

"It is extraordinary to be able to present side by side this rare group of ancient stone masks, all originating from the same region in the ancient Land of Israel," said James S. Snyder, Anne and Jerome Fisher Director of the Israel Museum. "That we have been able to assemble so many – first for intensive comparative research and then for display – is a tribute to the collections that were so cooperative in making these treasures available to us. And, given their origins in the region and the context provided by the adjacent setting of our Archaeology Wing, their display in our Museum in Jerusalem carries special meaning, underscoring their place in the unfolding history of religion and art." The current presentation is the result of more than a decade of research. For many years, the Israel Museum has held in its collections two Neolithic stone masks–one from a cave at Nahal Hemar in the Judean Desert and the other from Horvat Duma in the nearby Judean Hills. A chance discovery of photographs of similar masks led Dr. Debby Hershman, the Museum’s Curator of Prehistoric Cultures, to begin to research the subject. An Israel Museum Curator of prehistoric cultures and the Face to Face Exhibition shows diagrams of one of the rare 9,000-year-old Neolithic stone masks, all originating from the Judean Hills and Judean Desert, which are to go on public display for the first time at the Israeli Museum in Jerusalem on March 5, 2014. 

These masks are believed to have represented the spirits of dead ancestors [Credit: AFP/Ahmad Gharabli] 

Hershman enlisted the assistance of Professor Yuval Goren, an expert in comparative microarchaeology at Tel Aviv University, to explore the masks' geographical origins, as well as of the computerized archaeology laboratory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to conduct 3-D analysis that shed light on their comparative features and functions. The current display reflects the fruits of this in-depth research, bringing together twelve striking and enigmatic masks near the place of their origin and for the first time. Face to Face is curated by Dr. Debby Hershman, Ilse Katz Leibholz Curator of Prehistoric Cultures. The exhibition and its accompanying publication were made possible through the generosity of Judy and Michael Steinhardt, New York, and with additional support from the donors to the Museum’s 2014 Exhibition Fund: Claudia Davidoff, Cambridge, MA, in memory of Ruth and Leon Davidoff; Hanno D. Mott, New York; the Nash Family Foundation, New York; and Yad Hanadiv, the Rothschild Foundation in Israel. 


Source: The Israel Museum [March 09, 2014]
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In ottima conservazione

Settembre 2013 -Trovata una tomba presso Atene (Delta del Faliro, una zona non lontana dall'antico porto di Atene antica) - datata stratigraficamente a 2600 anni fa - in ottimo stato di conservazione. I resti appartennero ad un giovane uomo e la bara fu ricavata da un unico tronco scavato, che conserva ancora la corteccia e gli anelli d'accrescimento, grazie al terreno argilloso che ne ha preservato i dettagli. 
Sembra che l'utilizzazione come sarcofago sia in realtà stata una seconda utilizzazione, in quanto prima il manufatto fu utilizzato come barca. Studi più approfonditi ancora da effettuarsi.

2,600 year old wooden coffin 

found near Athens 


In September 2013, archaeologists excavating an Archaic Period cemetery discovered during the course of construction works in an area known as the Delta of Phaliro near Athens, stumbled upon a perfectly preserved wooden coffin.

The 2,600 year old burial of a yound man in a perfectly preserved wooden coffin found in Phaliro near Athens [Credit: Ta Nea] 

Measuring 1.61 metres in length and 0.77 metres in width, the coffin, which contains the remains of a young man, is made from a single hollowed out tree-trunk which still retains all its characteristics, including its bark and growth rings. 

Pottery fragments and general context indicate that the burial dates to between 510 and 480 BC. 
The excellent state of preservation is attributed to the presence of clay from a nearby stream. Although research has not yet taken place, it is thought that the tree trunk’s use as a coffin was secondary, having previously been used as a boat. 


Source: Ta Nea [March 06, 2013]

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ISET

Luxor - E' stata annunciata da archeologi europei la scoperta della statua in alabastro di Iset, figlia del Faraone Amenhotep III, che fu adorato come un dio dopo la propria morte. Si tratta della prima immagine di Iset senza i fratelli ed è di dimensioni maggiori del naturale (2 metri). Secondo il Ministro delle Antichità egiziano avrebbe fatto in origine parte di un gruppo scolpito di molto maggiori dimensioni (14 metri) posto di guardia davanti ad un tempio.

Statue of pharaonic princess found in Luxor 


  Egypt has announced that a team of European archaeologists have found a nearly 2-meter- (6 ½-foot-) tall alabaster statue of a pharaonic princess, dating from approximately 1350 B.C., outside the southern city of Luxor. 

The nearly 2-metre tall alabaster statue of Amenhotep III's daughter, dating from approximately 1350 B.C., discovered outside the southern city of Luxor [Credit: AP Photo/Egypt's Antiquities Ministry] 

Minister of Antiquities Mohammed Ibrahim said in in a statement Friday that the statue was once part of a larger statue that was nearly 14 meters (456 feet) tall and guarded the entrance to a temple. Ibrahim says the statue is of Iset, the daughter of Amenhotep III, and is the first found that depicts her without her siblings. 
Archaeologists uncovered the statue next to the funerary temple of Amenhotep III, who was worshipped as a deity after his death.

 Source: The Associated Press [March 07, 2014] 
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UN UOVO RITUALE, A SARDI

 L'antica capitale della Lidia - Sardi - fu favolosamente ricca per le miniere d'oro non lontane da essa: perciò fu sede della prima coniazione di monete (dapprima elettro e poi solo oro o solo argento) nell'Ovest. Fu la patria del mitico re lidio Creso. Recentmente ha restituito agli scavatori un enigmatico tesoretto composto da due vasi, con un contenuto che si presta a mille illazioni.

Il seppellimento era stato volontario ed era avvenuto in due fosse appositamente scavate nel terreno, risalente ad un edificio privato antico, che era in seguito stato distrutto da un grande terremoto (la Turchia è tutta molto sismica) nel 17 dopo Cristo.

Il tesoretto, probabilmente di natura rituale ed atta a benedire la 'domus' secondo una pratica nota e diffusa, risale all'epoca romana (I sec a.C.): il ritrovamento di depositi d'epoca greca o romana è piuttosto frequente, essendo invece le monete di epoca lidia antica molto rare.

In questo caso, si tratta di due piccoli vasi con coperchio,  contenenti una moneta, un gruppo di oggettini di metallo appuntiti ed un uovo, uno dei quali intatto a parte un buco accuratamente prodotto nel suo guscio già in epoca antica.

Una delle monete mostra su una faccia il ritratto di Nerone. L'atra faccia - curiosamente - è stata martellata via ed in seguito sostituita con il ritratto di un leone. Questo animale era il simbolo dei re lidi e della loro madre comune Cibele.

Sardis dig yields a ritual egg in a pot 


By any measure, the ancient city of Sardis—home of the fabled King Croesus, a name synonymous with gold and vast wealth, and the city where coinage was invented—is an archaeological wonder. 
An enigmatic ritual deposit, found intact beneath the floor of a first century Roman house in Sardis, a key archaeological site of the classic world in modern Turkey. 

The deposit, found inside two bowls, included a number of small implements, a unique coin and an egg. The hole in the egg was made in antiquity 

[Credit: Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/Harvard University] 

The ruins of Sardis, in what is now Turkey, have been a rich source of knowledge about classical antiquity from the 7th century B.C., when the city was the capital of Lydia, through later Greek and Roman occupations. 

Now, however, Sardis has given up another treasure in the form of two enigmatic ritual deposits, which are proving more difficult to fathom than the coins for which the city was famous. 

"The two deposits each consist of a small pot with a lid, a coin, a group of sharp metal implements and an egg, one of which is intact except for a hole carefully punched in it in antiquity," explains Will Bruce, a classics graduate student a the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has been digging at Sardis for the past six years. Bruce made the finds last summer.
The dig at Sardis is overseen by Nicholas Cahill, a UW-Madison professor of art history. Cahill has directed field research at Sardis for decades. 

Both ritual deposits, says Cahill, date from the Roman era of Sardis, about A.D. 70 or 80. An inverted bowl, covering another bowl with a ritual deposit, emerges from the earth at Sardis. 

The bowls contained a ritual deposit of a coin, small metal implements and an egg. The intact deposit mirrors similar discoveries made by Princeton University archaeologists 100 years ago, although those discoveries were not intact 

[Credit: Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/Harvard University] 

Bruce and his team were excavating below the floor of a first century room, built over the ruins of an earlier building, which had probably been destroyed in a massive earthquake in A.D. 17. Digging beneath the floor, Bruce and his colleagues first uncovered a thin-walled, nearly intact jug and, nearby, an assemblage of mostly unbroken pottery. "It looked like we were reaching a more intact deposit instead of fill," says Bruce. Within that assemblage, Bruce began to carefully uncover an inverted bowl, which turned out to be sitting on top of another bowl. The bowls, still filled with dirt, were carefully removed and immediately turned over to conservators who cleaned and dissembled them to find a set of small pointed instruments, a coin with a lion and portrait of Nero, and the intact egg. "The ritual offerings were dug into pits in the floor, after the room was constructed," says Cahill. "We know they were renovating the room periodically, because in another part of the space there was a dump of painted wall plaster buried under the floor, presumably in a renovation." 

A gold coin found at Sardis. Another coin, bearing the likeness of Emporer Nero, was also found [Credit: Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/Harvard University] 

"The meaning of these deposits is still quite open to interpretation," notes Cahill, "but burying votive deposits below ground or in a wall was a fairly common practice," perhaps as a ritual offering to protect the house. 

Roman literary sources suggest eggs were used in particular rituals. For the archaeologists, part of the intrigue is that similar groups of bowls, needles, coins and eggs were discovered at Sardis more than 100 years ago when the temple of Artemis was excavated by Princeton University archaeologists. 
"It is an exact parallel to what they found in the early 20th century," according to Cahill. The coin was also unique. Sardis is famous as the place where coinage was invented in the Western world, first using electrum, an alloy of silver and gold, and later of pure gold and silver. 
Nearby sources of gold made ancient Lydia, and King Croesus, fabulously wealthy. While these Lydian coins are very rare, coins and coin hoards from later Greek and Roman occupiers of Sardis are routinely found. But the coin found with the egg, says Cahill, seems to be special. Scholars digging at Sardis, the capital of ancient Lydia later occupied by Greeks and Romans. 

Sardis, in modern Turkey, was the fabled home of King Croesus, the richest man of his day, according to lore [Credit: Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/Harvard University] 

"The coin has a portrait of Nero on the front. 
The original reverse was hammered flat, and the image of a lion engraved in its place, which is very odd." Expert numismatists have never seen anything like it. "The image of the lion is important because it is emblematic of the Lydian kings and of their native mother goddess Cybele," Cahill says. The discovery is unusual, Cahill notes, because finding ritualistic objects intact and in place after thousands of years is no everyday discovery, even in a rich archaeological context such as Sardis. "Ancient ritual was important to people. It is most unusual to find such fragile things so perfectly preserved." 

Author: Terry Devitt 

Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison [March 04, 2014]

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Clima e (scomparsa di) Civiltà.

Il declino delle grandi città della Civiltà dell'Indo, 4100 anni fa circa,  fu determinato da un indebolimento del Monsoni estivi (oggi scientificamente provato: vedi articolo in Inglese), che portò un periodo di siccità della lunghezza di almeno 200 anni. L'articolo dell'Università di Cambridge è riportato sulla rivista Geology del 25 Febbraio. Se ce ne fosse mai stato bisogno ecco un altro studio scientifico che dimostra come sia stato il clima - non episodi bellici - a spazzare via città anche grandi, quali erano quelle dell'Indo (superavano gli 80 ettari!) e a fare scomparire i loro floridissimi commerci con il Medio Oriente, impedendo che la loro protoscrittura si trasformasse in scrittura.

Decline of Bronze Age 'megacities' linked to climate change

 Climate change may have contributed to the decline of a city-dwelling civilization in Pakistan and India 4,100 years ago, according to new research.

Excavated ruins of Mohenjo-daro [Credit: The Story of India] 

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have demonstrated that an abrupt weakening of the summer monsoon affected northwest India 4,100 years ago. The resulting drought coincided with the beginning of the decline of the metropolis-building Indus Civilisation, which spanned present-day Pakistan and India, suggesting that climate change could be why many of the major cities of the civilisation were abandoned. The research, reported online on 25 February, 2014, in the journal Geology, involved the collection of snail shells preserved in the sediments of an ancient lake bed. By analysing the oxygen isotopes in the shells, the scientists were able to tell how much rain fell in the lake where the snails lived thousands of years ago. The results shed light on a mystery surrounding why the major cities of the Indus Civilisation (also known as the Harappan Civilisation, after Harappa, one of the five cities) were abandoned. Climate change had been suggested as a possible reason for this transformation before but, until now, there has been no direct evidence for climate change in the region where Indus settlements were located. Moreover, the finding now links the decline of the Indus cities to a documented global scale climate event and its impact on the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age civilisations of Greece and Crete, and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, whose decline has previously been linked to abrupt climate change. "We think that we now have a really strong indication that a major climate event occurred in the area where a large number of Indus settlements were situated," said Professor David Hodell, from Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences. "Taken together with other evidence from Meghalaya in northeast India, Oman and the Arabian Sea, our results provide strong evidence for a widespread weakening of the Indian summer monsoon across large parts of India 4,100 years ago." Hodell together with University of Cambridge archaeologist Dr Cameron Petrie and Gates scholar Dr Yama Dixit collected Melanoides tuberculata snail shells from the sediments of the ancient lake Kotla Dahar in Haryana, India. "As today, the major source of water into the lake throughout the Holocene is likely to have been the summer monsoon," said Dixit. "But we have observed that there was an abrupt change, when the amount of evaporation from the lake exceeded the rainfall – indicative of a drought." At this time large parts of modern Pakistan and much of western India was home to South Asia's great Bronze Age urban society. As Petrie explained: "The major cities of the Indus civilisation flourished in the mid-late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BC. Large proportions of the population lived in villages, but many people also lived in 'megacities' that were 80 hectares or more in size – roughly the size of 100 football pitches. They engaged in elaborate crafts, extensive local trade and long-ranging trade with regions as far away as the modern-day Middle East. But, by the mid 2nd millennium BC, all of the great urban centres had dramatically reduced in size or been abandoned." Many possible causes have been suggested, including the claim that major glacier-fed rivers changed their course, dramatically affecting the water supply and the reliant agriculture. It has also been suggested that an increasing population level caused problems, there was invasion and conflict, or that climate change caused a drought that large cities could not withstand long-term. "We know that there was a clear shift away from large populations living in megacities," said Petrie. "But precisely what happened to the Indus Civilisation has remained a mystery. It is unlikely that there was a single cause, but a climate change event would have induced a whole host of knock-on effects. "We have lacked well-dated local climate data, as well as dates for when perennial water flowed and stopped in a number of now abandoned river channels, and an understanding of the spatial and temporal relationships between settlements and their environmental contexts. A lot of the archaeological debate has really been well-argued speculation." The new data, collected with funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, show a decreased summer monsoon rainfall at the same time that archaeological records and radiocarbon dates suggest the beginning of the Indus de-urbanisation. From 6,500 to 5,800 years ago, a deep fresh-water lake existed at Kotla Dahar. The deep lake transformed to a shallow lake after 5,800 years ago, indicating a weakening of the Indian summer monsoon. But an abrupt monsoon weakening occurred 4,100 years ago for 200 years and the lake became ephemeral after this time. Until now, the suggestion that climate change might have had an impact on the Indus Civilisation was based on data showing a lessening of the monsoon in Oman and the Arabian Sea, which are both located at a considerable distance from Indus Civilisation settlements and at least partly affected by different weather systems. Hodell and Dixit used isotope geochemical analysis of shells as a proxy for tracing the climate history of the region. Oxygen exists in two forms – the lighter 16O and a heavier 18O variant. When water evaporates from a closed lake (one that is fed by rainfall and rivers but has no outflow), molecules containing the lighter isotope evaporate at a faster rate than those containing the heavier isotopes; at times of drought, when the evaporation exceeds rainfall, there is a net increase in the ratio of 18O to 16O of the water. Organisms living in the lake record this ratio when they incorporate oxygen into the calcium carbonate (CaCO3) of their shells, and can therefore be used, in conjunction with radiocarbon dating, to reconstruct the climate of the region thousands of years ago. Speculating on the effect lessening rainfall would have had on the Indus Civilisation, Petrie said: "Archaeological records suggest they were masters of many trades. They used elaborate techniques to produce a range of extremely impressive craft products using materials like steatite, carnelian and gold, and this material was widely distributed within South Asia, but also internationally. Each city had substantial fortification walls, civic amenities, craft workshops and possibly also palaces. Houses were arranged on wide main streets and narrow alleyways, and many had their own wells and drainage systems. 
Water was clearly an integral part of urban planning, and was also essential for supporting the agricultural base. At around the time we see the evidence for climatic change, archaeologists have found evidence of previously maintained streets start to fill with rubbish, over time there is a reduced sophistication in the crafts they used, the script that had been used for several centuries disappears and there were changes in the location of settlements, suggesting some degree of demographic shift." "We estimate that the climate event lasted about 200 years before recovering to the previous conditions, which we still see today, and we believe that the civilisation somehow had to cope with this prolonged period of drought," said Hodell. The new research is part of a wider joint project led by the University of Cambridge and Banaras Hindu University in India, which has been funded by the British Council UK-India Education and Research Initiative to investigate the archaeology, river systems and climate of north-west India using a combination of archaeology and geoscience. The multidisciplinary project hopes to provide new understanding of the relationships between humans and their environment, and also involves researchers at Imperial College London, the University of Oxford, the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and the Uttar Pradesh State Archaeology Department. "It is essential to understand the link between human settlement, water resources and landscape in antiquity, and this research is an important step in that direction," explained Petrie. "We hope that this will hold lessons for us as we seek to find means of dealing with climate change in our own and future generations." 

Source: University of Cambridge [February 26, 2014]

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Climate caused the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean

PLoS ONE 8(8): e71004. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071004

Environmental Roots of the Late Bronze Age Crisis 

David Kaniewski et al.

The Late Bronze Age world of the Eastern Mediterranean, a rich linkage of Aegean, Egyptian, Syro-Palestinian, and Hittite civilizations, collapsed famously 3200 years ago and has remained one of the mysteries of the ancient world since the event’s retrieval began in the late 19th century AD/CE. Iconic Egyptian bas-reliefs and graphic hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts portray the proximate cause of the collapse as the invasions of the “Peoples-of-the-Sea” at the Nile Delta, the Turkish coast, and down into the heartlands of Syria and Palestine where armies clashed, famine-ravaged cities abandoned, and countrysides depopulated. Here we report palaeoclimate data from Cyprus for the Late Bronze Age crisis, alongside a radiocarbon-based chronology integrating both archaeological and palaeoclimate proxies, which reveal the effects of abrupt climate change-driven famine and causal linkage with the Sea People invasions in Cyprus and Syria. The statistical analysis of proximate and ultimate features of the sequential collapse reveals the relationships of climate-driven famine, sea-borne-invasion, region-wide warfare, and politico-economic collapse, in whose wake new societies and new ideologies were created. 

Mare colore del vino: Daltonismo? Sinestesia?

Il modo dei greci di 'vedere' i colori  ottiene un basso punteggio, nella scala di Berlin e Kay (3,5 su 7). Ma l'idea che fossero tutti daltonici è peregrina, naturalmente, anche se si è ipotizzato che Omero fosse cieco (ammesso che sia esistito e che sia stato l'unico autore delle opere attribuitegli). 

Eppure, quel 'mare colore del vino' di Omero lascia molto perplessi: il mare può essere scuro, come quasi neri sono certi vini. Può anche essere rosso, al tramonto. Ma forse l'accostamento con il vino è frutto di sinestesia: un modo particolare di 'vedere' che implica anche l'uso di altri sensi e sensazioni. Ulisse ed Achille lamentano la morte dei loro compagni, quando descrivono il mare di quel colore.

In questo caso, il mare potrebbe essere assimilato al vino per gli effetti ammaliatori ma traditori e pericolosi. Si tratterebbe - cioé - di un modo culturalmente differente d'intendere il colore: che include molte altre fini considerazioni e trascende il freddo materialismo fisico e distante di Berlin e Kay.

Were the ancient Greeks and Romans colour blind? 

 People in ancient cultures saw colour in an altogether different way from you and me. The most famously perplexing description of colour in the ancient Mediterranean world is the 'wine-dark sea' in The Iliad and The Odyssey. Have you ever looked at the sea and thought that it was the colour of claret? 

Painted wooden tablet found near Pitsa, Corinthia, c. 540-530 BC, unknown painter, National Archaeological Museum, Athens 

[Credit: WikiCommons] 

One of the first people to argue that the ancient Greeks had an under-developed colour sense was a 19th century British prime minister. As well as being a politician, William Gladstone was a classics scholar and in his spare time did a study of colour usage in early Greek literature. According to Mark Bradley, Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Nottingham, Gladstone observed, quite rightly, that colour operated in a very different way in antiquity from what we are used to today. 'We have a great deal of difficulty in translating Homer's colour terms into modern western languages,' he says. 
Gladstone noted that Homer actually uses very few colour terms, that black and white predominate, and that he uses the same colours to describe objects which look quite different. 'He believed that although Homer represented the origins of western literature and had very sophisticated ideas about characterisation and tragedy and plot and genre, that in fact his colour vocabulary was comparable to that of a contemporary infant of about three years old,' says Bradley.
 This established the idea that Homeric Greeks had defective colour vision and that perhaps were colour blind en masse. It's been a hotly debated scholarly topic for over a hundred years. Bradley says that one of the problems with what Gladstone and subsequent scholars did was to attempt to map ancient Greek colour terms onto how we understand colour. That is, the idea of a spectrum of abstract colours that we've inherited from Newton, where we can close our eyes and picture yellow and orange and red and blue. 'If you start to approach colour in a very different way and think of it as a different phenomenon, this really helps to understand what's going on with ancient uses of colour,' he says. According to Bradley, the Greeks viewed chroma (in Latin color) as essentially the visible outermost shell of an object. 
So a table wouldn't be brown, it was wood-coloured. 
A window would be glass-coloured. 
Hair would be hair-coloured, skin would be skin-coloured. 'They wouldn't talk in terms of the abstract colours that we are used to today.' The term 'synaesthetic' can be used to broadly describe the different kind of association that the ancient Greeks made between the five senses. 'If colours are the external manifestations of objects, then the perception of that colour can tap into other ideas such as smell, liquidity, saturation, touch, texture.' In what we would tend to think of as purely visual, the ancient Greeks brought other senses into play. 'In antiquity, in pre-modern societies, there is much more capacity for the way you describe the world to tap into several different senses simultaneously,' says Bradley. 
So what of Homer's wine-dark sea (oinops pontos)? Bradley describes this as antiquity's best-known colour problem and one that's given rise to various theories. 
One interpretation is that it describes the sea at sunset when it's a sort of fiery red. Another interpretation hold that it's an allusion to a now obsolete type of French wine called le petit bleu or le gros bleu, a blue wine, which, if it even existed in antiquity, might explain the metaphor. Bradley takes a different view. The important point for him is that Homer describes the sea as wine-dark following a tragedy. 
Odysseus mourns the death of his men after a shipwreck, when they’ve been swallowed up by the wine-dark sea. Achilles mourns the death of Patroclus looking out on the wine-dark sea. 'The idea is that the sea is dangerous, it's captivating, it's intoxicating, just like wine', he says. 'It's much more than just the colour, it's more about what the object-metaphor is encouraging us to think about'. 
Did the Romans as well as the ancient Greeks have this 'synaesthetic' way of understanding colour? An example Bradley cites that affirms this is the meaning contained in the word we simply translate as purple. 'In antiquity when something was porphura or purpura it would describe the dye which was extracted from sea-snails.' This dye was very expensive, it glistened and refracted light and was used for the garments of the rich and powerful. It also stank. 'One of the overpowering aspects of purple was it smelled really, really bad,' says Bradley. The fishy smell stayed in imperial robes and senatorial togas, and so the word purpura carries both visual and auditory meaning. 'It's an example of how actually what we would see as a straightforward visual colour purple is in fact in ancient eyes something that is inherently synaesthetic.' Contrary to Gladstone's view that the ancients having an undeveloped, infantile colour sense, this could be seen as quite sophisticated sensory perception, according to Bradley. 'In fact ancient colour was very subtle, very sophisticated, very versatile but it functioned along different parameters from how we think colour works.' 
It's an interesting example of the difficulties involved in trying to understand another culture. Bradley says that Gladstone's model was extended in the 1960s by the sociologists Berlin and Kay. 'They looked at cultures ancient and modern around the world, and counted the number of basic colours they had and therefore plotted them out in a sort of evolutionary scale.' Homeric Greece was stage 3.5 out of seven. Various African tribes were at stage one because they only had white, black and red in their vocabularies. England, Russian and Japan were right at the top of the scale. But perceptions have changed, says Bradley. 'Their approach now has been almost universally discredited, precisely because it doesn't take into account different ways of understanding colour.' 

Author: Amanda Smith | 

Source: ABC Radio National [February 19, 2014]

Read more at: http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.it/2014/02/were-ancient-greeks-and-romans-colour.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheArchaeologyNewsNetwork+(The+Archaeology+News+Network)#.Uw9d4ovomuB
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Arte Preistorica nelle Highlands

E' stata trovata - in una zona archeologicamente molto prolifica delle Highlands - una pietra "decorata" con coppelle e cerchi su ambo i lati (un'eventualità piuttosto rara). La datazione presunta è di circa 4-5000 anni fa (Neolitico/Bronzo). I motivi della 'decorazione' non sono certi: potrebbe trattarsi di un po' di tutto, da pietre di confine, a pietre rituali,  fino anche alle 'mappe stellari'. 

Ma gli archeologi Inglesi non si scompongono. Potrebbero anche essere creazioni di antichi pastori, a tempo perso: 'doodlings'.

Annuncio ai naviganti: vorrei segnalare ai miei amici ciarlatani (#armatabrancaleoneshardariana) quanto siano oggi consunte e 'poco leggibili'  le incisioni antiche, che - appena fatte - dovevano invece essere nette e molto più chiare. Teniatene quindi conto, quando produrrete i vostri prossimi lavori!

Prehistoric rock art 

found in Scottish Highlands 




A rare example of prehistoric rock art has been uncovered in the Highlands. Archaeologists made the discovery while moving a boulder decorated with ancient cup and ring marks to a new location in Ross-shire. 

The rock decorated with cup and ring marks [Credit: BBC] 

When they turned the stone over they found the same impressions on the other side of the rock. It is one of only a few decorated stones of its kind. John Wombell, of North of Scotland Archaeological Society (NOSAS), said: "This is an amazing discovery." Susan Kruse, of Archaeology for Communities in the Highlands (ARCH), first discovered the stone at Heights of Fodderty several years ago when out walking. The second set of cup and ring marks were uncovered recently when archaeologists were moving the stone to a new site at nearby Heights of Brae Neil Gunn Viewpoint. 
From the Neolithic or Bronze Age, the art was created between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago. Archaeologists believe the markings may have been made for a number of reasons. 

The newly-discovered markings on the opposite side of the stone [Credit: BBC] 

These include for 

- rituals, 
- as territorial markers 
- or mapping the stars. 

They could even be the "doodlings" of bored, ancient shepherds. Ms Kruse said: "Finding cup and ring decoration on the opposite side has raised a number of tantalising questions. Was the decoration meant to be viewed from both sides or was one decorated side deliberately placed face down? Or was the stone carved at different times?" Mr Wombell, who is leading a project to record rock art in the Highlands and Grampian, said it was an important discovery. He said: "Although some stones are decorated on different faces, I only know of a few other stones with decoration on opposite sides." 

John Wombell and Susan Kruse with the stone at its new location [Credit: BBC] 

The archaeologist said most boulders with markings were too heavy to turn over to find out if they were decorated on the reverse side. The stone in the new discovery was moved by crofters about 200 years ago when they used it for building a dyke. There is a cluster of rock art in the local area. 
A Neolithic chambered burial cairn and round houses dating to the Bronze and Iron Ages have also been found. 
Another major discovery in the area was the Heights of Brae hoard, the largest surviving late Bronze Age gold find in Scotland. 
A farmer uncovered the jewellery while ploughing a field in the 1960s. 

Author: Steven McKenzie  

Source: BBC News Website [February 27, 2014]
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