The Department of Art History and the Near Eastern Languages & Cultures Department are pleased to co-sponsor Dr. Serdar Yalçin’s talk, “From One Hand to Another: Turbulent Lives of Cylinder Seals from Ancient Western Asia.”
Generally made of precious stones and carved with detailed designs and pictorial images, cylinder seals constitute a unique group of artworks indigenous to ancient Mesopotamia. From the late fourth millennium BCE to the Hellenistic period, these intricately engraved objects were widely distributed across Western Asia, as they were commissioned and used by individuals, communities and institutions. This presentation will explore the fresh meanings and functions that these traveling objects gained in their new cultural habitats. Focusing on a small group of seals, which were initially made for elite Babylonians in the 14th and 13th centuries BCE but later acquired by people based in Assyria, Mycenean Greece and Transcaucasia, this study will investigate the appropriated seals’ shifting significance and usage, and the ways in which they participated in constructions of identities in those new cultural settings.
Dr. Serdar Yalçin is an associate professor of art history at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, specializing in the art and archeology of ancient Western Asia and the Mediterranean world with a special focus on the Bronze and Iron Age cultures of Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia. His research interests include art and identity, gender and representation, artistic interconnections in the ancient world, and western antiquarianismand the formation of the European and American antiquities collections.
The event will be held on Wednesday, December 4th at 4 PM in Kaplan Hall, Room 365. All are welcome to attend.
