Cedar forests, cedar ships : allure, lore, and metaphor in the Mediterranean Near East /

Cedar forests, cedar ships : allure, lore, and metaphor in the Mediterranean Near East /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Rich, Sara A., author.
Imprint:Oxford : Archaeopress Publishing Ltd., [2017]
©2017
Description:xii, 283 pages : illustrations (some color), maps ; 25 cm.
Language:English
Series:Archaeopress Archaeology
Archaeopress archaeology.
Subject:
Cedar -- Mediterranean Region -- History.
Antiquities.
Cedar.
Cedar of Lebanon.
Shipbuilding.
Mediterranean Region.
History.
Format: Map Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11043341
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9781784913656
1784913650
9781784913663
Notes:Includes bibliographical references.
Summary:It is commonly recognized that the Cedars of Lebanon were prized in the ancient world, but how can the complex archaeological role of the Cedrus genus be articulated in terms that go beyond its interactions with humans alone? And to what extent can ancient ships and boats made of this material demonstrate such intimate relations with wood? Drawing from object-oriented ontologies and other 'new materialisms,' Cedar Forests, Cedar Ships constructs a hylocentric anti-narrative spreading from the Cretaceous to the contemporary. With a dual focus on the woods and the watercraft, and on the considerable historical overlap between them, the book takes another step in the direction of challenging the conceptual binaries of nature/culture and subject/object, while providing an up-to-date synthesis of the relevant archaeological and historical data. Binding physical properties and metaphorical manifestations, the fluctuating presence of cedar (forests, trees, and wood) in religious thought is interpreted as having had a direct bearing on shipbuilding in the ancient East Mediterranean. Close and diachronic excavations of the interstices of allure, lore, and metaphor can begin to navigate the (meta) physical relationships between the forested mountain and the forest afloat, and their myriad unique realities.
Table of Contents:
  • Preface
  • Prologue - An Object-Oriented Archaeology
  • Object potency and speculative fictions
  • Seeking meaningful realities in (ship) wood
  • The relevance of origin: From forest to shipyard to sand and back
  • The material in the metaphor
  • Part I. Forests, Trees & Timber: The Realities and Relations of Wood
  • Chapter 1. The Enduring Qualities and the First Relations
  • Cedar Evolution and the Geological Background
  • The fossil record
  • Taxonomical debates over Cedrus Trew
  • East Mediterranean Cedar Forests: Geology & Geography
  • The Levant: Amanus and the Lebanon
  • Anatolia: The Taurus
  • Cyprus: The Troodos
  • Prehistoric Encounters: The Stone Age or the Wood Age?
  • Pleistocene Paleolithic in Western Asia
  • Epipaleolithic & Holocene Neolithic
  • Chapter 2. The Seductive Forests
  • Introduction: Souvenir Possession
  • Egypt & the hunger for everlasting life
  • The Levant: Amanus and the Lebanon
  • Gilgame¿ and those who followed his route
  • Canaan, Israel, and Phoenicia
  • Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian revival of tradition
  • The Persian version of the paradeisoi
  • Ptolemaic and Roman Levant
  • Anatolia: The Taurus
  • The Bronze Age empires
  • The Iron Age empires
  • Cyprus: The Troodos
  • Ala¿iya in the Amarna Letters
  • The island in the Iron Age
  • Conclusions: The Venerated & Vendible 'Pure Mountain'
  • Chapter 3. The Allure and the Distortion
  • Introduction: Pax Sylva vs. Religious Refugia
  • The Levant
  • The purlieus and their 'anchorites'
  • The vigilant cedar in prophecy and paradise
  • The Taurus
  • Ill omens and immigrations
  • The Troodos
  • More mountain sanctuaries
  • Conclusions: Irony in the Legacy
  • Part II. Ships, Shipbuilding, and Seafaring: The Potency of Wood on Water
  • Chapter 4. Ships and Transformation
  • Introduction: Wind, waves & word-object play
  • Egyptian Mortuary Barques: Birth, Death, Dismemberment & Rebirth
  • Predynastic
  • Early Dynastic & Old Kingdom
  • Middle Kingdom
  • Egyptian ships as symbols
  • Senwosret III & the subjugation of Set
  • West Semitic Merchantmen: 'Coupling' onboard Seaborne Sanctuaries
  • West Semitic seafaring & shipbuilding mythology
  • The Gelidonya shipwreck
  • The Uluburun shipwreck
  • Putting the 'ax' back in axis mundi
  • Ptolemaic-era Warships: Parasemon, pilei & prophecy
  • Archaeological evidence of warships
  • Symbols on the Ram
  • The Athlit Ram's mythological implications
  • Conclusions: The Sacred Art of Shipbuilding
  • Chapter 5. Ship Construction, Myth Construction
  • Introduction: Place and the Ship Anthology
  • From Tree to Ship and back into Wood
  • Senwosret III's 'Carnegie' boat & Horsh-Ehden
  • The Uluburun (coastal Turkey) & the Syrian Coastal Range
  • The Athlit Ram (coastal Israel) & the Troodos (Cyprus)
  • Conclusions: Practical and Religious Considerations in Building an Ancient Cedar Ship
  • Chapter 6. The Ontology of Obsolescence
  • Introduction: From Sources to Resources (or, Hey Hylozoic Directions)
  • Byzantine-Arab Shipbuilding & Seafaring
  • Byzantine, Arab, and both
  • The Crusades and Shipbuilding among the Caliphates
  • Ottoman Shipbuilding on the Brink of the 'Age of Discovery'
  • Conclusions: The Early Modern Transformation
  • Epilogue - Dark Ecology (or, On Pins & Needles)
  • Introduction: The Beautiful Soul and Plant-Thinking
  • Levant
  • Anatolia
  • Cyprus
  • Conclusions: Their Seduction Will Save Them
  • Bibliography
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