Seals and Sealing in the Ancient World: Case Studies from the Near East, Egypt, the Aegean, and South Asia
Cambridge University Press, 5/3/2018
EAN 9781107194588, ISBN10: 110719458X
Hardcover, 400 pages, 26.3 x 18.8 x 2.9 cm
Language: English
Studies of seals and sealing practices have traditionally investigated aspects of social, political, economic, and ideological systems in ancient societies throughout the Old World. Previously, scholarship has focused on description and documentation, chronology and dynastic histories, administrative function, iconography, and style. More recent studies have emphasized context, production and use, and increasingly, identity, gender, and the social lives of seals, their users, and the artisans who produced them. Using several methodological and theoretical perspectives, this volume presents up-to-date research on seals that is comparative in scope and focus. The cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach advances our understanding of the significance of an important class of material culture of the ancient world. The volume will serve as an essential resource for scholars, students, and others interested in glyptic studies, seal production and use, and sealing practices in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Ancient South Asia and the Aegean during the 4th-2nd Millennia BCE.
Preface Joan Aruz
1. Introduction
small windows, wide views Marta Ameri, Sarah Kielt Costello, Gregg Jamison, Sarah Scott
Part I. The Ancient Near East and Cyprus
2. Administrative role of seal imagery in the early Bronze Age
Mesopotamian and Iranian traders on the Plateau Holly Pittman
3. Slave labor
Uruk cylinder seal imagery and early writing Sarah Jarmer Scott
4. The first female bureaucrats
gender and glyptic in 4th-3rd Millennia Northern Mesopotamia Andrew McCarthy
5. Rematerializing the early dynastic banquet seal Sarah Kielt Costello
6. Sealing practices in the Akkadian period Yelena Z. Rakic
7. Authenticity, seal recarving, and authority in the ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean Joanna Smith
Part II. South Asia and Persian Gulf
8. Indus seals and glyptic studies
an overview Asko Parpola
9. Letting the pictures speak
an image-based approach to the mythological and narrative imagery of the Harappan world Marta Ameri
10. Understanding Indus seal carving traditions
a stylistic and metric approach Gregg Jamison
11. Operational sequences and stamp seals
a new approach to identifying groups of seal carvers in the Indus civilization Adam Green
12. Seals and sealing technology in the Dilmun culture
the post Harappan life of the Indus Valley sealing tradition Steffen Laursen
Part III. Egypt
13. The evolution of Ancient Egyptian seals and sealing systems Joe Wegner
14. Early dynastic sealing practices as reflection of state formation in Egypt? Ilona Regulski
15. Sealings and seals from pyramid Age Egypt John Nolan
16. The administrative use of scarabs during the middle kingdom Daphna Ben Tor
17. Middle and new kingdom sealing practice in Egypt and Nubia
a comparison Stuart Tyson Smith
Part IV. Aegean
18. Introductory remarks, Aegean Judith Weingarten
19. Aegean Bronze Age sealstones and fingerrings
chronology and functions John Younger
20. An Aegean seal in Greek hands? Thoughts on the perception of Aegean seals in the Iron Age Maria Anastasiadou
21. Cryptic glyptic
multivalency in Minoan glyptic imagery Erin Mcgowan
22. The magic and the mundane
the function of 'talismanic class' stones in Minoan Crete Angela Murock Hussein.