Global Antiquity Faculty Lunch Series

David Schneller (Art History)

Composite Creations: Cross-Cultural Artistic Experimentation in the Eastern Mediterranean

Friday, December 6, 2024 | Royce 306 | 12:00 pm

This talk focuses on three unique sculptures from Olympia, Greece that are among the most significant instances of cross-cultural artistic experimentation in the eastern Mediterranean during the early first millennium BCE. The sculptures comprise at least sixteen individual sheets of bronze of variable date and technique of manufacture that feature imagery differing in style, iconography, and composition. The imagery points to two distinct regions of the eastern Mediterranean: the island of Crete and Northern Syria. I will discuss the archaeological provenience of the sculptures, the iconography of the imagery they carry, and the cultural identity and mobility of the artists who made them. While the sculptures resist categorization as Greek or West Asian, escaping the attention of either academic field, they provide insight into early Cretan sculpture, Mesopotamian iconography, Neo-Hittite bronzework, and Olympia as a locus of artistic exchange.

About the Speaker

David Schneller is Assistant Professor of Ancient Art in the department of Art History at UCLA, where he teaches eastern Mediterranean art, architecture, and archaeology. He is currently at work on his first book, Crafting Across Time and Space: Artistic Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean, which explores works of art from the pre-classical Aegean that transcend the bounds of modern academic fields. By narrating materially informed object histories that center culturally-specific crafting knowledge, the book makes the case for collaborations among eastern Mediterranean artists and their patrons during the early first millennium BCE.