Constance von Rüden, "Producing Aegeanness – An Innovation and Its Impact in Middle and Late Bronze Age Syria/Northern Levant", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 225–249

Abstract

In the second half of the 18th Century BCE Yarim-Lim of Alalakh gave instructions to decorate his palace with wall paintings. Instead of following the inner-Syrian or ‘Mesopotamian‘ tradition of al secco painting on dark mud plaster, he decided in favor of a technical and iconographical innovation known from the Aegean, a bright, shiny lime plaster with a griffin as a depiction. Later, similar decorations appeared in palaces and houses in Syria and beyond. My paper analyzes why this technical and social innovation was successful within the local life world. Secondly, it takes a closer look at the impact of the murals by exploring the use and meaning of Aegean-related motifs in the following centuries and the production of a Levantine Aegeanness in different media of expression.

Published In

Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017