Chronological Evidence Research Articles

Three Centuries of Hellenistic Terracottas the Second Century B.C.

A S we have seen in the previous articles of this series, Athens during the 3rd century B.C. produced an abundance of figurines of which the Agora excavations obtained a fair, if fragmentary, sampling. For the coroplastic work of the 2nd century, we have not discovered so much material nor so much chronological evidence. This period was evidently not very productive. The groups of terracottas which we have studied above (pp. 276-292), the Komos Cistern and Group C, moreover, did not end neatly with the end of the 3rd preChristian century, but they evidently included a certain amount that must be dated within the next half-century. The line of demarcation is vague between work of the latest 3rd century and of the earlier 2nd century. Similarly, at the other end, the natural limit of chronological grouping falls not at 100 B.C. but at 86 B.C. when the sack of Athens by Sulla filled wells and cisterns with destruction debris. This discussion is therefore devoted to the period ca. 200-86 B.C. and will be divided into three sections.

Observations on the Technique of Production of Szeletian Flint Implements

It is widely accepted by specialists in the Old Stone Age that the Szeletian culture in Hungary developed directly from the local Mousterian. Apart from the chronological evidence, this theory is based on a few bifacially worked Mousterian implements. It is not without interest to investigate this supposed process of evolution also from the point of view of the technique of implement-making. The problem is to decide whether the retouch of the Early Szeletian implements found in the Bükk Mountains in Hungary could have evolved from the Mousterian retouch, which comes down to the question of their mutual relationship considered from the point of view of process of manufacture. We approached this problem along two lines: (1) we conducted laboratory experiments to clear up certain technological problems of stone implement flaking; and (2) we measured the angle between the retouch and the flat bulbar face of the implements from finds of various Palaeolithic cultures in Hungary.In the course of our experiments we constructed a device that precisely measured the force and the direction of the blow applied in flaking. This proved that a blow striking a tabular flint with parallel faces or a thick glass plate vertically, produces a conic crack with included angle of about 100° to 110°. With flint-like materials, used in the making of Old Stone Age implements, this cone can be considered as more or less constant. Our experiments confirmed Leakey's observation according to which the cone produced when striking the edge of a piece of flint is incomplete, i.e., part of it may be supposed to continue beyond the flake. We set ourselves the task of establishing the relationship between the angle of the fracture of the real cone resulting from the blow administered and the angle of the direction of the blow.

A Fragment of a Gold Appliqué from Ziwiye and Some Remarks on the Artistic Traditions of Armenia and Iran during the Early First Millennium B. C.

Previous articleNext article No AccessOriental Institute Museum Notes, No. 11A Fragment of a Gold Appliqué from Ziwiye and Some Remarks on the Artistic Traditions of Armenia and Iran during the Early First Millennium B. C.Helene J. KantorHelene J. Kantor Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 19, Number 1Jan., 1960 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/371552 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1960 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Sheler Amelirad, Eghbal Azizi Kani Koter, Iron Age Cemetery From Iranian Kurdistan, Iran 59, no.11 (Jul 2019): 57–76.https://doi.org/10.1080/05786967.2019.1633240Sheler Amelirad A STUDY OF IVORY AND BONE PLAQUES FROM ZIWIYE IN THE SANANDAJ MUSEUM, Iraq 81 (Oct 2019): 11–21.https://doi.org/10.1017/irq.2019.6R. D. Barnett Urartu, (Aug 1982): 314–371.https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521224963.009John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond The Cambridge Ancient History, 1 (Mar 2008).https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521234474

A Reconstructed Panel by Fra Angelico and Some New Evidence for the Chronology of His Work

A Reconstructed Panel by Fra Angelico and Some New Evidence for the Chronology of His Work

St. Spyridon: The Earlier Frescoes

The discovery of a frescoed wall representing an earlier period of the church of St. Spyridon, and the chronological evidence for it, have already been noted.' The photographs on the following pages (Figs. 2-8) give the complete record of the newly discovered paintings, and the plan (Fig. 1) illustrates the relationship of the two buildings. The upper part of the wall was broken away, also the back of the apse. The scheme of decoration as preserved is as follows: in the upper register, to left and

The Stoa Basileios

The American excavations in the agora at Athens, while solving many problems, have left others unsolved, and have even raised unsuspected difficulties. One of the most important points of dispute is the identification of the Stoa Basileios. H. A. Thompson's theory that the winged building at the north end of the west side was both the Basileios and the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios seems to me to be the most convincing solution, though, as he says, the present state of knowledge does not leave the problem finally settled. Even if one sets aside the complicated topographical, chronological and sculptural evidence, the balance of which probably favours Thompson, certain recent rival claimants to the title Stoa Basileios are open to grave doubts on the ground that they were not stoas in the normal classical sense of the word.

Querns

When excavating in the hill-fort of Cissbury a few years ago the writer found nothing by which to date a certain group of pits except a piece of a revolving handmill (FIG. 23). Even this could not supply the necessary chronological evidence, because the developmental history of the quern or hand-mill had not yet been worked out in sufficient detail to enable one to say that a certain form is characteristic of a certain period. Being thus impressed with the need for such a study the writer endeavoured to collect data, but was met at the outset with the difticulty that of all the hand-mills preserved in our Museums extremely few have been dated at all closely by associated finds of pottery—at least so far as records go—while it seems to be exceptional even for modern excavators to note such associations when querns are found. After all, it is, as Pitt Rivers said, the common objects that are often more important than the rare ones, just because they are common, and it is surely one of the prime objects of excavation to obtain data for the study of the evolution, not only of pottery, but of all common objects.

Research Items

Jaina Temples, Two Jaina temples in the village of Tiruparuttikunram on the outskirts of Conjeevaram in the Deccan, described and fully illustrated in a monograph by T. N. Ramachandran (Bull. Madras Government Museum, N. S., l,pt. 3), the larger, early Chola with a mandapa in Vijayanagara style, the smaller in late Pallava style, supply an epitome of the main features of the chronological development of Dravidian temple architecture. Jainism, which was the most powerful religion in the south from very early times, is held to be the result of a partial attempt to Aryanise the Dravidian races. Conjeevaram has been identified with some certainty as Jina-Kanchi, where a regular colony of Jains seems to have settled early. The larger Jaina temple here studied is the biggest in the taluk, and nowhere else is the style found in so concise and well-balanced a form. The chronological evidence afforded by style is supported by inscriptions, in which the larger temple is peculiarly rich. The ceilings and veranda are adorned with paintings illustrating Jaina mythology. The smaller temple, and the older, is dedicated to Chandraprabha, the eighth tirthankara, and the larger to Vard-hamana, the twenty-fourth tirthankara. Local tradition says that the two owe their existence to a Pallava king and that he built them at the instance of two Jaina teachers, who lived in the village. While the first part of the tradition is in accordance with the style of architecture, the latter part is evidently incorrect, as an inscription in the temple shows that the two teachers were not contemporaneous with the Pallavas, but flourished six centuries after them, that is, in the fourteenth century.