Căutare Avansată

Caută în Domenii

Căutare Detaliată

Semn, simbol, decor – perspective asupra băncilor de cult din neoliticul şi epoca cuprului din sud-estul Europei

  • Subiect: „In this study we aim to take a brief look over a fixed piece of furniture, the bench, which we find in various structures of worship in South-East Europe, looking for the contexts, decor, signs and symbols related with this. The dilemma that arises is linked to the difficulty to differentiate between two aspects of the prehistoric world. The question is how much is functional and how much is ritual in case of the fixed parts, such as the bench inside Neolithic buildings? Of course the context of discovery and its associated objects are very important, but these alone can not provide absolute answers in this case. The inventory nearby the benches might suggest plausible answers on their functionality, but rarely the entire inventory from a specific building is analised. We tried to find as many benches from ritual buildings as possible. The analysis that we propose is a descriptive and statistical numerical indices related to frequency, types and forms of worship location inside buildings. The most interesting type of bench is accounted at Çatalhöyük. The bench has horns or skulls, partially or totally embedded. The embedding of the horns in the upper side of the benches is not a common practice. We made a typology of benches from shrines, taking into account both the typical forms, mostly geometrical, and the ones with embedded horns, less common. Of course the typology is still open and it will be enriched over time, when new types will appear. We identified so far three major types, with various geometric shapes: rectangular, square and semicircular. We introduced the informations related to these into an Access table holding until now 65 individual records of benches, from 27 sites and 54 individual buildings. Benches are documented in a series of miniature buildings, in which are preserved various items of furniture or inventory. These miniature constructions are important because they provide a number of informations about buildings which nowadays are lost. The altar could have various shapes, depending on the specific ritual activity that took place in a particular moment inside the building. The bench can be an altar when it supports statues, becoming object of worship when it is used to dispaly the cult inventory. What we see from the statistical point of view is the frequent association between the bench and the hearth. Most often used was the rectangular bench made of clay, positioned in the protected places inside buildings. Observing the location, we note that the bench is most often near the eastern wall. An interesting exception is the bench with the embedded horns, which has a central position inside the buildings, but it has no practical purpose. The bench implies a communitarian activity, by concentrating more people at a certain time in a certain space. Apart from the examples we have reviewed, we must ask ourselves how many benches of the prehistoric world were made of wood or other perishable materials and no traces thereof reached us.”
  • Limba de redactare: română
  • Vezi publicația: Acta Musei Tutovensis: ActaMT
  • Editura: Demiurg
  • Loc publicare: Bârlad
  • Anul publicaţiei: 2016
  • Referinţă bibliografică pentru nr. revistă: XII; nr. în TOM: 1; anul 2016
  • Paginaţia: 73-109
  • Navigare în nr. revistă:  |<  <  6 / 12   >  >|