Communities of Style: Portable Luxury Arts, Identity, and Collective Memory in the Iron Age Levant

Communities of Styleexamines the production and circulation of portable luxury goods throughout the Levant in the early Iron Age (1200–600 BCE). In particular it focuses on how societies in flux came together around the material effects of art and style, and their role in collective memory. Marian H. Feldman brings her dual training as an art historian and an archaeologist to bear on the networks that were essential to the movement and trade of luxury goods-particularly ivories and metal works-and how they were also central to community formation. The interest in, and relationships to, these art objects, Feldman shows, led to wide-ranging interactions and transformations both within and between communities. Ultimately, she argues, the production and movement of luxury goods in the period demands a rethinking of our very geo-cultural conception of the Levant, as well as its influence beyond what have traditionally been thought of as its borders.

About the Author :
Marian H. Feldman is professor of Near Eastern studies and art history at Johns Hopkins University.

Review :
"An important and exciting book, which will be read with profit and enjoyment by scholars of times and places well beyond the Iron Age Levant."-- "Antiquity" "Groundbreaking . . . . Feldman's compelling argument has the potential to liberate ancient Near Eastern specialists from longstanding debates about the geographic origin of Levantine artistic styles and the mechanisms for their distribution. . . . A terrific addition to the art historian's library."-- "caa.reviews" "Provide[s] a richer understanding of the art of this period. . . . Recommended." -- "Choice" "This important book provides a set of new research directions and interpretations for the study of ancient art for the Iron Age Near East and Eastern Mediterranean. . . . Feldman offers an enriched understanding of ancient Near Eastern art that goes beyond her contemporaries."-- "Journal of Near Eastern Studies" "Communities of Style presents the histories of many Iron Age Near Eastern communities through the lens of portable luxury arts, particularly ivories and metalwork. Feldman's studies of selected luxury objects and their afterlives compel the reader to view them as active rather than passive agents in the formation of social groups. She offers an original and welcome perspective and sets a very high scholarly standard."--Elizabeth Carter, University of California, Los Angeles "Communities of Style will be of interest to anyone interested in the Bronze Age continuities and Iron Age functions of a widespread corpus of carved ivories, their connection to the iconography of large-scale sculptures in the Near East, the widespread distribution and meaning of decorative or inscribed bowls, and the reuse of exotic objects. Feldman's building of bottom-up narratives from individual artifacts, instead of putting all similar objects into a totalizing narrative, is the cutting edge of archaeological and art historical research."--Louise A. Hitchcock, University of Melbourne "This volume should have a significant impact on the way we think about ancient art. . . . Historians of ancient Near Eastern art . . . should take note of Feldman's thoughtful and innovative study." -- "Art Newspaper"