As its alluring title suggests, this collection of essays is about the interpretation of small and broken artifacts and artworks in archaeological settings. It stems from a panel held at the College Art Association meeting of 2015, which aimed to emphasize anthropologically informed approaches to art history. The book has a sensible structure, with a theoretical introductory chapter by the editors, seven articles, and a final response by Margaret Cool Root.
The volume's goal is to present miniature and incomplete objects as more than mere references to complete or full-sized objects, and simply to broaden the approaches used in dealing with this sort of material. The editors’ introductory chapter offers no definitions, and quite intentionally does not present a new theory or advocate a single approach to the phenomena of miniaturization and fragmentation. It is rather a discussion of new possible approaches. This chapter is written in a general way, such that archaeologists and art historians working in numerous fields are likely to find points of contact in it.
Under the heading of ‘miniaturization theory’, the editors discuss approaches that can be used to understand small things, apart from the obvious use of miniaturization as a cost-saving measure. Small objects demand an intimate interaction with their viewers, requiring touch and handling, and entangling viewers in a fascinating miniaturized world. A section on ‘fragmentation theories’ reviews a very broad set of artifacts and phenomena, from the obvious dichotomy between naturally damaged and deliberately broken objects to the issue of objects intentionally made in several pieces, such as acrolithic statues, and objects that have been re-used in a secondary context, e.g. spolia. Both main themes, miniaturization and fragmentation, are thus remarkably broad in conception.
This broad approach has its drawbacks. For example, for this reviewer, there is a real distinction between things that are miniatures, or miniaturized, and those that are naturally small. Thus, a glass bead might be less than a centimetre in length, and fascinating and attractive for that reason, but is it then really a miniature or miniaturized? A miniature object for me, sensu stricto, is a reduced copy of something larger (Kiernan Reference Kiernan2009, 2). Similarly, under the heading of fragmentation, the topic of spolia seemed very much out of place. The act of breaking an artwork or building may occur quite independently of the re-use or recycling of the broken components (Kristensen & Stirling Reference Kristensen and Stirling2016). Other readers will doubtless come away with different critiques of this introductory discussion, but it certainly achieves its stated goal of broadening the reader's horizons and opening up a discussion.
The first chapter, by Rosemary A. Joyce, ‘Breaking Bodies and Biographies’ (pp. 24–47) discusses clay figurines from the Playa de los Muertos tradition in northern Honduras from the first millennium bc. After setting the background to these figurines, Joyce discusses the contexts of broken and complete figurines and the object's possible relations to the perception of the human body.
For this reviewer, Jessica Hughes’ chapter (pp. 48–71) on miniaturization and fragmented votive offerings in the Greek and Roman world was the most interesting in the volume. Hughes manages to survey a remarkably broad swathe of Graeco-Roman antiquity, and still finds time to present some innovative ideas about votive practice and its impact on the archaeological record. For example, she convincingly supports the idea that battered, worn and damaged dedications were somehow more acceptable to the gods, because they reflected the dedicant's suffering, skill in a craft, or participation in warfare. She goes on to discuss fragmented anatomical votives as a means by which a worshipper exercised control over a sick body. There is enough material condensed in this brief article for a best-selling book.
S. Rebecca Martin (pp. 72–98) deals with the representation of Tanit in texts and art and, combining the evidence of Phoenician epigraphy and iconography, argues that the god Tanit could be represented by means of a symbol or sign. This is a fascinating article, but in this case one feels we are dealing with a case of abstraction, or perhaps pars pro toto, rather than miniaturization or fragmentation.
Marian H. Feldman's chapter (pp. 99–115) is perhaps the most incongruous contribution to the volume. Arguing that artistic style is itself a fragment of a culture's art, Feldman connects Near Eastern Iron Age art to broader art-historical debates about the nature of style. While it may well make an important contribution to art history and the question of style, in this case it is not really the artworks themselves that are tiny, fragmented, or miniaturized.
Langin-Hooper (pp. 116–44) deals with Hellenistic figurines depicting athletes, children, banqueters, and a class of figurine with detachable limbs found at Babylonian sites. Langin-Hooper is well aware that Greek traditions of figurines depicting Greek activities may have been out of place in the Babylonian context, and suggests that the use of detachable limbs somehow helped avoid damaging the social fabric of the mixed society in which they circulated. My personal sense, from the images in the article, was that many of these choices to produce a figurine in multiple parts were connected to the limitations of the press-moulding technique used to create them, but I may well be wrong. Langin-Hooper's discussion of these Greek objects and the individual subjects in a non-Greek setting is certainly novel and interesting reading.
‘Tiny Bodies for Intimate Worlds’ by Mireia López-Bertran and Jaime Vives-Ferrándiz (pp. 145–69) deals with Iberian clay and bronze figurines of the fourth to second centuries bc. Having recently worked on one of these bronze figurines in an American Museum, I found their background information, discussion of sites, and bibliography to be extremely helpful. The authors suggest the small size of the figurines is an invitation to intimacy and interaction with the viewer, generating a sense of immediacy and personality which was enhanced by the novelty of the figures in a culture that had hitherto produced only monumental sculpture.
Doug Bailey's highly entertaining and intriguing essay begins with the question of why Neolithic pit-house dwellers dug holes in the first place, and then turns to a remarkably philosophical question – what is a hole? Bailey connects this discussion to the works of artist Gordon Matta-Clark, who famously cut holes in Parisian buildings in the 1970s. While I found this a good read, I must admit I am not fully convinced of the symbolic and deep significance in digging a hole that Bailey advocates. Nor, I suppose, can I accept ‘holes’ as fitting into the book's theme of fragmentation, but perhaps I am falling into a semantic trap here. Bailey, who is well known for his work on Neolithic figurines (Bailey Reference Bailey2005), may well yet put a new hole in current archaeological theory with this novel approach.
The concluding response by Margaret Cool Root takes us to Achaemenid Persepolis, contrasting the monumental sculpture of the site with the miniature seals and sealings found there, and finally presenting a fascinating glimpse of an unusual method of using the seals. This is a very well written article and, as a good response piece should, it succeeds in making passing references to the individual chapters of the whole book while still presenting ideas of its own.
Cool Root begins with an examination of monumentality in Near Eastern art, illustrated with a range of examples, and ending up with a discussion of the relief-covered apadana of Persepolis. One should perhaps add Osbourne (Reference Osbourne2014) to the bibliography of this oversize topic. While seals are of a less monumental size, some, like that of an administrator named Parnaka, were carved in such a style and in such depth that their impressions in clay must have stood out more than others and so impressed viewers – a sort of monumentality in miniature. From here Cool Root asks why seals, which were so important to Achaemenid society, were not included in representations of people in other artworks. While it was technically possible to depict small objects on reliefs like the apadana, Cool Root concludes that these artifacts were not symbols of court life, and so perhaps too mundane for inclusion in royal art.
Finally, Cool Root introduces a remarkable phenomenon in the seal impressions found at Persepolis which she terms ‘seal play’. On several clay tablets, seal users have intentionally applied only a selected section of their seal to generate a different image from that with which the whole stone was engraved. Sometimes only parts of the seals were used as stamps, adding to or modifying the imagery of a complete rolled impression. Finally, on some tablets that bear multiple seal impressions, the images have been intentionally aligned such that elements from one impression interact with those of another. In this seal play, the imagery is broken into fragments, which are reassembled to create new images and meanings.
While this collection aims at a more anthropological approach to the themes of miniaturization and fragmentation, its chapters are not quite as diverse as one might hope to meet such a lofty goal. Four deal with Near Eastern topics; two are on European prehistory, and one on the Graeco-Roman; and a single chapter on pre-Columbian Honduras represents the rest of the world. If it was not possible to assemble broader contributions, it may well have been a better approach to focus specifically on these phenomena in the Near Eastern world, or a specific medium or context. Figurines, for example, stand large in both the introduction and chapters.
This problem of cohesion aside, the strength of the individual chapters is such that each will surely make an important contribution to its specific field, and perhaps in turn will bring readers to look into the sort of anthropological questions and approaches to miniaturization and fragmentation that the editors so eloquently advocate.
