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August 8, 2005
Neat Late Antiquity Blog!
I forgot this one in the Carnivalesque listings -- I came across Troels Myrup Kristensen's Towards an Archaeology of Iconoclasm sometime last month and had misfiled the bookmark. Kristensen is a graduate student at the University of Aarhus and the blog tracks the course of the M.A. thesis on early Christian iconoclasm of non-Christian (pagan, that is) art.
The Case Studies category is especially interesting -- and the pictures are even more so.
One of the interesting issues will be sorting out the dating accurately enough to be certain that what shows up is Christian iconoclasm rather than Islamic iconoclasm (something that certainly went on as well). It's also tricky to separate accidental damage from intentional destruction -- marble statues are inherently fragile (the qualities which makes marble easy to carve makes it easy to break). For instance, were statues damaged in earthquakes or shipping and then simply disposed of?
When we see faces that have been chipped away with bodies that have been allowed to let stand it's clear we're seeing something intentional -- but it's difficult to date except by careful attention to archaeological context.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at August 8, 2005 10:27 AM