Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Art Of Burial In The Medieval Nile Valley: Christian And Islamic Interchange In Religious Funerary Contexts, Arielle Winnik

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

Christian communities in medieval Islamic Egypt (ca. ninth to twelfth centuries) were active participants in Islamicate visual culture. Indeed, Christians employed the same artistic objects as their Muslim neighbors in secular contexts, and close commonalities were even pervasive in art employed in religious rituals.

This dissertation investigates one such instance of the shared use of objects between Christians and Muslims in distinct sacred contexts. Christian and Muslim burials shared deep similarities, including the use of burial shrouds and grave markers with almost identical iconographic and compositional features. I draw attention to ways that Christians deployed an interreligious visual and material …

Radiant Sites: Projection And The Mobile Spectator In Contemporary Moving-Image Installations, Taylor Hobson

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation examines contemporary moving-image installations that use projected images to expand and elaborate upon the cinematic experience. It focuses on works by Douglas Gordon (b. 1966), Jim Campbell (b. 1956), and the partnered artists Janet Cardiff (b. 1957) and George Bures-Miller (b. 1960), all of whom have reconfigured the classical cinematic system of viewing since the 1990s. Through their works, I trace the term “expanded cinema” as a literal extension of projected light from the screen into the open gallery and beyond. I argue that the term “projection” – as thrown light, mental anticipation, and moving bodies – brings …

Imperial/Non-Imperial Encounters In The Gulf During The Late Pre-Islamic Period: The Glazed Pottery From Southeastern Arabia And Tepe Yahya, Iran, Matthew F. Jameson

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation proposes a method of combining formal, contextual, and geochemical ceramic analyses to investigate an encounter between imperial and non-imperial societies evidenced in the archaeological record. Glazed pottery from Mesopotamia appeared in southeastern Arabia and southeastern Iran during the late pre-Islamic period (c. 300 BCE – 7th century CE) and neither the mechanisms through which it arrived nor its use in local contexts is fully understood. It is found alongside a set of objects that signal an increased connectivity with the wider worlds of the Indian Ocean, MENA region, and the Mediterranean. Previous scholarship has focused on the extent …

Text And Images Of Authority: The Inscribed Seals From The Persepolis Fortification Archive, Christina Chandler

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

The Persepolis Fortification archive, a large archive of administrative tablets dating to the early years of Darius I (509-493 BCE), preserves impressions of over 4,000 distinct and legible seals. 174 of these approximately 4,000 seals carry both figural imagery and text in their designs. This dissertation presents the inscribed seals corpus from the Fortification archive for the first time, thus laying the groundwork for future studies on inscribed seals from Persepolis.

Inscribed seals offer myriad avenues of investigation. In the present study, we focus on three main features of inscribed seals: 1) the languages and formulae of the inscriptions; 2) …

The Terracotta Altars Of Morgantina: A Study Of The Form, Production, Use, And Development Of Arulae From Hellenistic Sicily, Andrew Tharler

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation establishes the first systematic and comprehensive study of cylindrical terracotta altars, often referred to as arulae. Arulae are considered characteristic of the material culture of Hellenistic Sicily and thought to represent a significant body of evidence for domestic cult practice. However, no comprehensive treatment has been published, and critical information about their use has not been securely established. As a result, arulae have not been fully incorporated into research on Hellenistic religion, and assertions about their ritual function remain conjectural. This study focuses on the complete corpus of arulae from Morgantina, comprising more than 300 fragments, but examples …

The Social Dynamics Of Early Helladic Sealing Practices: Seal Use And Social Change In Early Bronze Age Greece, Maggie Beeler

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

This study investigates the role of administrative sealing practices in the emergence of social complexity in Early Helladic (EH) period (ca. 3100-2000 BCE) Greece. Archaeologists associate emerging complexity in mainland Greece with key developments in the EH period, including sealing practices, long-distance exchanges, monumental architecture, and craft specialization. Seals and sealings are a particularly sensitive proxy for complexity because of their economic and political potential as administrative devices, a pre-literate form of record keeping. Although Mycenaean elites used seals to control resources in the palatial political economy in the Late Bronze Age, there is no evidence that incipient elites did …

Inspired Invention: Cristóbal De Villalpando's Paintings Of The Life Of Saint Francis, Mark A. Castro

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

This project is an in-depth study of Cristóbal de Villalpando’s cycle of paintings depicting the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, commissioned in 1691 for the Franciscan Convent in Antigua, Guatemala. This seminal group has not been the subject of a focused study since 1986 and the sources of its unique iconography, as well as its impact on later depictions of this saint’s life in New Spain, have never been fully explored. In a larger context, examining the scenes illustrated in Villalpando’s series, which were likely selected under the guidance of his Franciscan patrons, tells us something about the Franciscans …

On The Surface Of A Thessalian City: The Urban Survey Of Kastro Kallithea, Greece, Laura E. Surtees

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation examines the establishment, occupation, and abandonment of Kastro Kallithea, a Hellenistic city in Achaia Phthiotis, Thessaly, through data collected from the intensive urban survey of the site. Kastro Kallithea is an orthogonal grid planned city with distinct zones of activities enclosed within a massive circuit wall running 2 km in length. The ancient name of the site is unknown, although it has been tentatively identified by Friedrich Stählin as the ancient polis of Peuma, known from coins and inscriptions. The site was founded in the late fourth century and was occupied into first century B.C.E. There is no …

A Walk Through The Past: Toward The Study Of Archaeological Museums In Italy, Greece, And Israel, Andrea Guzzetti

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

Archaeological museums and museum displays help to broadcast ideological statements, particularly concerning the formation of national identities, yet the ways in which the messages being transmitted have been articulated within the actual spaces devoted to the display of artifacts are still far from being thoroughly studied. More specifically, little attention has been dedicated to some of the most immediate means through which a museum interprets the past for the modern-day visitor, such as its plan, the arrangement of its collections in the galleries, and its visiting paths.

The dissertation examines the physical features a group of archaeological museums in Italy, …

Household Shrines And Cults In Roman Achaia: A New Approach To Examining Cultural Change Under The Roman Empire, Catherine W. Person

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

This study explores the changing nature of household cult practices, a currently under-studied category of evidence, in the Roman province of Achaia, from the first century BCE to the fourth century CE, with reference to pre-Roman domestic religion. The primary aim of this investigation is to understand to what extent Roman cult practices were integrated in select households across Roman Achaia. Household religion is an ideal indicator for cultural change and shifting cultural identities; it was essential in both Greek and Roman cultures and vital to the survival of the family unit and the wider community, but was conducted differently …

Specific Objects: Lee Bontecou’S Steel And Canvas Reliefs, 1959-1964, Lesley E. Shipley

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation focuses on the reception and interpretation of the welded steel and canvas reliefs that the American artist Lee Bontecou created between 1959 and 1964.In Chapter 1,I present an overview of the initial critical reception of Bontecou’s steel and canvas reliefs, highlighting those exhibitions and texts from the first half of the 1960s that stand out as important records of this work’s reception. In Chapter 2, I examine the feminist claiming of Bontecou’s reliefs that occurred between 1965 and 1976.Here, I contextualize the feminist response to Bontecou’s art within its historical moment, in order to consider how feminism has …

Art, Trade, And Patronage In Seventeenth-Century Lima: Francisco De Zurbarán's Commission For The Convent Of La Encarnación, Lori Kata

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) was the most famous of the Sevillian painters who participated in the overseas art trade. The artist sent several hundred works to destinations in the viceroyalty of Peru during his career. While his participation in this long-distance endeavor can be documented between 1636 and 1662, a time span which covers the majority of his career, to date this aspect of the artist’s production has remained a minor focus of scholars.

This dissertation uses the lost commission of 1646-47 that Zurbarán produced for the nuns of the convent of La Encarnación in Lima to help formulate a …

The Danger Of Visual Seduction: Netherlandish Prints Of Susanna And The Elders, Susan Dackerman

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

In 1563, the Council of Trent issued a decree which stated, "...all lasciviousness is to be avoided, so that images shall not be painted and adorned with seductive charm." In the wake of this mandate, and other Netherlandish mandates intended to bolster the Council's decrees, prints of the biblical heroine Susanna proliferated in the Low Countries. The majority of these engravings, etchings, and woodcuts portray the attempted seduction of a provocative female nude by two old men, a scene which explicitly manifests "lasciviousness" and "seductive charm." This dissertation examines why these erotically charged prints of Susanna and the Elders flourished …

Natus Diformis: Hermaphrodites In Greek And Roman Art, Aileen Ajootian

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

Hermaphroditos, the personage in Greek and Roman myth and iconography possessing both male and female sexual features, first appears in Greek literary and epigraphical sources in the fourth century B.C., although a pedigree as the offspring of Hermes is not provided before the mid-first century D.C. In addition to the proper name Hermaphroditos, the term used generically, along with its adjectival form describes these Mischwesen as they are reported by various ancient authors to occur in nature. But from the inscriptions, literary testimonia, and artifacts, it appears that the Greeks and Romans considered Hermaphroditos a divinity with a variety of …

Mycenaean Masonry Practices And Elements Of Construction, James C. Wright

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation is a study of the basic practices and primary elements of construction in Mycenaean architecture: foundations, terraces, rubble, and ashlar masonry, cyclopean masonry and its relation to circuit walls. Special consideration is given to conglomerate masonry in the circuit walls and the practice of corbelling. Addenda deal with the cyclopean terrace at the Argive Heraeum and the construction of the Southern Citadel of Tiryns.

The study is a summation of a detailed catalogue of information gathered from published reports of excavations and from on the spot inspection of most of the sites discussed; it is accompanied by 155 …