Free Book of the Week: Swords

The first part of my short history of swords seems to have been a hit. So, this weekend's book picks will offer more information on that topic! These selections come from the online library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For more information on the Met's fantastic Arms & Armor collection, visit the page dedicated to their Arms & Armor department, or visit the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History and take a stroll through the topics. This excellent resource offers short, academic articles on the history surrounding pieces in the Met's collection, and usually does a pretty solid job of putting objects in context.

The first "book" is actually an article in the Metropolitan Museum Journal. It offers more comprehensive information on Islamic blades, and as an added bonus, describes Islamic helmets. The article is downloadable by itself, or the entire volume is available for free, by visiting the Met Publications record: here.

The second book is downloadable as a PDF file. The "Arms and Armor from the Permanent Collection" edition of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, has rich, gorgeous pictures of objects from the collection. This includes some impressive swords in various states of battle readiness.

For those seeking tips on perfecting their thrust while continuing to look fabulous in a tri-corner hat, we have The Academy of the Sword: Illustrated Fencing 1500-1800. The illustrations alone are worth a look-through. The third book of the week is available to read online via Google Books.

Enjoy your weekend!

Image of a man & woman fencing,
from the Bain Collection in the Library of Congress.
Image in the Public Domain.

Free Book of the Week: Buddhist Art on the Silk Route

This will doubtless be a topic we return to again and again on this blog, as I am utterly enchanted by the history of the network of trade routes traditionally termed "the Silk Road." Spices, luxury goods, and religion were not the only things traded along those oasis lined highways. Civilizations were defined by the interactions and ideas supported by the Road. The amalgam of traditions borne by traders and pilgrims affected art in the civilizations involved for centuries.
Buddhism is a religion that was kindled into international life along the Silk Route. It took off in some way in nearly every culture it cam in contact with, and morphed into a system of beliefs that worked for them. This week, I have found a purely visual book from the Getty Research Institute. This Tibetan Pattern Book provides the traditional proportions of iconic Buddhist art in Tibet. For those interested in more information on the art styles Along the Ancient Silk Routes, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has made their publication on it free to read online, and also available for download.

A photo of a Buddhist dance,
captured on exhibition to Tibet by Ernst Schafer.
via the Bundersarchiv

"Pile Dwelling Fever"

As children, most of us dream of finding treasure in our attics, or in our back yard. At least, I know I did. Television programs like Antique's Roadshow feed the horror vacui we suffer from in our lives with stories of junk turned to treasure over the course of a couple of minutes. News stories about some farmer, elsewhere, or, more tantalizing, right up the road, finding a hugely important horde of gold coins or the like fuels a culture of finder's keeper's.

Beyond hoarding, there is a social status that comes with collecting. Especially when it comes to artifacts. They symbolize more than an appreciation for a time in history. Artifacts in the private collection become stories of adventure, exemplary of wealth, and hopefully, the beginning of a legacy within an institution. But what happens once your artifacts get to wherever their going?

The Swiss Lake Dwellings

In the winter of 1853 and 1854, water levels in Switzerland dropped. This revealed prehistoric artifacts and "pile dwellings" that were known to have been built their between 3,000 and 6,400 years ago. The houses are called Pfaulbau in German.

The people that lived there so many millenia ago had an extremely varied diet. They hunted and gathered, as one would expect of such an old European settlement, but also fished in the lakes they built their homes on, practiced agriculture, and herded animals. Some of the most exciting finds are the preserved types of domesticated plants and obviously prepared foodstuffs (such as charred apples). On top of good eats, the bog-like conditions of the lake bed preserved organic material of incredible complexity, such as wood and even textiles.

The appearance of valuable cultural artifacts brought out archaeologists and treasure hunters alike. Granted, it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between these two groups of people. The sudden fad by locals of collecting artifacts from the unsubmerging sites was named "Pfahlbaufieber" in German (pile dwelling fever). The artifact fishermen themselves were called "Pfahlbaufischer."

Portrait of Jakob Messikomer, 1902
via Wikimedia Commons

The Pfahlbaufischer were paid good money for their finds. Amateur archaeologists like Jakob Messikommer ensured that finds treasure seekers might pass up, such as the remains of food and other organic material, were collected and preserved. In the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s, there were several collectors that donated their collections to museums for further research and to be shared with the public, who were just wild about the Swiss lake dwellers.

The Pfahlbauten were extremely exciting because they suddenly presented a picture of life where death had previously held all the answers. Before this, the archaeological record on prehistoric Europe had been filled in by grave and military sites. On top of this, most research covered times after Roman occupation. The Pfahlbau gave Europe an independent historical identity. As Armando Mombelli of swissinfo so eloquently put it, "history no longer began with the Romans."

History in the Basement

However, at the turn of the century, Pfahlbaufieber waned. Information on the lake dwellers was relegated to that unobtainable world of academia. Museums in the United States had been the recipients of several collections, but after the beginning of World War I, all research stopped. With public interest at nil, acquisitions of European material from prehistory stopped also.

Unfortunately, it seems the wars of the 20th century created a bias against German-speaking parts of Europe; even those regions that held keys to the ancestry of the continent. Today, institutions like the Milwaukee Public Museum and the University of Glasgow are leading the way by offering information on their collections from the Robenhausen village online, but it took a century to get back in the public eye.

J. Messikomer & team digging at Robenhausen
via Wikimedia Commons

Sources (not linked above)

Arnold, Bettina. "The Lake-Dwelling Diaspora: Museums, Private Collectors, and the Evolution of Ethics in Archaeology." In The Oxford Handbook of Wetland Archaeology, edited by Francesco Menotti and Aidan O'Sullivan, 875-886. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Free Book of the Week:

There are a ton of amazing free books online! Old and otherwise. Every Friday, I plan to post some weekend reading.

This week we have a particularly delectable morsel of archaic medical documentation. I made the dubious decision to research the exact method of use of a pair of bone forceps found in a surgeon's house at Pompeii. This led me to the digital exhibition of surgical instruments from ancient Rome put up by the University of Viriginia. (Available here: http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/romansurgical/) While it has beautiful images of the objects, and good information in the minimal text, it is ultimately too easy to be lost in the horror of it all. Naturally, after retching at the collection of Vaginal Specula, I could hardly scroll past the Rectal Speculum and Bone Levers. Nor could I ignore the overall fearsome shape of the Male Catheter, which I learned elsewhere is probably made from copper of bronze. Silver examples have also been described; as well as attempts using reed and quills (which would have had a more difficult time surviving over long periods, archaeologically.)

Roman medical tools. Try to guess what they were for!
(Image in the Public Domain)

On to the free reading! My investigations brought me to the 1816 publication A Dictionary of Practical Surgery: comprehending all the most interesting improvements from the earliest times down to the present period: an account of the instruments and remedies employed in surgery: the etymology and signification of the principal terms: and, numerous references to ancient and modern works forming a catalogue of surgical literature arranged according to subject. The text is certainly comprehensive, and extremely useful in destroying word count when referenced in a research paper.

If you are the type of sick individual that relishes disgusting detail, horrifying history, or are simply looking to improve your Georgian era medical vocabulary, it can be viewed and even downloaded from the Internet Archive (where I think it is easier to read), or Google books (where it is easier to search for topics like "necrosis" or "uvula amputation" ( location on the "VAG" page).

A second text this week is the more pithy title Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind. Historically, our understanding of mental disorders and faculties has led to inhumane treatments and madly misplaced assumptions. This misunderstanding extends into the modern age. However, this particular book was interesting to me because of its use of "noble savage" tropes in identifying the causes of derangement. Specifically, on page 65, Rush (the author) says,

Certain states of society, and certain opinions, pursuits, amusements, and forms of government have a considerable influence in predisposing to derangement. It is a rare disease among savages. ... Infidelity and atheism are frequent causes of it in christian countries."

I hope these entertain!

 

On Owning Monuments

National Archives and Records Administration

George Clooney's Monuments Men should have been a victory for art history nerds everywhere: it shed light on a group of World War II heroes previously unknown to many, and was followed by a well intentioned demand by Clooney for the return of looted artifacts on display at the British Museum. For many, however, it fell short. First of all, the film was not very good. On top of a poorly written and realized script, the film failed to recognize is that many of the 345 participants in the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program were women. It opts instead to follow a fictionalized female, meant to represent several real life characters.

Excluding females and other minorities from art history is an huge issue. But let's talk about Clooney's request of the British Museum, first.

The Elgin Marbles

A section of the Elgin Marbles. (From Wikimedia Commons)

It might be surprising to some to learn that many of the collections you have come to think of as defining the realm of art history can be considered looted. Such is the case with the "Parthenon Marbles" (or Elgin Marbles). The "Marbles" are the frieze sections of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. They were obtained by a Lord Elgin while he was working as an ambassador for Britain to the Ottoman Empire. Today, the museum stands by its rightful ownership of the Marbles by citing a document that has since been lost. According to Elgin at the time, he received legal permission to remove the frieze from the culturally important Greek building from the Ottoman government.
When thinking about this instance, it is important to keep in mind two things. First of all, the document in question cannot be found. Copies supposedly exist, but even these are possibly hoaxes. Secondly, this region of Greece was under foreign control at the time. This means that, did the government give permission to have these elements removed, the permission did not come from the culture that the history of the architecture belonged to. Thus today, Greece is demanding the return of their cultural artifacts on the grounds that they were illegally removed. Britain's saying no. And that's how Imperialism got it done.

How 247 feet of outdoor decoration from a 2,500 year old acropolis could end up 2,000 miles away from its home might seem suspect to those outside the museum atmosphere. The museum's refusal to return the pieces might appear even more heinous. However, this is actually a completely normal occurrence in the history of Western institutions. That's what this blog is going to be all about. The history of the collections of Western museums is fraught with suspect policies, thievery, and a healthy dose of seasoned adventurers who got it all done.

The Art Historian in Pop Culture

When I tell people that I am going in to Art History, I most often get a joke about becoming Indiana Jones. While I doubt I could currently outrun a boulder, the historical image of the people retrieving art objects is not far off from Professor Jones. Adventure in unknown and exotic lands is part of the Imperial Art Historical Mythos for a reason. However, the adventurers I will be talking about often enough will fall more in line with Laura Croft: independently wealthy, well educated people with singular interests in the history. Dual wielding pistols might even come into play more often than you think.
The people that compiled the art collections of the West were action heroes in the most basic sense. They had to survive on their wits and knowledge far from home. That being said, they are historically a privileged set with entirely dubious morals.

About Me & This Blog

For those of you that do not know me from previous work at Fempop, and my Babe in Armor Blogs, an introduction is necessary. I am a college drop out about to finish my first degree in Art History. I have an especial interest in the history of China, academically, and have done work for a couple of museums, including giving tours and research.

While I made a small name for myself as an internet commentator and reviewer of Nerd Culture, I have since replaced pop culture journalism with genre fiction. I operate from a strict moral code that includes, but is not limited to, Feminism with a capital 'F' (the intersectional kind). My writing is entirely biased, though I try to make my opinions informed ones.

This blog will explore the biased nature of art history. More importantly, it will tell the story of famous collections and the people that "discovered" them. I hope to supply arguments where I feel they must be made, and facts where I feel the reader should pick a side for themselves, or simply be informed. Each post will have sources linked in the articles, or cited at them end.

Looking forward to going on some adventures with you all!

--Josephine Maria--