Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T13:38:35.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hands Up for the Individual! The Role of Attribution Studies in Aegean Prehistory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

Christine Morris
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Attribution studies, the identification of the work of individual artists, are a familiar aspect of art history, and have also been used to isolate individuals and workshops of the Aegean Bronze Age. This paper examines the methodological issues involved and argues that attribution is feasible for prehistoric material, albeit in only a limited way in comparison, for example, with Classical vase painting. It is further suggested that attribution should be viewed not as an isolated aesthetic pursuit, but be approached contextually, as an integral part of artefact analysis. In this way attribution studies can contribute towards the better understanding of the formation and development of style, the definition of closely contemporary groups of material, and the spatial distribution (and its significance) of the products of individuals. Two case studies are presented to illustrate this approach: Mycenaean pictorial pottery of the fourteenth-thirteenth centuries BC, and a contrasting group of material, clay figurines from the Minoan peak sanctuary of Atsipadhes.

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , April 1993 , pp. 41 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beard, M., 1991. Adopting an approach II, in Looking at Greek Vases, eds. Rasmussen, T. & Spivey, N.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 12–35.Google Scholar
Beazley, J.D., 1922. Citharoed us. Journal of Hellenic Studies 42, 70–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beazley, J.D., 1963. Attic Red-figure Vase-painters. 2nd ed.Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Benson, J.L., 1961. Observations on Mycenaean vase painters. American Journal of Archaeology 65, 337–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berenson, B., [1902]. Rudiments of connoisseurship (a fragment), in The Study and Criticism of Italian Art, second series, ed. Berenson, B.. London: George Bell, 111–48.Google Scholar
Berenson, B., 1932. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford: Phaidon Press.Google Scholar
Berenson, B., 1948. Aesthetics and History. New York (NY): Pantheon.Google Scholar
Betancourt, P.P., 1985. The History ofMinoan Pottery. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Betts, J.H., 1981. The jasper Lion' Master: some principles of establishing LM/LH workshops and artists, in Studien zur minoischen und helladischen Glyptik. Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel, Beiheft 1, ed. Niemeier, W.-D.. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1–16.Google Scholar
Broodbank, C., 1992. The spirit is willing. Review of C. Renfrew, The Cycladic Spirit. Antiquity 66, 542–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cahen, D. & Karlin, C., 1980. Les artisans de la préhistoire. La Recherche 116, 1258–68.Google Scholar
Cahen, D., Keeley, L.H. & van Noten, F., 1979. Stone tools, tool-kits and human behaviour in prehistory. Current Anthropology 20, 661–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cherry, J.F. 1986. Polities and palaces: some problems in Minoan state formation, in Peer Polity Interaction, eds. Renfrew, C. & Cherry, J.F.. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 19–45.Google Scholar
Cherry, J.F., 1992. Beazley in the Bronze Age? Reflections on attribution studies in Aegean prehistory, in EIKON. Aegean Bronze Age Iconography: Shaping a Methodology (Aegaeum 8), eds. Laffineur, R. & Crowley, J.L.. Liège: Université de Liège, 123–44.Google Scholar
Courbin, P., 1989. What is Archaeology? London & Chicago (IL): Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Crouwel, J.H. & Morris, C.E., 1985. Mycenaean pictorial pottery from Tell Atchana (Alalakh). Annual of the British School at Athens 80, 85–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crouwel, J.H. & Morris, C.E., 1991. Mycenaean pictorial pottery from early British excavations at Enkomi—in Brussels, Dublin, Oxford, and Reading. Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, 141–56.Google Scholar
Eisner, J., 1990. Significant details: systems, certainties and the art-historian as detective. Review of D.C. Kurtz, Greek vases: lectures by J.D. Beazley, and of J.C. Boardman, Athenian red figure vases, the classical period: a handbook. Antiquity 64, 950–2.Google Scholar
Friedlander, M.J., 1943. On Art and Connoisseurship. London: Bruno Cassirer.Google Scholar
Furumark, A., 1972. Mycenaean Pottery I: Analysis and Classification. (First published in 1941). Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen.Google Scholar
Getz-Preziosi, P., 1987. Sculptors of the Cyclades: Individual and Tradition in the Third Millennium BC. Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Gill, D.W.J., 1986. Attic Black-glazed Pottery in the Fifth Century BC: Workshops and Export. Unpublished D. Phil, dissertation, University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Gill, D.W.J. & Chippindale, C., in press (1993). Material and intellectual consequences of esteem for Cycladic figures. American Journal of Archaeology.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ginzburg, C., 1990. Clues: roots of an evidential paradigm, in Myths, Emblems, Clues. London: Hutchinson Radius, 96–125.Google Scholar
Hill, J.N., 1977. Individual variability in ceramics and the study of prehistoric social organization, in The Individualin Prehistory, eds. Hill, J.N. & Gunn, J.. London: Academic Press, 55–108.Google Scholar
Hill, J.N. & Gunn, J. (eds.), 1977. The Individual in Prehistory: Studies of Variability in Style in Prehistoric Technologies. New York (NY): Academic Press.Google Scholar
Immerwahr, S.A., 1956. The Protome painter and some contemporaries. American Journal of Archaeology 60, 137–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karageorghis, V., 1956. Two Mycenaean bull kraters in the G.G. Pierides collection, Cyprus. American Journal of Archaeology 60, 143–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karageorghis, V., 1960. Supplementary notes on the Mycenaean vases from the Swedish tombs at Enkomi. Opuscula Atheniensa 3, 135–53.Google Scholar
Karageorghis, V., 1983. Two Mycenaean amphoroid kraters from Cyprus. Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, 163–7.Google Scholar
Kurtz, D.C., 1983. ‘Gorgos’ cup: an essay in connoisseurship. Journal of Hellenic Studies 103, 68–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurtz, D.C., 1985. Beazley and the connoisseurship of Greek vases, in Greek Vases in the J. Paul Getty Museum II. (Occasional Papers on Antiquities 3.) Malibu (CA): Paul Getty Museum, 237–50.Google Scholar
Kurtz, D.C. & Beazley, J., 1983. The Berlin Painter. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Maiuri, A., 1923. Jalysos: Scavi della missione archeologica Italiana a Rodi. Annuario dell Scuola Archeologica di Atene Vl-VU, 83–341.Google Scholar
Marion, J.L., 1989. Sotheby's Preview October/November 1989. London.Google Scholar
Marriott, A., 1986. Maria: The Potter of San Ilefonso. (1st impression 1948). Norman (OK): University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Morelli, G., 1892–1893. Italian Painters: Critical Studies of their Works, vols. I—II. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Morris, C.E., 1989. The Mycenaean Amphoroid Krater: A Study in Form, Design and Function. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London.Google Scholar
Mountjoy, P.-A., 1984. The Marine Style pottery of LMIB/LHIIA: towards acoryus. Annual of the British School at Athens 79, 161–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muller, J., 1977. Individual variability in art styles, in The Individualin Prehistory, eds. Hill, J.N. & Gunn, J.. London: Academic Press, 23–39.Google Scholar
Niemeier, W.-D., 1979. The master of the Gournia octopus stirrup jar and a Late Minoan IA pottery workshop at Gournia exporting to Thera, in Temple University Aegean Symposium 4, 18–26.Google Scholar
Olivier, J.-P., 1967. Les scribes de Cnossos. Incunabula Graeca XVII. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.Google Scholar
Palaima, T.G., 1988. The scribes of Pylos. Incunabula Graeca LXXXVII. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.Google Scholar
Peatfield, A., 1992. Rural ritual in Bronze Age Crete: the peak sanctuary at Atsipadhes. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 2(1), 59–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redman, C.L., 1977. The ‘analytical individual’ and prehistoric style variability, in The Individual in Prehistory: Studies of Variability in Style in Prehistoric Technologies, eds. Hill, J.N. & Gunn, J.. New York (NY): Academic Press, 41–53.Google Scholar
Rees, A.L. & Borzello, F., 1986. The New Art History. London: Camden Press.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C., 1991. The Cycladic Spirit: Masterpieces from the Nicholas P. Goulandris Collection. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Rice, P.M., 1987. Pottery Analysis. A Sourcebook. Chicago (IL): Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Robertson, M., 1985. Beazley and Attic vase painting, in Beazley and Oxford, ed. Kurtz, D.C.. (Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, Monograph 10.) Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 19–30.Google Scholar
Robertson, M., 1989. Beazley's use of terms, in Beazley Addenda. 2nd ed., by Carpenter, T.H.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xii–xx.Google Scholar
Robertson, M., 1991. Adopting an approach, i, in Looking at Greek Vases, eds. Rasmussen, T. & Spivey, N.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–12.Google Scholar
Rystedt, E., 1990. On distinguishing hands in Mycenaean pictorial vase-painting. Opuscula Atheniensa 18, 167–76.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, C.F.A., 1961. Résumé des résultats de la XXIHe Campagne des Fouilles à Ras Shamra-Ugarit. Annales Archéologiaues de Syrie II, 187–96.Google Scholar
Shanks, M. & Tilley, C., 1987. Re-constructing Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stubbings, F.H., 1951. Some Mycenaean artists. Annual of the British School at Athens 46, 168–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vermeule, E.T., 1972. Greece in the Bronze Age. (First published 1964). Chicago (IL):Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Vermeule, E.T. & Karageorghis, V., 1982. Mycenaean Pictorial Vase Painting. Cambridge (MA) & London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Weingarten, J., 1983. The Zakro Master and his Place in Prehistory. (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology Pocketbook 26.) Göteborg: Paul Åströms Forlag.Google Scholar
Whitley, J., in press. Protoattic pottery: a contextual approach, in Classical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies, ed. Morris, C.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wollheim, R., 1973. Giovanni Morelli and the origins of scientific connoisseurship, On Art and the Mind: Essays and Lectures. London: Allen Lane, 177–201.Google Scholar
Yanagi, S., 1978. The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty. (First published 1972). Tokyo: Kodansha International.Google Scholar