BMCR 2009.01.30, Cynthia S. Colburn, Reading a Dynamic Canvas

Cynthia S. Colburn, Maura K. Heyn (ed.), Reading a Dynamic Canvas:
Adornment in the Ancient Mediterranean World.  Newcastle:  Cambridge
Scholars, 2008.  Pp. x, 230.  ISBN 9781847184061.  L34.99.

Reviewed by Liza Cleland, University of Edinburgh
([email protected])
Word count:  1730 words
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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

The legacy of early twentieth-century historical clothing studies is
one of authors arguing often about details, while assuming a very great
deal about clothing and adornment. Focus on the 'exceptional' (in the
absence of systematic understandings relevant to each culture) has done
the field few favours. Despite later advances, particularly increasing
sophistication of theoretical and cross-cultural analyses, this legacy
still casts a long shadow. Therefore, it is heartening to see this
volume of essays, which is a valuable attempt to address the peculiar
dynamism of adornment as an aspect of material and social culture. It
is even better to see overt and carefully considered definition and use
of comparative assemblages in doing so, rather than statements on
exceptions. Further, the volume as a whole makes useful approaches to
reading dress as a subject of art. Though the focus of the essays is
tight, this enhances their relevance and utility, rather than
detracting in any way from their contributions to the fields of
clothing, material culture and wider scholarship. Clear arguments reach
interesting conclusions, and in each case context is ably explained for
non-specialists.

The slim volume is physically pleasing. The illustrations, though
relatively sparse, are well placed, and the text is well produced, with
only a few minor typographical errors. The index is effective. I should
have preferred a balance between Harvard in-text references and
footnotes, rather than the latter alone, and an integrated
bibliography, but this is perhaps simply a personal preference. The
essays themselves are, without exception, both innovative and carefully
argued, and I very much look forward to extended treatments of all the
subjects. Overall, the different subjects flow well and complement each
other. Both the individual essays, and the subject in general, are ably
introduced by Colburn and Heyn's introductory chapter, 'Bodily
Adornment and Identity'.

There is no doubt that, as they claim, this volume fills (or rather,
begins to do so) a gap in existing scholarship on the cultures of the
ancient Mediterranean. This introductory chapter provides a good basic
outline of general dress scholarship, as well as the themes explored in
the volume. While assessment of the 'dynamic canvas' as less than
easily legible is certainly accurate, more attention to the theoretical
impossibility of definitive (or singular) readings of adornment would
have been welcome. Indeed, this would have gone some way towards
elucidating the unique theoretical and methodological challenges
claimed (but not described) here. Nevertheless, this chapter is a good
introduction, which accurately reflects the content of the volume.

Colburn's 'Exotica and the Body in the Minoan and Mycenaean Worlds'
does well in outlining and elaborating upon the flexibility of dress
and adornment as means of social construction and communication. The
insistence on drawing a major distinction between extant evidence, and
adornment in life, is perhaps natural to archaeology (and certainly
recurs in these essays) but could well have been addressed as one of
the unique challenges of this type of evidence and analysis. After all,
evidence of memorialized adornment is better testimony to the
conception of adornment by contemporaries (how people in the past
addressed this dynamic canvas) than the inherently partial data
provided by an ideal 'snapshot' of adornment in use. And there are
theoretical problems with the very existence of such an ideal: even
now, but certainly in evidence from the past.

Still, this is a minor quibble: this chapter effectively addresses its
subject cultures, as well as more general considerations such as the
importance of rarity as a signifier, and the potential of adornment to
establish connections between cultures at the same time as carrying
culture-specific meanings. It also makes valuable points about the
capacity for imported technologies and techniques to remain exotic even
once 'known'; evoking or symbolizing social memory. More could perhaps
have been done to explore the adornment aspect; why was it important
that these things were worn, as opposed to other types of display?
However, this is probably as much to do with the fact that the argument
led me to desire a deeper treatment than afforded by a volume of this
size.

Similarly, the premise of Chapin's 'The Lady of the Landscape: An
Investigation of Aegean Costuming and the Xeste 3 Frescoes' would be
fascinating to see extended. The contention that dress (especially in
art) can communicate privileged social status and distinct identity,
without necessarily indicating exceptionally high rank, is a rare one.
It should certainly be more commonly considered, particularly, as here,
in relation to context within artistic programmes or projects. The
illustrated typology of garment depictions is most welcome, as is the
attention to how dress associates as well as differentiating. The
recognition that costume distinctions generally express more than
wealth is both refreshing and methodologically valuable. Aegean
costuming seems a perennially disputed field: regardless, this argument
deserves wide attention.

Guralnick's 'Fabric Patterns as Symbols of Status in the Near East and
Early Greece' has a similarly detailed argument, making good use of
cross-cultural evidence, and of the analytical potential of depictions
of complete hierarchies to illuminate their individual members. There
is a very welcome outline of the complexity of fabric techniques,
although more on the varied uses of common techniques in different
social contexts would have been welcome. Although the comparative
material from Early Greece is useful in making this point, it suffers
somewhat in the comparison, as its artistic context, and nature as a
body of evidence, are so different. Guralnick is quick to call Greek
patterns decorative rather than meaningful: I should have preferred a
more detailed argument on this point, embracing the programmatic
differences between the earlier and later examples used. However, the
arguments from the Near Eastern evidence are all one could want.

Castor's 'Grave Garb: Archaic and Classical Macedonian Funerary
Costume' engages with the idea of the adorned corpse as 'canvas'
(rather than problematic source) and makes some excellent comparisons
between the Macedonian material evidence and the Attic artistic corpus.
These should invite much further study and thought. Again, the outline
of the context for non-specialists is excellent, while the attention to
the use of grave assemblages to ascribe gender is welcome. The detailed
case study of a grave grouping reflecting ritual status is well
considered and very useful. Material like this chapter will be
instrumental in moving the study of adornment 'beyond the gleam of gold
. . . to explore the changing ways . . . elite[s] signaled their
cultural identity and alliances' (p.141).

Gawlinski's '"Fashioning" Initiates: Dress at the Mysteries'
effectively introduces the flexibilities of dress. It also makes
excellent use of wider material and scholarship to illuminate a
specific piece of direct inscriptional evidence, while making important
points about the potential of dress and adornment to signal different
types of status simultaneously, and of appearance as a visible index
(accurate or otherwise) for behaviour. Meanwhile, it also manages to
convey the interconnectedness of dress with other forms of culture
(e.g. links between lamellae and wreaths, binding and magic). It very
usefully emphasizes and integrates the concept of dynamism as
fundamental to how adornment can and should be considered as evidence.

Heyn's 'Sacerdotal Activities and Parthian Dress in Roman Palmyra'
properly rejects ideas about 'fanciness' as the operative aspect of
dress, in favour of its 'complex social situation in a cross cultural
world', p. 171. It also makes the valuable point that seeing dress
purely in terms of ethnic identity is an equally facile approach.
However, it might have been worth exploring how both these 'motives'
for dress, actually privilege, and so attract, the outsider perspective
of modern scholars. It is often hard, but always valuable, to recognize
how little we know: few sources confront us with this as much as dress
in art. The close attention here to context, to programmatic features
of the assemblage of evidence (funerary reliefs depicting 'banquets')
and to specifics rather than blanket generalities, goes a long way
towards remedying this.

Finally, Rosten's 'Appearance, Diversity, and Identity in Roman
Britain' is an exceptional, detailed examination of different
assemblages of extant evidence, and their potential when analysed in
logical, consistent, yet creative ways. The emphasis on 'scales of
approach', on artifacts as contributory to overall appearance, and on
inter-relationships between loss and depository contexts, should make a
vast difference to how we consider Roman evidence. This essay counters
the persistent tendency to concentrate on one aspect (e.g. regional
identity) of this inherently multivalent material. However, while the
converse can hardly be established, I feel it would be hard to argue
that adornment can be used only for self-decoration, past or not.

This final point indicates my only real concern with the volume as a
whole. This is simply that I find these essays making more of a
contribution to the wider field of clothing studies (textiles, jewelry,
grooming; representations and remains) than they themselves claim or
indeed allow. In every case, the closely argued conclusions could
usefully have been extended to wider aspects of scholarship, to the
benefit of both. Instead, underlying assumptions (about the role and
basic nature of adornment, a dynamic canvas to be read) seemed rather
tentative. This is a shame, if only for the fact that this accessible
and useful volume itself deserves to be widely read, by students as
well as researchers, in various fields. In any case, I should have
welcomed an afterword, drawing together the wider issues both posed and
resolved by the essays taken together. But again, this is perhaps
simply reflective of the fact that this is an interesting volume, which
whets the appetite for more from its editors and contributors.

Table of Contents


List of Figures
List of Tables
Map of the Aegean and Near East
Introduction
Bodily Adornment and Identity
Cynthia S. Colburn and Maura K. Heyn
Chapter One, Exotica and the Body in the Minoan and Mycenaean Worlds
Cynthia S. Colburn
Chapter Two, The Lady of the Landscape: An Investigation of Aegean
Costuming
and the Xeste 3 Frescoes
Anne P. Chapin
Chapter Three, Fabric Patterns as Symbols of Status in the Near East
and Early Greece
Eleanor Guralnick
Chapter Four, Grave Garb: Archaic and Classical Macedonian Funerary
Costume
Alexis Q.Castor
Chapter Five, "Fashioning" Initiates: Dress at the Mysteries
Laura Gawlinski
Chapter Six, Sacerdotal Activities and Parthian Dress in Roman Palmyra
Maura K. Heyn
Chapter Seven, Appearance, Diversity, and Identity in Roman Britain
Judith Rosten
List of Contributors
Index