Seals and sealing in the ancient world : case studies from the Near East, Egypt, the Aegean, and South Asia
Title:
Seals and sealing in the ancient world : case studies from the Near East, Egypt, the Aegean, and South Asia
Author:
Ameri, Marta, 1973- editor.
ISBN:
9781107194588
Physical Description:
xxix, 468 pages : illustrations ; 27 cm
Contents:
Preface / Small windows, wide views / The Ancient Near East and Cyprus. Administrative role of seal imagery in the early Bronze Age: Mesopotamian and Iranian traders on the plateau / Slave labor: Uruk cylinder-seal imagery and early writing / The first female bureaucrats: gender and glyptic in third-millennium northern Mesopotamia / Rematerializing the early dynastic banquet seal / Sealing practices in the Akkadian period / Authenticity, seal recarving, and authority in the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean / Indus seals and glyptic studies: an overview / Letting the pictures speak: an image-based approach to the mythological and narrative imagery of the Harappan world / Understanding Indus seal-carving traditions: a stylistic and metric approach / Operational sequences and stamp seals: a preliminary report on an experimental and microtopographic framework for identifying groups of seal carvers in the Indus civilization / Seals and sealing technology in the Dilmun culture: the post-Harappan life of the Indus Valley sealing tradition / Egypt. The evolution of ancient Egyptian seals and sealing systems / Early dynastic sealing practices as a reflection of state formation in Egypt / Sealings and seals from pyramid age Egypt / The administrative use of scarabs during the Middle Kingdom / Middle and New Kingdom sealing practice in Egypt and Nubia: a comparison / Aegean. Introductory remarks, Aegean / Aegean Bronze Age seal stones and finger rings: chronology and functions / An Aegean seal in Greek hands? : Thoughts on the perception of Aegean seals in the Iron Age / Cryptic glyptic: multivalency in Minoan glyptic imagery / The magic and the mundane: the function of "talismanic-class" stones in Minoan Crete
Abstract:
Studies of seals and sealing practices have traditionally investigated aspects of social, political, economic, and ideological systems in ancient societies throughout the Old World. Previously, scholarship has focused on description and documentation, chronology and dynastic histories, administrative function, iconography, and style. More recent studies have emphasized context, production and use, and increasingly, identity, gender, and the social lives of seals, their users, and the artisans who produced them. Using several methodological and theoretical perspectives, this volume presents up-to-date research on seals that is comparative in scope and focus. The cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach advances our understanding of the significance of an important class of material culture of the ancient world. The volume will serve as an essential resource for scholars, students, and others interested in glyptic studies, seal production and use, and sealing practices in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Ancient South Asia and the Aegean during the 4th-2nd Millennia BCE.
Bibliographical References:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Field 805:
npmlib 10801133 CD5204 S43 ysh