“…When such views are not based on culture-historical reasoning, this Germanic ‘essence’ is presumed to have come from the metalwork's role in conveying cosmologies and ideologies that refer to the ‘Germanic’ world, such as pagan myths or migration narratives preserved in Late Roman texts. These cosmological frameworks supposedly provide a cultural coherence that lends these decorative styles their ‘Germanic’ quality (Behr 2000, 2007; Hedeager 2000, 2011; Behr & Pestell 2014: 68; Martin 2015: 154–55; Pesch 2017). While there are countless examples of this line of argument, Hedeager (2000: 37–38; also argued with little alteration in Hedeager 2011: 37–41, 50–58) is fairly typical and widely cited; her understanding is based upon the assumption that material symbolism is an act of expression for the signalling of identity, providing a methodological bridge for material culture to be interpreted through the use of the textual evidence.…”
Section: The ‘Breath Of Odin’? Zoomorphic Art Stylesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…These cosmological frameworks supposedly provide a cultural coherence that lends these decorative styles their ‘Germanic’ quality (Behr 2000, 2007; Hedeager 2000, 2011; Behr & Pestell 2014: 68; Martin 2015: 154–55; Pesch 2017). While there are countless examples of this line of argument, Hedeager (2000: 37–38; also argued with little alteration in Hedeager 2011: 37–41, 50–58) is fairly typical and widely cited; her understanding is based upon the assumption that material symbolism is an act of expression for the signalling of identity, providing a methodological bridge for material culture to be interpreted through the use of the textual evidence. Figure 3.Great square-headed brooch with Style I decoration from Chessell Down, Isle of Wight (late fifth century AD, no scale was provided in the original version of this figure; photograph courtesy of The British Museum).Figure 4.Saucer brooch with Style I decoration from Aston, Berkshire (no scale was provided in the original version of this figure; photograph courtesy of The British Museum).Figure 5.Cruciform brooch with a Style I animal-head terminal and bird-head lappets, Lakenheath, Suffolk (late fifth/early sixth century AD; photograph courtesy of The British Museum).…”
Section: The ‘Breath Of Odin’? Zoomorphic Art Stylesmentioning
“…When such views are not based on culture-historical reasoning, this Germanic ‘essence’ is presumed to have come from the metalwork's role in conveying cosmologies and ideologies that refer to the ‘Germanic’ world, such as pagan myths or migration narratives preserved in Late Roman texts. These cosmological frameworks supposedly provide a cultural coherence that lends these decorative styles their ‘Germanic’ quality (Behr 2000, 2007; Hedeager 2000, 2011; Behr & Pestell 2014: 68; Martin 2015: 154–55; Pesch 2017). While there are countless examples of this line of argument, Hedeager (2000: 37–38; also argued with little alteration in Hedeager 2011: 37–41, 50–58) is fairly typical and widely cited; her understanding is based upon the assumption that material symbolism is an act of expression for the signalling of identity, providing a methodological bridge for material culture to be interpreted through the use of the textual evidence.…”
Section: The ‘Breath Of Odin’? Zoomorphic Art Stylesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…These cosmological frameworks supposedly provide a cultural coherence that lends these decorative styles their ‘Germanic’ quality (Behr 2000, 2007; Hedeager 2000, 2011; Behr & Pestell 2014: 68; Martin 2015: 154–55; Pesch 2017). While there are countless examples of this line of argument, Hedeager (2000: 37–38; also argued with little alteration in Hedeager 2011: 37–41, 50–58) is fairly typical and widely cited; her understanding is based upon the assumption that material symbolism is an act of expression for the signalling of identity, providing a methodological bridge for material culture to be interpreted through the use of the textual evidence. Figure 3.Great square-headed brooch with Style I decoration from Chessell Down, Isle of Wight (late fifth century AD, no scale was provided in the original version of this figure; photograph courtesy of The British Museum).Figure 4.Saucer brooch with Style I decoration from Aston, Berkshire (no scale was provided in the original version of this figure; photograph courtesy of The British Museum).Figure 5.Cruciform brooch with a Style I animal-head terminal and bird-head lappets, Lakenheath, Suffolk (late fifth/early sixth century AD; photograph courtesy of The British Museum).…”
Section: The ‘Breath Of Odin’? Zoomorphic Art Stylesmentioning
“…Similarly, the newly emerging central places in northern Europe were characterized by establishing control over religious rituals. 39 The visual language in imperial Rome, as in migration-period Scandinavia, was imbued with religious symbols and images, pointing to the intricate connections between politics, religion and art in these periods. According to Zanker, the evidence that the new imperial art spread quickly in all the provinces of the Roman Empire cannot be explained by a central authority in Rome imposing the same recognizable imperial style throughout the Empire.…”
In the fifth and early sixth centuries, numerous objects in northern Europe were decorated in a particularly consistent visual style ('Germanic Animal Style I'). This article argues that we should treat these images not simply as representations of cultural notions, but as an active part in the process of creating a shared elite identity, formed during a particular period of historical crisis.
“…In the Iron Age, property in objects is less well documented, but it came to emphasize personal contact with the expanding Greek and Roman Empires (see Hedeager, 1992). At this time, property served as a means to define prestige and may well have been held as inalienable objects closely associated with their owner (Hedeager, 2011). Stimulated by Roman economic expansion, however, market-like conditions and coinage suggest increased trade in commodities, representing the alienation of consumer goods.…”
Section: Phase 3: Origins Of Political Economy With Overarching Prmentioning
The evolution of property rights has been of great interest to legal scholars, economists, and anthropologists from at least the seminal philosophical thoughts of Locke (1689) and the expanding knowledge of property among traditional peoples (Maine, 1861; Demsetz, 1967). Based largely on first principles, property systems have been modeled as unintended consequences of costs-benefits choices by individuals and as intentional design of codes by governing bodies (Krier, 2009). These evolutionary formulations provide logically consistent and pleasing outlines of the past, but they would seem to demand empirical validation. It is broadly felt by social scientists, however, that 'because property began in prehistoric times, no one can really prove what actually happened, as a matter of historical truth' (Krier, 2009: 9). Without written documentation, can we know with any certainty about the history of property? I hope to show that the robust material record provided by archaeology allows reasonable evaluations of how property systems developed. An evolution theory of property can be formulated using a combination of the ethnographic and archaeological records to test theoretical concepts from anthropology, economics, political economy, and legal theory. Following the logic of Flannery and Marcus (2012), I combine ethnographic and archaeological evidence to describe property relationships in traditional societies and how they developed through prehistory. Cross-culturally, many forms of property have existed (Strathern, 1999) probably as a continuum from identification or association with things to social and political possession to ownership enforced by the rule of written law (Hodder, 2012). The 20th-century archives of ethnographies provide vivid descriptions of alternative ways that property operated outside of modern states, and property relationships can be arranged into pseudo-evolutionary patterns, hypotheses really, that link sociopolitical complexity to particular developmental trajectories in line with the views of legal and economic thinkers (
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