Breaking Images: Damage and Mutilation of Ancient Figurines

Fragmented and chipped artefacts have usually been associated with the idea of refuse, discard, abandonment, decay, pillaging or reshuffling, as opposed to objects preserved in their entirety which have been imagined as synonymous with intact, original, complete, functional or usable things. In his volume Fragmentation in Archaeology, John Chapman drew attention to the need to reconsider the broken artefacts as resulting from a deliberate process of physical fragmentation. Eventually, the breaking of an object served (and still nowadays serves) to establish material, ritual and social relationships. Breaking and damaging is part of a negotiation process: one or more individuals who wanted to mark their relationship or mutual transaction – of any type, from affective to ritual to economic; and with any type of entity, from human beings to the deceased and divinities – may have broken a particular object into parts. The phenomenon of fragmentation and damage can be more easily analysed as a category of objects that play an important role within society, such as figurines. The possibilities of touching, engaging and carrying a figurine increases its permeability, leading to proximity, engagement and intimacy, as well as the posing of inter-subjective and transcendental questions. Beyond the fact that the phenomenon of fragmentation of figurines was often the result of chance, mechanical processes or involuntary human action, it has usually been explored and explained within closed-circuit arguments (i.e., within the same society to which the figurines belonged), with all the limitations created by such an approach. This volume has the scope to analyse the process using a comparative approach in order to open up new horizons and research lines, confronting the reader at the moment when the figurine was broken, and provoking an interpretation as a moment of re-writing figurine identity, ontology and social bounds. AUTHOR: Gianluca Miniaci is Associate Professor in Egyptology at the University of Pisa, Honorary Researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL – London and Chercheur associé at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. He is currently co-director of the archaeological mission at Zawyet Sultan (Menya, Egypt) and principal investigator for the project PROCESS (fingerprints on clay figurines). He is author of several volumes, including Rishi Coffins (2011), The Middle Kingdom Ramesseum Papyri Tomb (2021) and The Treasure of the Egyptian Queen Ahhotep (2022) and more than 100 scientific articles.

Table of Contents:
Contributors Preface   At the dawn of a break: The agency of the damage 1. In the footsteps of Auguste Rodin: Fragmentation is not an end Gianluca Miniaci 2. The meaning of deliberate figurine fragmentation: Insights from the Old and New Worlds John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska Beyond ritual: When the whole cracks 3. In the beginning: Exploring integrity of anthropomorphic images in prehistoric Europe Elisabetta Starnini 4. When garbage is art: Broken ceramic figural objects from ancient Honduras Jeanne Lopiparo and Rosemary A. Joyce 5. Parts, not wholes: Long histories and negative space analysis Stacy Boldrick 6. Not whole yet holy: Some breakage rituals and their significance in Hinduism and other religions of India Urmi Chanda The materiality of the damage: Searching for the intentionality 7. Broken beyond repair. Reflections on the intentionality of breakage and its archaeological identification regarding Naqada period clay figurines Axelle Brémont 8. The materiality of the damage in the faience figurine corpus from late Middle Bronze Age Egypt (1800–1550 BC) Gianluca Miniaci 9. Breaking into pieces: An experimental investigation into fracture behaviours in ceramic female figurines Paulina Wandowicz 10. Intentionality in the breaking. A case study of intentional damaging of figurines at Neolithic Tell Sabi Abyad (Syria) and Çatalhöyük (Turkey) Monique Arntz 11. Fragmented or intact – Mycenaean figurines and figures in cult and burial contexts Ann-Louise Schallin Inside the fragmentation: Exploring methods and technologies 12. Made it for breaking it? Assessing fragmentation of the Lahun figurines (Egypt, MBA II, c. 1800–1700 BC) Vanessa Forte 13. Displaying the fragmented: Damaged and mutilated ancient Egyptian figures from Sir Charles Nicholson’s collection Candace Richards and Michelle F. Whitford 14. Broken collections: A 3D approach to the digital reunification and holistic study of dispersed terracotta figurines assemblages Valentina Vassallo Concluding remarks Afterword: Strong at the broken places? Caitlín Eilís Barrett

About the Author :
Gianluca Miniaci is Associate Professor in Egyptology at the University of Pisa, Honorary Researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL – London and Chercheur associé at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. He is currently co-director of the archaeological mission at Zawyet Sultan (Menya, Egypt) and principal investigator for the project PROCESS (fingerprints on clay figurines). He is author of several volumes, including Rishi Coffins (2011), The Middle Kingdom Ramesseum Papyri Tomb (2021) and The Treasure of the Egyptian Queen Ahhotep (2022) and more than 100 scientific articles.

Review :
"...Breaking Images (as engaging as some of the case studies and analyses are) demonstrates that new approaches to archaeological breakage beyond intentionality will be required to generate new insight."--Hannah Mattson "Journal of Anthropological Research"