The "Art" of the "Ancient Near East" / Ann C. Gunter Art and Material Culture / David Wengrow -- Meaning and Interpretation / Astrid Nunn -- Style / Margaret Cool Root -- Connoisseurship and Classification / Eleonora Pappalardo -- Visual Culture / Sarah B. Graff -- Technical Examination and Material Analysis / Deborah Schorsch -- Gender and Sexuality / John D. M. Green -- Semiotics, Reception Theory, and Poststructuralism / Marlies Heinz -- Representation / Dominik Bonatz and Marlies Heinz -- Narrative / Paul Collins -- Ideology / Beate Pongratz-Leisten -- Ritual / Carolyn Nakamura -- Agency / Sophy Downes -- Aesthetics / Gebhard J. Selz -- Statuary and Reliefs / Claudia E. Suter -- Glyptic / Adelheid Otto -- Religious Architecture / Jean M. Evans -- Palaces and Elite Houses / Andreas Schachner -- Rock Reliefs and Landscape Monuments / Ömür Harmansa̧h -- Reconstructing Artistic Environments / Mehmet-Ali Ataç -- The Ancient Near East and Egypt / Betsy M. Bryan -- The Ancient Near East and the Bronze Age Aegean / Marian H. Feldman -- Near Eastern Art in the Iron Age Mediterranean / James Whitley -- Archaeology and the Art of the Ancient Near East / D. T. Potts -- Cultural Heritage across the Middle East, Ancient and Modern / Geoff Emberling and Katharyn Hanson
Summary:
This book covers the aesthetic traditions of Mesopotamia, Iran, Anatolia, and the Levant, from Neolithic times to the end of the Achaemenid Persian Empire around 330 BCE. It describes and examines the field from a variety of critical perspectives: across approaches and interpretive frameworks, key explanatory concepts, materials and selected media and formats, and zones of interaction. This important work also addresses both traditional and emerging categories of material, intellectual perspectives, and research priorities. The book covers geography and chronology, context and setting, medium and scale, while acknowledging the diversity of regional and cultural traditions and the uneven survival of evidence