An aryballos from an Italian cemetery, made in Corinth in the seventh century BC.

(large image - Downloadnola-complex-large.jpg)

The third of the ten things.

The story of an ancient Corinthian perfume jar takes us from cutting edge ceramic technology to cemeteries and temples in the first city states of the Mediterranean through redefinitions of what it was to be a hero in the European bronze and iron ages.

Lecture slides - DownloadCorinth02.mov - DownloadCorinth-early-city.mov

Artifacts can be seen as "black boxes" - bundles of connections that are hidden by the apparently simple coherence of being a "thing" - they are packed away in a box normally kept closed - hence a "black" box.

Open the black box - and follow the connections - see what is being linked!

To start the unpacking process you might ask - "what work does the artifact do?" - "what is it connecting?" - and, to get this going, you might ask "what work would I have to do if I didn't have such an artifact?"

Is this a perfume jar? Well, yes and no.

So, what is a thing? It is a "gathering" of relationships.

Key points also

• "branding" is a concept we can use to understand an artifact like this - again a challenge to our notion that modernity is radically different to antiquity;

• risk versus consistency/certainty/tradition (here in relation to ceramic manufacture) is a key contrast in understanding contemporary business and design.

Readings and Resources

DownloadArt and an Archaeology of Embodiment.pdf

Temple Hill - Corinth

Corinthian pots found in the Phoenician city of Mozia in western Sicily