Iconography - Science topic

Part III. Critical Art: New Ways of Seeing Style and Confguration in Prehistoric Iconography, pp. 223-238, Vernon James Knight Jr.

Selected Papers from the Annual Meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society, Richmond, Virginia March, 2011 Robert Shanafelt, Series Editor

the author starts with: "The iconography of ancient art has to do with making propositions about what that art depicts. Stylistic studies, in contrast, make propositions about the sharedness of formal properties with other objects. Tese can be done separately. Although many iconographic analyses of ancient art proceed with little or no consideration of style, I argue that the two modes of analysis are interdependent. I offer a methodological case that stylistic analysis is logically prior to iconography study in the domain of ancient art...", the reason is why deals with images depicted under the iconography of ancient art as the point of view stylistic analysis an prerequisite under symbolical and athropological cognition to be depicted, to help to interpret what is depicted... Iconography transfers representational images and whatever they refer to cultural models, which rule styles that are going to be applied. Contemporaneous theories of art have in common with ancient cultures that they were products of artists whether known whether anonymus. The study of styles and the representations are imagery and skills to represent as trusthworthy as possible. The sources of iconographic interpretation are mainly stylistic traits of execution and layout.

You could get a good estimate of the types of things in a soil for the purposes of further research but you could not say with certainty, especially as the color changes depending on heat during firing. Check out Prudence Rice Pottery Analysis.

This type of representation is relatively common in Franco-Cantabrian Paleolithic art. In the cave of Tito Bustillo (Spain), for example, there is an area known as the "Camarín de las Vulvas".

We could look at icons from two very different perspectives: social and personal (many other in-between scales could also be taken into account).

Regarding the former, when we talk about architectural icons, comes to mind landmark or famous buildings. They are supposed to be known by many people, otherwise they wouldn't function as landmarks. People use them as a base or referring point to find and address other places in cities, rural, natural or other environments. For any reasons many people know them. People agree that they are important for some reasons (size, social, economic, historical importance, etc.)

When it comes to the personal perspective, icons might be totally different. They might be hidden. They might be signs in individuals' minds. They might be secret images or sounds or smells or etc. that one remembers as the symbols or benchmarks when s/he thinks about or imagines an environment. Maybe they talk about them; maybe they don't.

Hi francisco;

There are some good books about chicks rearing for instance in peregrine falcons. Did you check the Peregrine falcon book of Dr Iñigo Zuberogoitia? There are also some interesting papers about parental investment...

Further information exist about other taxa of the same family.

Best regards

Jon

With a MyJSTOR account, you can read up to six articles each month for free.

It's not mey area

Lode a similar concept to the French usage is also used in English with the tugging on a beard a symbol of dominance over a rival, I seem to recall that Robin Hood does it in a few legends and also I think Hollywood used it in the Errol Flynn version.  A variant on this is probably the language used to describe the damage Drake did to the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, he 'singed the King of Spain's beard'.  Both these usages and the French are probably descended from the pagan Germanic association of beards and virility, something vividly illustrated in Njal's saga where lack of a beard was used as a taunt and this was regarded as sufficiently offensive to justify killing the taunter.  The beard as a symbol of virility means that to pull a man's beard is virtually the same as groping his genitals.  Interestingly the Rallinge figure is simultaneously stroking his beard and masturbating, also interesting is that the Rallinge figure and this church carving have very similar hand positions leading me to wonder whether or not the church figure is copied from a pagan original that was indeed performing both actions.

There is also a practical aspect to this in that in combat grabbing a man's beard can give one the advantage by enabling one to pull an opponent off balance.  In this case I do not think that this is relevant to this figure since it clearly depicts a man tugging on his own beard ala the old 'fertility' images.

However, your comment on the Dutch usage makes me wonder whether there is a Biblical version where tearing at the beard is a sign of grief/powerlessness, unfortunately I do not have any versions to hand except for the King James which I would not trust to render such details accurately.  It might be interesting if something with access to a good Hebrew or Greek version could confirm this since this might allow for an interpretation of this figure as either humility or despair, or at least a person in this.

Dear Anupama, 

Thank you for your response. On your superlative for Dr. Pattanaik - I would simply like to state that while his work is gravely important in terms of filling gaps within the study of folk myths and rituals, his academic credibility and analysis is still rather lacking; I would suggest reading 'Water & Womanhood' by Anne Feldhaus (1995) <https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/water-and-womanhood-9780195092837?cc=in&lang=en&> to gain a much more comprehensive and analytic view on such themes. 

Thank you Dolores. Are there any theories/methodologies that can be used to help develop icons that have the 'Flower sermon' effect?