Hallie G. Meredith and Ahmad Mohammed, eds. World Archaeology journal special issue, Craft Interconnections, 56, no. 3 (2024).
Today, we generally think of a maker in ancient times as a practitioner who regularly or even exclusively worked in a single medium and repeatedly performed a particular kind of task, such as a carpenter, glassblower, ivory carver, potter or stonemason – in other words, a specialist. Increasingly, however, it appears that such a narrow view of ancient production is more representative of the subdivisions within contemporary archaeological practice and a skewed historical bias regarding pre-industrial societies than it is of the true experiences, skills, or knowledge of makers in that era. This volume turns the idea of the reductive ‘specialist’ craftworker on its head and instead expands this restrictive characterization beyond the limiting idea of a single artisan working with a single material to encompass productive inter-industry relations, or what is often referred to as coproduction, cross-craft, cross-craft interactions, or multicrafts.
This guest-edited journal special issue includes the following articles: An Approach to Craft and Craftworkers in Process: Re-Examining Late 3rd-6th Century CE Roman Carvings, Inscriptions, and Engraved Symbols (Hallie G. Meredith), Crafting and Everyday Archaeology at Chumnungwa (Robert T. Nyamushosho), Crucibles: Material Expressions of Cross Craft Interaction (Carlotta Gardner and Justine Bayley), Cross-Crafting in Standardized and Customized Metallurgy. Some Examples from Bronze Age Poland (Justyna Baron and Kamil Nowak), Crafting Space and Kinship: Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives on Pottery Production in Contemporary
El-Nazlah, Egypt (Ahmad Mohammed), and Exploring Craft Interdependencies in Historical Practices: A Transdisciplinary Approach in the Present (Inês Coutinho, Alexandra Rodrigues, Márcia Vilarigues and Robert Wiley).
- Editorial Craft Interconnections
- An Approach to Craft and Craftworkers in Process: Re-Examining Late 3rd-6th Century CE Roman Carvings, Inscriptions, and Engraved Symbols (see Articles)
Hallie G. Meredith and Elizabeth A. Murphy, eds. Journal of Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies journal special issue, Reconstructing Material Evidence of Late Roman Cross-Craft Working Relations, 3.1-2 (2024).
The study of crafts and trades in the ancient Mediterranean world has garnered increased attention over the last decade, including through the investigation of cross-craft or inter-industry relations among craft producers. This body of literature represents a range of distinct approaches – including co-production, cross-craft interaction, skeuomorphism, and multicraft – each derived from different disciplinary perspectives, yet collectively these inter industry approaches are offering new and important perspectives on social and professional networks of artisans, technological developments, and economic organisation of ancient industries. In the editorial we outline the current trajectories in cross-craft studies and their too often overlooked significance for the study of Late Antiquity and beyond.
This guest-edited journal special issue includes the following articles: Late Antique Glass Carving as Cross-Craft (Hallie G. Meredith), Bound by Binders: Multicraft Organisation and Industrial Interdependence of Lime Production for Mortar in the Eastern Mediterranean during Late Antiquity (Elizabeth A. Murphy and J. Riley Snyder), Interactions between Industries in Late Antique Church Construction in the Western Provinces (Beth Munro), and Disentangling Cross-Crafting, Reuse, and Recycling in Late Antique Gerasa/Jerash (Fourth-Seventh Centuries CE) (Rubina Raja).
Hallie G. Meredith. Word Becomes Image: Openwork Vessels as a Reflection of Late Antique Transformation. Archaeopress Archaeology Series (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2015)
Word becomes Image presents a diachronic investigation providing a rich case study as well as an approach tracing the contours of a category of Roman material culture defined by the Roman period technique of openwork carving. As the first comprehensive assemblage of openwork vessels from Classical to late Antiquity, this work offers primary evidence documenting a key example of the fundamental shift from naturalism to abstraction in which inscriptions are transformed and word becomes image. A glass blower herself, Hallie Meredith poses questions about process, tactility and reception providing a clear picture of the original contexts of production and reception demonstrated by the Roman technique of openwork carving. In an in-depth analysis of the corpus as a whole, typologies (old and new), imagery, geometric patterning and inscriptions as the major divisions among openwork decorative elements, basic design principles are identified, non openwork carving and its relation to openwork decoration are discussed, as are the function, handling, display, movement and provenance of openwork vessels throughout the Roman Empire. Art historians and archaeologists working on the transition from Classical to late Antiquity, as well as scholars focusing on these and later periods of study, can fruitfully apply this approach to visual culture. This work shows how openwork vessels are a reflection of a wide-reaching Roman cultural aesthetic.
Word Becomes Image: Openwork Vessels as a Reflection of Late Antique Transformation
Hallie G. Meredith, ed. Objects in Motion: The Circulation of Religion and Sacred Objects in the Late Antique and Byzantine World. BAR International Series 2247 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011).
This volume contains a series of papers that had their origins in a symposium convened whilst the editor was a Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, New York in May 2008. Contents: Introduction (Hallie G. Meredith); Christianizing Constantine: Eusebius’ Vita Constantini as a Late Antique Social Canvas (Hallie G. Meredith); The Portable Altar in Christian Tradition and Practice (Crispin Paine); Telling Jerusalem: Miracles and the Moveable Past in Late Antique Christianity (Georgia Frank); The Matter of Ivory and the Movement of Ideas: Thoughts on some Christian Diptychs of Late Antiquity (Anthony Cutler); The Art and Ritual of Manichaean Magic: Text, Object and Image from the Mediterranean to Central Asia (Matthew P. Canepa); The Narrative Fabric of the Genoese Pallio and the Silken Diplomacy of Michael VIII Palaiologos (Ida Toth); Conclusion (Henry Maguire).