Pendant from Tutankhamen’s tomb @1330 BCE. From Cairo Museum, photo by Jon Bodsworth.
All kept objects have a purpose.
It’s a basic rule of archaeology, the discipline where people dig up other people’s graves and trash. What gets buried with a person is generally thought to be valuable. What remains at settlements, even discarded, was thought to be there for a reason.
When it comes to carved objects, though, whose purpose is not shelter, food, or defense, the logic gets a little squirrelly. If scholars can argue the items are religious, like a “venus” figurine or ankh symbol, it might be filed under protection or belief systems. Let’s explore the purpose for personal ornamentation as the archaeologists call it. We just call it Jewelry.
Japanese “deep bowls” @11,000 ya, Tokyo National Museum, photo by Ismoon.
While I waxed lyrical about Bread a couple days ago, I must confess that, in comparison, ancient Pottery has seemed a little underwhelming. It’s been the part of the museum I slog through, wedged between those fascinating replicas of the Gate of Ishtar and the Egyptian mummies. Oh, look yet another brown glaze!
Yet if there ever was a thing that humans invented and re-invented, in one culture after another, it is cookware. Archaeologists can find buried treasure, in fact, treasure troves just by spotting an ancient “shard” in the trash heaps, among the cigarette butts and plastic bags. Dating the shards can be tricky, but technology has improved its precision. It was once thought that dishes to hold food were created after the invention of organized farming (@10,000 ya), but recent finds on digs have unearthed pots far earlier.
Personally, I can’t tell quartz from limestone, but I’ll bet Paleolithic and Neolithic people could look at the dirt in my neighborhood and explain it to me. Certainly, it makes sense that Stone Age people would have been experts in geology. If they could find the right kind of rocks to hone the points of other rocks and create sparks for fire, then they could make their own rocks, which is why today’s post is all about Dishes. Let’s explore three topics:
A core definition of the “thing”
Where and when it happened first “around the world”
The 1st Academy Banquet of 1929, designed by union-busting studio execs. Winners had been announced beforehand; many did not show. Wikimedia photo.
In the final week’s run-up to this year’s birthday party for Uncle Oscar, i.e. the 97th Academy Awards, there have been surprises, rumors, and scandals. In other words, the movie and awards business as usual. Each batch of pre-Oscar awards (SAG, BAFTA, Critics Circle) has led journalists to conclude that this movie or that movie is definitely gonna win because of some quasi-statistical calculation. Some of the nominations have been controversial. “The Brutalist” was slammed for using a little bit of AI-based technology. The “front-runner” for Best Actress made numerous racist and Islamophobic statements on social media a few years ago, so now has quasi-apologized, though what this has to do with her performance may seem head-scratching.
Personally, what I find most head-scratching is that movies which premiere in one theater for one day at the end of December can somehow be considered better than any other movie that is seen by the rest of us all year long. It seems like cheating. But then artistic contests have a history of cheating, campaigning, and judging biases. Patriotism, popular sentiment, and politics influence the voting. It’s not just in the movies. Classical art and classical music have also had their own versions of campaigns and contests. Let’s go back a few centuries and take a look.
