Caves to Cathedrals

Cross-posted on Early Medieval Art.

Yesterday evening, I came across this post on 21st Century Teaching & Learning, a blog about “how to effectively integrate web 2.0 tools into instruction”. The blogger, Michelle Pacansky-Brock, teaches art history and, at least from my perspective, stands at the cutting edge of digital learning.

In this post, Dr. Pacansky-Brock shares a slideshow that she presented as part of a series on on-line teaching. I was most struck by slides 5 and 6 showing a traditional syllabus and a web-inspired syllabus. Although the more traditional among us may abhor such seeming frivolity or even pandering, looking at these two versions of a syllabus, I realized that the form of the traditional syllabus reflects the limitations of the technology of a different age. Why shouldn’t we take advantage of our technological capabilities in order to make syllabi, first, more visually appealing, and second, more interactive?

In this post, she also shares a VoiceThread from one of her classes (you may also discover other uses to which she has put VoiceThread). VoiceThread is not new to on-line educators, but it is new to me. VoiceThread amazes me, and I easily see its potential for the traditional classroom. The greatest struggle, I find, is to create autonomous learners. I ask students to spend time looking closely at works of art in order to prepare for class, but they seldom understand what this means. I also encourage them to form study groups to force them to articulate what they see; this they rarely do. The next time that I teach, I will use VoiceThread to guide the students preparation for class and to facilitate a conversation among the students about objects and monuments and thereby to train them to look at and talk about art. In turn, such preparation would permit greater depth and more meaningful discussion during class time.

The section in Gardners’ on Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egyptian art has six figures, but two of those have multiple parts. I found that the sequence of works in Gardners’ worked well. Nevertheless, I would suggest the following improvements on the accompanying figures.

Figure 1: Plan of Hierakonpolis with Tomb 100 and the Temple of Narmer, the findspot of the Palette of Narmer, highlighted

Figure 2: Photograph of Tomb 100 in situ

Figure 3: Watercolor copy of Tomb 100 juxtaposed with a photograph of Tomb 100 in its current condition in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo

Figure 4: Palette of Narmer

Figure 5: Plan of Temple of Djoser

Figure 6: View of the Serdab relative to Stepped Pyramid

Figure 7: Seated Statue of Djoser from the Serdab

I consider Figure 3-4 – the section, plan, and restored view of a generic mastaba – out of place in this section. Also, the restored view of the mortuary precinct in Figure 3-6 adds little to actual views, and I would eliminate it. Finally, the view of the facade of the north palace certainly offers a less interesting view than that of the serdab.

Following the discussion of the status of the Palette of Narmer as either an historical or political document, the Palermo Stone clarifies the definition of a historical document and also nicely transitions to the reign of Djoser as a relatively near contemporary source for the dates of his reign. But, be forewarned, this would take some additional research.

The mortuary precinct of Djoser offers an opportunity to develop the students’ spatial awareness through the interrelating of the plan of the precinct, the restored view, and the two viewpoints offered by Gardners’ (one less than the previous edition). Most simply, students should learn to locate images on plans when Gardners’ provides the plans. Students should learn not just to pass over them, but to stop and examine them in a meaningful way. Finding the stepped pyramid and the facade of the north palace on the plan of the precinct only begins this learning process. A clickable plan at the UPenn website would move this process yet further along.

In my view, Gardners’ omits the most interesting feature of the mortuary precinct of Djoser, namely the serdab at the base of the north face of the stepped pyramid and the seated statue of Djoser originally found within, but now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. (Flickr, by the way, offers a wealth of photos of the mortuary precinct). This statue permits a discussion of burial context and the function of images.

The Narmer Palette comes from Hierakonpolis, the location of Tomb 100. You may find an abundance of on-line material for the Palette of Narmer, but a print article by Whitney Davis on “Narrativity and the Narmer Palette” in Narrative and Event in Ancient Art (Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism) proves the most useful and reliable.

This object offers a great opportunity for  the observation of fascinating detail and lends itself easily to a discussion of meaning.  One may easily explore answers to the following questions: how was the palette originally intended to be viewed?  what type of document is it – historical or political?  and what is the relationship between image and text?

To appreciate the meaning of the format, the most illuminating resource may be the Corpus of Egyptian Predynastic Palettes.  An examination of the Macehead of Narmer at the Ashmoleon Museum provides additional historical and physical context, if time permits additional research (here in a line drawing).

First and foremost, Gardner’s does not publish a photo of the actual wall painting, but only a watercolor copy.  Second, Gardner’s crops it.  The website of Francesco Raffaele has a large image of the complete watercolor, as well as a helpful linedrawing.

Two JSTOR-available articles, both from the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, greatly aid preparation for the teaching of Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis:  first, an article from 1962 with a plan of the tomb; second, an article from 1973 with photos of the painting in situ. An official Hierakonpolis website may also offer some useful information.  The British website, Digital Egypt for Universities, has a good plan with the location of the mural marked.  And Archaeology.com hosts an Interactive Dig.

I also found an image of the mural as you can see it today in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but I cannot trace its source.  I post it, but if anyone knows its source, please let me know, so that I may properly link to it!

Following the Neolithic – and the Bronze and Stone Age prehistoric material that I would have appended to it – I turned to Egypt. I deviated from the standard placement of the Ancient Near East at the beginning of the trajectory of the Western artistic tradition because of a strict adherence to chronology – quite simply, the bulk of the Sumerian material dates later than the earliest Egyptian material.

Gardner’s has seven figures in its Neolithic section, not including the map. The Paleolithic section has thirteen. I would aim to create more balance between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. A global approach to the Neolithic would also necessitate additional images. I offer this plan with all humility, as I do not specialize in prehistoric art. I welcome comments. I also wrestle with the term prehistoric and its only partial application to Bronze and Iron age civilizations. Any and all insight is welcome.

Figure 1 Plan of Ain Ghazal showing findspot of statues

Figure 2 Statue from earlier cache at Ain Ghazal, with front and side view

Figure 3 Statue holding breasts from later cache at Ain Ghazal

Figure 4 Plan of Catal Hoyuk showing locations of selected wall paintings

Figure 5 Photo of Landscape Wall Painting in situ or in museum

Figure 6 Watercolor Copy of Landscape Painting

Figure 7 Second Wall Painting in situ

Global

Figure 7 Neolithic Jade from China

Figure 8 Olmec Jade Celt (understanding the Olmec as a prehistoric Mesoamerican Civilization)

Plus Bronze Age, Prehistoric

Figure 9 Cycladic Figure shown bare and then with paint, either reconstructed or under special lighting

Plus Iron Age, Prehistoric

Figure 10 An object from the La Tene period

Also published at Early Medieval Art.

Thanks to the Digital Research Tools Wiki, I have discovered two on-line tools for creating timelines. While Simile requires facility with HTML, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University offers a more accessible Timeline Builder.

I usually encourage students to make timelines, in order to manage the periods and works of art, but they seldom do. An on-line program would make this task much more enticing. To promote active learning, the students should really do the work, but I think I will make my own next time as well!

For the class, I defined prehistoric as before writing (rather than before written history). The basic principle of contextualization – that the interrelating of text and image/object/monument permits contextualization of the work of art – means that with the emergence of textual sources in the historical record, the possibilities for interpretation of a work of art dramatically increases. I therefore prioritized the recognition of this moment, when writing emerges, and defined prehistory accordingly. So you may see on my syllabus that in the second class on prehistoric art, which focused primarily on the Neolithic, I also included Bronze Age Cycladic art.

The Cycladic figures compare well with the Ain Ghazal statues. Furthermore, the discernment of paint through scientific analysis relates the Cycladic figures to the paleolithic figures. (On the painting of these figures, see “Painted Early Cycladic Figures: An Exploration of Context and Meaning” by Elizabeth Hendrix.)

Scholars, however, traditionally consider the Myceneans and Minoans, also of the Bronze Age Aegean, as prehistoric, in spite of their scripts – Linear A, B, and C. But the figures of the Cycladic Civilization have so much more in common with the enigmatic objects of the Neolithic than with the expressive Mycenean and Minoan works, that I may still stand behind the decision to include the Bronze Age Cycladic with the Neolithic.

Although Gardner’s includes Stonehenge, I did not cover it during class time. But at the least, I can note recent news items.

National Geographic has just published several items – a news article, a magazine essay, and a slideshow – as part of its coverage of new findings, most notably the dating of some burials so that they predate the stones.