BRILL

Parables; Bernard of Clairvaux's mapping of spiritual topography.

Though he traveled much, Cistercian monk Bernard (1090-1153) never visited the Holy Land, so he was free to envision Jerusalem as he thought fit. Bruun (Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals, U. of Copenhagen) explains how his topography of the city was composed of a range of theologico-literary topoi and included such features as the Garden of Eden, Babylon, and the wilderness. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Phrygian rock-cut shrines; structure, function, and cult practice.

Berndt-Ersöz explores Phrygian cult and cult practices through a detailed analysis of rock-cut monuments in their preserved context in central Anatolia, and in combination with other Phrygian religious material groups. She draws on already published and recorded material, partly at least to indicate where and how further surveys and excavations should be undertaken to clarify issues she raises. An underlying question is the role of the Phrygians in the formative stage of the Iron Age and subsequent centuries. The study is updated from her 2003 Ph.D. dissertation in classical archaeology and ancient history at the University of Stockholm. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Queen as king; politics and architectural propaganda in twelfth-century Spain.

San Isidoro de Léon is a royally-sponsored monastic church, one of the best known monuments surviving from Romanesque Spain. Yet Martin (medieval art history, U. of Arizona) notes that scholars have never given the full site its due because they found it difficult to date the buildings and name its patron. This study traces the construction history of San Isidoro and determines the identities of its patrons, including the remarkable Urraca, Queen of Léo-Castialla, who ruled in her own right. Martin traces the history of the site and its growth to a major site of pilgrimage, the elements of monarchic power introduced into the building as symbols of Urraca's self-identity, and the complex ways in which Urraca and other political women made themselves known in stone. This contains over 100 well-chosen monochrome and color photographs supporting Martin's claims. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Roman villas in Central Italy; a social and economic history.

Marzano (archaeology, Oxford U.) analyzes wide range of texts and artifacts to find how elite villas in Roman central Italy related to their socio-economic surroundings. Through close observations of such elements as the placement and quality of slave quarters and intense study of the putative second century Roman economic crisis, Marzano goes far beyond typical assumptions about the moral choices villa owners made, models of operation, and amount and type of interaction between the villas and their complex networks of supporting enterprises. Marzano closes with a fascinating catalog of sites with commentary. The illustrations and maps are superior. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Social and political life in late antiquity.

Archaeologists, historians, and scholars of classical literature investigate the social world of individuals in late antiquity and integrate the study of social groupings within the trajectory of political change during the period. Among their topics are material culture on the western frontier, monuments and memory in the Forum Romanum, the control of public space and the transformation of the early Medieval town of Brescia, towards an interactive topography of Dark Age Rome, middle class houses, the urban poor, and social and cultural time. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Subjects and objects; art, essentialism, and abstraction.

Strayer (philosophy, Indiana U.-Purdue U.) presents a philosophical consideration of the limits of abstraction in art, but in order to make a proper job of it, he finds he must reflect widely on the philosophy of subjects — who make and apprehend the art — and objects — the art itself and whatever it depicts. He is also working on a series of artworks exploring the limits of abstraction. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Temple consecration rituals in ancient India.

Revising her 2006 doctoral dissertation for Leiden University, the Netherlands, Slaczka examines three important construction ritual of the Hindu tradition: laying the first stones, placing the consecrated deposit, and placing the crowning bricks. She draws heavily on the rich accounts in many Sanskrit texts on architecture and religion that date from the seventh to the sixteenth centuries. Chief among them is the Kasyapasilpa, a South Indian treatise on art and architecture and ritual written about the 11th-12th centuries. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Text, image and song in transdisciplinary dialogue; proceedings. (CD-ROM included)

Many of these papers come from field work by the Interdisciplinary Research Unit of the Austrian Science Fund. Papers include an analysis of art history relative to transdisciplinary research in the Nako Sacred Compound, an introduction to the Western Himalayan Archive in Vienna, an analysis of cultural preservation and research in central Tibet in the Ke ru lha khang, and examinations of fragments of pramana texts, a manuscript of the Gondhla Kanjur, historical inscriptions at Wanla and a narrative composition found in the Main Temple at Tabo. Others cover art of the court reflecting eastern Iranian elements, methods of preserving oral traditions, and songs in Tibetan recorded in Spiti and Upper Kinnaur. Three papers describe the structure, methods and advantages of transdisciplinary research and are based on the interactive dialogue of scholars attending the seminar. The illustrations are especially well-chosen and the color plates are on the accompanying CD-ROM. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

West over sea; studies in Scandinavian sea-borne expansion and settlement before 1300: a Festschrift in honor of Dr. Barbara E. Crawford.

Crawford is honored in this volume with 30 essays by former students and colleagues on topics concerning early Scandinavian travel and settlement. History, culture, religion, archaeology, and place names and language are the broad themes, with a common focus on material culture. Individual topics including sculpture from the Faroe Islands, Scandinavian naming systems in the Hebrides, the Church of St. Clement in Oslo, and the Celtic sea route of the Vikings. The resulting tribute provides a fitting 20-year update to Crawford's Scandinavian Scotland (1988, Leicester U. Press), which set the standard for the field. A group of plates present b&w photos of the works, sites, and monuments discussed. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Woman and art in early modern Latin America.

McIntyre (art history, U. of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio) and Phillips (art history, U. of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg) offer a collection of 17 essays on the visual representation of women in early modern Latin America. Noticing the omission of art and architecture of this period in feminist art historical publications, they sought to compile a volume that combines feminist approaches with interdisciplinary methodologies as a means to expand understanding of the topic. Essays are grouped according to forms of representation in places such as Mexico, Peru, and Spain. Some b&w illustrations are included. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)