Thravsma. Contextualising the Intentional Destruction of Objects in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus

Edited by Kate Harrell & Jan Driessen

City: Louvain

Year: 2015

Publisher: UCL Presses Universitaires de Louvain

Series: AEGIS, Actes de Colloques 09

Description: Paperback, 196 p., 117 b/w & colour figures, plates, 29,3 x 20,8 cm

Abstract

How does intentionally inflicting damage to material objects mediate the human experience in the prehistoric eastern Mediterranean? For all of the diversity in cultural practice in the civilisations of the Greek mainland and Aegean islands, Crete, Cyprus and the eastern coast of Italy between 4000-750 BC, archaeologists consider the custom of ritually killing objects as a normative, if inconsistent practice. Yet as artefacts that are alike only in that they have been disarticulated, intentionally destroyed objects defy easy characterization. Such pieces frequently stand outside of clearly defined patterns. This volume is an initial step in addressing a gap in the scholarship by aiming to deconstruct and contextualize the practice of intentional fragmentation. The case studies in this volume present a diverse range of evidence, including pottery, lithics, metals, jewellery, figurines, buildings and human remains, in an exploration of the wide spectrum of meanings behind material destruction.

Contents

Jan Driessen, Fragmented souvenirs: Introduction to the volume [15-19]

Kate Harrell, The Social Life of Θραύσματα [21-24] PDF

John Chapman, Bits and pieces: Fragmentation in Aegean Bronze Age context [25-47]

Stratos Nanoglou, Situated intentions: Providing a framework for the destruction of objects in Aegean prehistory [49-59] PDF

Carl Knappett, The rough and the smooth: Care and carelessness in the forgetting of buildings [61-73]

Maria Pantelidou Gofa, Damaged Pottery, Damaged Skulls at the Tsepi, Marathon Cemetery [75-79]

Colin Renfrew, Evidence for ritual breakage in the Cycladic Early Bronze Age: The Special Deposit South at Kavos on Keros [81-98]

Mario Denti, Des biens de prestige grecs intentionnellement fragmentés dans un contexte indigène de la Méditerranée occidentale au VIIe siècle av. J.-C. [99-116]

Jennifer M. Webb & David Frankel, Coincident biographies: Bent and broken blades in Bronze Age Cyprus [117-142]

Kate Harrell, Piece Out: Comparing the Intentional Destruction of Swords in the Early Iron Age and the Mycenae Shaft Graves [143-153] PDF

Michael J. Boyd, Destruction and other material acts of transformation in Mycenaean funerary practice [155-165]

Giorgos Vavouranakis & Chryssi Bourbou, Breaking Up the Past: Patterns of Fragmentation in Early and Middle Bronze Age Tholos Tomb Contexts in Crete [167-196] PDF