Robin Osborne

Hoards, votives, offerings: the archaeology of the dedicated object

Objects given to supernatural powers have been remarkably neglected by archaeologists. This paper makes the case for the importance of such objects, whether they be described as votives, dedications, ritual deposits, ritual hoards, offerings or by some other term. It explores some archaeological reasons for their neglect, including the practice of publishing artefacts by type rather than by context, and argues that archaeologists should not assume that religious practices can be discussed only when there are texts available as guides. It summarizes the particular concerns of the papers which follow in this volume.

Placing the gods : sanctuaries and sacred space in ancient Greece

No one disputes the centrality of cult activity in the lives of individuals and communities in ancient Greece. The significance of where people worshipped their gods has been far less acknowledged. In 1884 Francois de Polignac argued that the placing of cult centres played a major part in establishing the concept of the city-state in archaic Greece. The essays in this collection, headed by that of de Polignac himself in which he re-assesses his position, critically examine the social and political importance of sanctuary placement, not only by re-examining the case of the archaic Greece discussed by de Polignac, but by extending analysis both back to Mycenaean times and onwards to Greece under Roman occupation. These essays reveal something of the complexity of relations between religion and politics in ancient Greece, demonstrating how vital factors such as tradition, gender relations, and cult identity were in creating and maintaining the religious mapping of the Greek countryside.

Pots, trade and the archaic Greek economy

Fine painted pottery is the archaeological trade-mark of the Greek presence overseas. Since other materials of exchange in the Classical world — soft things like grain, oil and slaves — are less archaeologically visible, a fresh look at issues in the archaic Greek economy revolves once more around patterns in the ceramics.

The viewing and obscuring of the Parthenon frieze

For all its notoriety, Classical archaeologists find the Parthenon frieze a difficult object with which to come to terms: its position on the building is seen as perverse, its subject-matter impenetrable, and its ‘style’ anomalous. This paper sets out to show that these difficulties are inter-related.

The erection and mutilation of the Hermai

A paper on the herms needs no excuse. There is no proper treatment in English of the origins of the herm or of the erection of herms by Hipparkhos. The Eion herm monument has been well studied by Jacoby and Harrison, but the recent treatment by Clairmont demands their reconsideration. The scholarly literature on the mutilation has been very narrowly focused on the questions of who mutilated the herms and why. These questions are clearly closely inter-related, and yet the attempts to answer the question ‘why?’ have been singularly unsatisfactory. Some have arbitrarily chosen to emphasise a single feature of the herm, and with little evidence have made wild claims: thus Farnell could write that ‘the mutilation of the phallic Hermai of Athens produced… in the Athenians the despondent sense that the luck of the state was gone and the divine power of fertilisation impaired’, Crome that ‘with this mutilation must be connected the religious world of the phallus cult of the old native population which had certainly always been strange to the oligarchs’. Others have ignored the fact that it was specifically herms that were mutilated and have reduced the activity of the hermokopidai to a massive act of general impiety, as Dover does when he argues that the mutilation was politically significant because as an act of impiety it would seem to bring down the wrath of the gods on the whole community, as a conspicuous act of vandalism it would make the number of people involved seem large, and as an offence against nomos it would prompt concern for the fact that a body of men had set themselves beyond the law.

Art's agency and art history

Arts Agency and Art History re-articulates the relationship of the anthropology of art to key methodological and theoretical approaches in art history, sociology, and linguistics. • Explores important concepts and perspectives in the anthropology of art • Includes nine groundbreaking case studies by an internationally renowned group of art historians and art theorists • Covers a wide range of periods, including Bronze-Age China, Classical Greece, Rome, and Mayan, as well as the modern Western world • Features an introductory essay by leading experts, which helps clarify issues in the field • Includes numerous illustrations.

Men Without Clothes: Heroic Nakedness and Greek Art

The naked men of Greek art have been an excuse for male nakedness in more recent art, but the significance of male nakedness in classical art is debated. Osborne traces the history of the representation of the naked male body in Greek art and argues that although in early Greek art nakedness was unmarked, and clothing was used only to draw special attention to men, changes in visual rhetoric led artists to make increasingly detailed reference to the male body, causing a loss of semiotic innocence. Naked male bodies thus came to carry messages about sex as well as gender. The reinstatement of the naked male body in classical art followed the development of a highly artificial convention in which beardlessness was equated with sexual immaturity and held to render the male body asexual.

Why did Athenian pots appeal to the Etruscans

Very large quantities of pottery painted in Athens in the sixth and fifth centuries BC found their way to Etruria. This paper compares the scenes painted on Athenian pots found in Etruria with the scenes on pots found in Athens itself and with the scenes on various classes of artefact produced in Etruria. It argues that, although the Etruscans were voracious consumers of Athenian pottery, their demand did not generally determine the iconography of the figure scenes, and that Athenian pottery provided the Etruscans with a lexicon of scenes from which they selected when producing for themselves artefacts for particular contexts of use.

A crisis in Archaeological History? The seventh century B.C. in Attica

The archaeological record from the seventh century in Attica poses acute problems of interpretation. Burial conventions and burial numbers show a sharp change at the end of the eighth century; there is discontinuity in the settlement record; activity at cult sites increases quite markedly; and the manner of artistic expression changes. Simple hypotheses which connect these changes with the birth of the polis or with political and social crisis cannot explain all these changes. One way forward may be to make the change in artistic expression central to interpretation instead of marginal.

Buildings and Residence on the Land in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: The Contribution of Epigraphy

References to rural buildings mentioned in inscriptions are analysed, particularly the records of the temple estates of Delian Apollo on Delos, Rheneia, and Mykonos. It is concluded that, against earlier interpretations, none of the vocabulary employed in the leases necessarily implies residence. Evidence from other leases confirms this. It is suggested here that buildings referred to as oikiai were not primarily residences, but centres of agricultural activity, according to season.