Object Biography Research Articles

Les ceintures de wampum en Amérique

Based on the biography of objects, this study seeks to reconstruct the trajectories of European beads in North America and to find out how they were used in producing value and, ultimately, in shaping group identity. This study focuses, first, on the appropriation of French glass and shell beads by Amerindian groups during the colonial period to make body ornamentation and belts. Secondly, it analyses their reappropriation by archaeologists and anthropologists during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for scientific inquiry and museum exhibits. Thirdly, it examines the recent repatriation of these objects by native American groups in Canada and the United States. The study emphasizes the use of the body and of the museum as sites of exhibition and of cultural regeneration.

Sergei Eisenstein: A Biography by Oksana s> Bulgakowa (review)

550 SEER, 8 i, 3, 2003 Bulgakowa,Oksana. Sergei Eisenstein. A Biography. Translatedby Anne Dwyer. Potemkin Press, Berlin and San Francisco, CA, 200 I. Xi + 290 pp. Illustrations. Chronology. Bibliography. Notes. Index. $25.00 (paperback). MORE than fiftyyears afterhis death, Sergei Eisenstein (i 898- I948) remains Russia'smost famousfilmdirector.Although hisfilmographyis short(onlysix completed films),the bibliographyof workswrittenby and about him and his movies is long indeed. Therefore Oksana Bulgakowa'snew biography, first published in German in Berlin to honour Eisenstein's centenary, was approachedwith a degree of scepticismby this reader.What could she tell us about Eisensteinthatwe do not alreadyknow from his own autobiographyor from reminiscences by Ivor Montagu, Vladimir Nizhnyi, Marie Seton, and Viktor Shklovskii?Or from books and articles by scholars and critics like David Bordwell,Ian Christie,RostislavJurenev,Jay Leyda,HerbertMarshall, Leon Moussinac, RichardTaylor,Neia Zorkaiaand many, many others? Through meticulous archivalexcavation and a thorough knowledge of the voluminous secondary material, Bulgakowa has written the definitive biography of the mercurial director. It differs from previous works both in intention and execution. Although Bulgakowa has founded her scholarly reputationon hertheoreticallysophisticatedanddense analysesof Eisenstein's filmsand filmtheory,shehas writtena rigorouslytraditionalbiography.Some may argue that this lucid, balanced, and objective biography is tootraditional especiallygiven that its subjectis a greatavant-gardeartistwho had a famously complicated life. But the straightforwardchronological form is necessaryto penetratethe layersof myth, half-truth,rumour,and obfuscationl that obscured Sergei Eisensteinduringhis lifetime as well as in the more than half centurysince his death. The Eisenstein that emerges in these pages is not much differentfrom the one we haveknown:a brilliant,emotionallyinsecure,narcissistic'Renaissance man' who was as much intellectualas artist.There are, however, many new nuances that arise from Bulgakowa'sextensive research.Particularlyinteresting is to learn how truly accidental the belated discovery of Eisenstein's artistictalent was. Despite his protestationsto the contrary,he owed much to the influence of his maligned mother, an ambitious artistic dilettante who encouraged him and introducedhim to members of Petrograd'sculturalelite when he was in his teens. It is even more interestingto learn how profoundly apoliticalhe was. This greatestof Russianrevolutionarydirectorswas completely uninterestedin the historical drama of his times, not only the 'Great War' (until he was inconivenientlydrafted),but also the revolutions and civil war that followed. Eisenstein'spolitical disengagement lasted throughout the I920s. Bulgakowa convincinglydemonstratesthat his legendaryworksfrom thisperiod Strike, Battleship Potemkin, and October--drew their inspirationnot from any sense of commitment to the aims of the revolution but from his single-minded passion for artistic experimentation. As his contemporary critics charged, Eisenstein really was a 'formalist' in every sense of the term. Only later, during the 1930s, did Eisenstein become genuinely interested in NMarxism.This interest resulted, however, from his restless intellect, certainly REVIEWS 55I not from a sense of social justice. Although he was little concerned with material possessions, he was not above jockeying for favours, especially with regardto living space and holiday trips.And while he was concerned with the impactof artisticorthodoxyand censorshipon hisown work,he neverevinced any particularempathy for those in the Soviet culturalcommunity who were persecuted or arrestedduring the purges. This is not to say that Bulgakowa paints a negative or revisionistportraitof the director;his many accommodations with the Stalinist regime always seem more naive than conniving. Art was all that matteredto him. Also fascinating is Bulgakowa's account of Eisenstein's peregrinations through Europe, the US, and Mexico, from I929 to I932. In the company of his close friend and co-director Grigorii Aleksandrov and his cameraman Eduard Tisse, and an ever-changing cast of admirers and hangers-on, Eisenstein managed to get half-way round the world without any money, banking on his childlike charm and celebrity, as much as his talent. It is arguable that the debacle in Mexico, his encounter with the mercenary and puritanical Upton Sinclair, and the desecration of QuevivaMexico!shocked and disappointedhim as much as anythingin his Soviet experience. This isnot to deny thatthe 'shelving'of IvantheTerrible, part 2, was a terrible blow, one that certainlyhastened his death at the age of fiftyfrom a massive heart attack.What Bulgakowa'sstory highlights is that Eisenstein truly died alone in 1948, spirituallyas well as physically.Unlike other oppressedSoviet artistsof his cohort, he had admirers...

Objects with Attitude: Biographical Facts and Fallacies in the Study of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Warrior Graves

Aegean prehistory still has to deal with the legacy of ‘Homeric archaeology’. One of these legacies is the ‘warrior grave’, or practice of burying individuals (men?) with weapons which we find both in the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age in the Aegean. This article suggests that the differences between the ‘weapon burial rituals’ in these two periods can tell us much about the kind of social and cultural changes that took place across the Bronze Age/Iron Age ‘divide’ of c. 1100 BC. In neither period, however, can items deposited in ‘warrior graves’ be seen as straightforward biographical facts that tell us what the individual did and suffered in life. Rather, the pattern of grave goods should be seen as a metaphor for a particular kind of identity and ideal. It is only in the Early Iron Age that this identity begins to correspond to the concept of the ‘hero’ as described in the Iliad. One means towards our better understanding of this new identity is to follow up work in anthropology on the biography of objects. It is argued that the ‘life cycle’ of ‘entangled objects’, a cycle which ends in deposition in a grave, provides us with indispensable clues about the nature of new social identities in Early Iron Age Greece.

Beyond the Grave: Biographies from Early Greece

Object biography is an analytical technique that traces the changing social meanings an object accumulates during its lifetime. This study of two Late Geometric pots from Argos and Thebes employs biographical methods to address the role played by material goods in contemporary social rituals. The decoration and burial context of both vessels attest discrete stages in the construction of the social identity of the deceased. A giant pyxis from Argos can be connected with the social maturation of the woman buried within it. A figured pithos from Thebes represents what may be an important festival of Apollo and can similarly be connected with the interred child. The biographical data of these objects and their ultimate owners necessitate reconstructing the social setting of goods within complex communities, including the often-marginalized young and aging adult segments of the population. By focusing on the intersections of biographies in the grave, these narratives emphasize the centrality of objects in shaping identity and social order in early Greece.

Memória familiar nos objetos biográficos e nas obras literárias

Neste artigo pretende-se refletir sobre a leitura e releitura de objetos biográficos, relíquias de família e as histórias que estes objetos trazem em forma de lembrança, valores repassados de uma geração à outra. Busca-se ainda explorar a presença desses objetos e memórias, em obras literárias que favoreçam esta releitura com alunos do ensino fundamental.

Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People's Lives. By Janet Hoskins. New York: Routledge, 1998. $70.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People's Lives. By Janet Hoskins. New York: Routledge, 1998. $70.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

Non‐portable stone artefacts and contexts of meaning: The tale of Grey Wether (www.museums.ncl.ac.uk/Avebury/stone4.htm)

It is easy to appreciate that portable artefacts can carry lengthy biographies. Those biographies can encapsulate many meanings which will have varied from production, to use, to deposition, with significance changing according to time, place and ownership. However, the cultural biography of static objects, particularly if they are essentially natural rather than culturally modified, may seem more prescribed. It is our contention that this is often far from the case, as the social lives of the stones making up the megalithic settings at Avebury, Wiltshire, vividly demonstrate.

The cultural biography of objects

(1999). The cultural biography of objects. World Archaeology: Vol. 31, The Cultural Biography of Objects, pp. 169-178.

Free and bound fatty acid oxidation products in archaeological ceramic vessels

While oxidation products of unsaturated fatty acids, for example dicarboxylic acids (hereafter diacids), must form during the use of unglazed ceramic vessels for the processing of animal and plant products, such components have never been observed during studies of absorbed lipids. Their absence from the extractable lipid fraction is presumed to be the result of their loss from potsherds through groundwater leaching. Lipid oxidation products including short-chain dicarboxylic acids, ω-hydroxy acids and longer-chain hydroxy and dihydroxy acids have now been observed as components probably covalently bound into solvent insoluble residues of potsherds recovered from waterlogged deposits. These components were only revealed following alkaline treatment of the insoluble residues. A similar mixture of diacids was observed in high abundance in the free lipid fraction of vessels recovered from an exceptionally arid deposit where groundwater leaching would never have occurred. These results confirm the formation of oxidation and probable polymerization products of unsaturated fatty acids during vessel use and burial.

Leo Eloesser, MD: Eulogy for a Free Spirit

To write an objective biography of one of your dear friends would not be easy. Harris Shumacker makes it clear in his title that he is not attempting that. Indeed, he is writing a eulogy for the independent life of a remarkably eclectic, intelligent man, Dr Leo Eloesser, who was a pioneer thoracic surgeon, world traveler and adventurer, chamber music devotee, and dedicated champion of the poor people of all countries. This book tells the story of the son of a successful German immigrant businessman who was prominent in the intellectual and musical life of San Francisco in the mid-19th century. Leo Eloesser received strong financial support from his father, enabling him to seek his education in medicine abroad, interspersed with frequent travels to Mexico, Russia, Hungary, and Italy. His capacity to learn and speak languages was almost incredible. Everywhere he went he learned everything he could about each person

Sean O'Casey: A Biography and an Appraisal

IT MUST HAVE BEEN very refreshing for Dublin when Dr. David Krause arrived from Brown University with a scholarly brief to investigate, not as might have been expected—Yeats or Joyce—but Sean O'Casey. One might perhaps imagine that a formal biography would be largely repetitious for one whose life has been so coherently described in six stout volumes of his own. But this is not the case, as Dr. Krause's excellent book clearly shows. The Irish capital has still got many caches of information-reliable and unreliable-about all her literary progeny, and it is surprising that the O'Casey data has never been adequately collected before. Apart from the surviving members of the Abbey Company that first performed his work, there are still to be found in the cit—-mainly in Labour circles—a number of cronies and companions-in-strikes who appear as characters in the earlier plays, sometimes without even a change of name. And all of these have plenty to say about their old friend. Besides, what greater need can there be for a good objective biography than when one has already been entertained and bemused by the subject's own vigorous conception of himself?