Representations of Musicians in the Coroplastic Art of the Ancient World: Iconography, Ritual Contexts and Function Organized by Angela Bellia and Clemente Marconi Institute of Fine Arts, New York University - March 7, 2015 Rebecca Miller Ammerman, Colgate University: Tympanon and Syrinx: A Musical Metaphor within the System of Ritual Practice and Belief at Metaponto Tympanon and Syrinx: A Musical Metaphor within the System of Ritual Practice and Belief at Metaponto Nestled in an arbor between clusters of grapes hang a tympanon and a syrinx. Beneath this arc of fruit and musical instruments, a female figure and the goat-god Pan prance together over rocky ground. She holds a cornucopia laden with cakes and produce of the earth. He clasps a volute crater of impressive dimension laden, no doubt, with wine. Why did the artisan include the musical instruments in an image that was to be cast in clay, mechanically, over and over again, in order to provide the residents of Metaponto with affordable terracotta reliefs to serve as votive gifts to the deities whose shrines punctuated the urban and rural landscape of this Italiote city-state in late fourth and early third centuries BCE? In formulating a response to this question, attention focuses first on the possible significance of the musical instruments within the pictorial narrative of the dancing couple represented in the terracotta plaques and then moves on to an examination of the varied contexts of public and private rite where the plaques were employed by the local population. Consideration is given to not only how the reliefs themselves served as instruments in the performance of a ritual act, but also how their imagery may allude to (1) the performance of other rites and (2) associated mythic narratives within the context of the cults where the plaques served a religious purpose. An investigation of the larger system of ritual acts and underlying myths casts penetrating light on the deeper meaning of the tympanon and syrinx at Metaponto and may better illuminate the local artisan’s motives for fashioning the musical instruments in the midst of a grape arbor that shades a mythic dancing floor. Rebecca Miller Ammerman is Professor of The Classics at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. She took her undergraduate degree in Classical and Near Eastern Art and Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College and completed her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. She served as an NEH Fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 1990-91 and an Elizabeth A. Whitehead Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 2008-09. Her research concerns ritual practice and the archaeology of Magna Graecia with a specific focus on terracotta statuettes and relief plaques. Research at Paestum has resulted in her book The Sanctuary of Santa Venera at Paestum II. The Votive Terracottas (Ann Arbor, 2002), and she is also studying of the vast corpus of votive terracottas from the northern urban sanctuary dedicated to Athena. At Metaponto, her research concerns terracotta figurines and plaques recovered during the field survey and many excavations conducted by the Institute of Classical Archaeology of the University of Texas. Currently, she is preparing publications of the terracottas from the spring sanctuary at Pantanello and the kiln site of San Angelo Vecchio at Metaponto. E-mail: [email protected]
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 07:13:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015