COST Action 19131 EURO WEB
Swiss member of the COST Action 19131 Europe Through Textiles: Network for an integrated and interdisciplinary Humanities
Team
Elodie Bauer PhD SNF doc.ch (2020-2024)
Corps et vêtement féminins de la petite enfance au mariage en Grèce ancienne,
Mémoire de Master en archéologie classique, “Bandelettes croisées dans l’iconographie de vases attiques de l’époque classique : un attribut polysémique.” (25.9.2018). Après avoir travaillé dans différents musées et monuments historiques (château de Neuchâtel, parc et musée du Laténium), j’ai décidé de poursuivre une carrière académique. Ayant obtenu une bourse Doc.CH du Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique, j’ai débuté le 1er septembre 2020 une thèse de doctorat en archéologie et histoire ancienne intitulée Corps et vêtement féminins de la petite enfance au mariage en Grèce ancienne, sous la co-direction des Prof. Véronique Dasen (Université de Fribourg) et Florence Gherchanoc (Université Paris-Diderot-Université de Paris). Mon approche est pluridisciplinaire, à la croisée des données iconographiques, textuelles et archéologiques combinées à l’expérimentation archéologique sur textile qui se réalisera à Copenhague au Centre for Textile Research dirigé par la Prof. M.-L. Nosch. Depuis avril 2020, je suis membre suisse du comité scientifique européen COST.
Alexandra Attia Postdoc researcher SNF COST (1.1.2022-31.1.2025)
Fashion in the West: Bodies, Dress and Identities in Apulian Iconography (5th-3rd cent.BC.)
Abstract
Textile craftsmanship and dress provide a privileged access to the social, cultural and economic fabric of past societies. Over the last two decades, the interest in the study of clothing in Antiquity has increased significantly. As Roland Barthes (1957) and several scholars after him demonstrated, dress plays a key role not only in the construction of social, gendered, ethnic, individual, and collective identities, it is also part of non-verbal communication in a shared normative system. Both the materiality (shape, texture, color) and the context in which it is worn (domestic, ritual, civic) are intertwined with various symbolic, social and religious values. This project is part of the innovative researches developed by the working groups (WG) of the COST Action « Euroweb. Europe through textiles » (CA #19131). It considers clothing as an identity marker and investigates this cultural dimension in iconographic representations produced in Apulia between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC, a region characterized by the coexistence of the Greek people established in Taranto with different indigenous populations (Messapians, Peucetians and Daunians).The study will be based on a multidisciplinary approach, gathering archaeological, iconographic and written data in order to analyze the self- and collective representations of gender, age, status and ethnic identities, as well as the social interactions between these populations through the lenses of clothes and body ornaments. The research focuses more specifically on Apulian vase painting produced in Taranto and distributed in South Italy both in Greek and indigenous settlements (ca 430-300 BC). The material is extensive (ca 10,000) and well published. A large number of vases, still under-exploited, are decorated with representations of women and men’s attire displaying interactions between the Greek inhabitants (apoikioi) and indigenous people which are not reduced to violent confrontations as mentioned in Greek literary sources. The visual language of vase painters reveals the peaceful weaving of Greek and Italic identities with varying accents over one hundred years. We will question how far visual conventions reflect socio-cultural changes, such as mixed marriages or trade relationships with neighbouring communities. This investigation of the fabric of gendered and multicultural identities will be divided into three parts. The first one will create a typology of the different visual clothing elements characterising Greek or local identities. These items will be classified according to their type (WG2) (dress, hairdress, hairstyle, shoes, body ornaments), their wearers (women or men, children or adults), as well as compared with depictions on other media (wall paintings, terracotta, reliefs) and with ancient written sources to establish a reference terminology (WG3). The second part will analyse the different types of dress according to social interactions in iconographical contexts where local and Greek people could interact (e.g. daily life, religious scenes, such as libation, marriage, funerals). The methodological limits of such investigations will be addressed, namely how to identify a local person in Greek attire, partners of mixed marriages and so on. We will finally compare the dress depicted in iconography with extant archaeological textile evidence of Apulia (WG4) and experimental archaeology. The third part will revisit the long-lasting devaluation of Italic people in ancient Apulia, often examined solely in relation to Greek culture. Their classification as “non-Greeks” as well as the use of the expression “Magna Grecia” (Strabo 6.1.2) have imposed a misleading appreciation of a culturally complex and evolving area. The study of dress will contribute to developing another view as mixed indigenous and Greek clothing could reflect the appropriation of Greek customs and culture among Italics users as well as the reverse, the influence of Italic people on Greek habits. The research thus aims to be a benchmark re evaluating the extent of cross-cultural exchanges in Apulia (coastal and hinterland) based on most recent post-colonial studies.
Activities
25.9.2020. Workshop ERC Locus Ludi /Formation doctorale CUSO Etudes genre, Femmes en jeu. Regards croisés de l’Antiquité à l’époque contemporaine, with M.-L. Arnette and E. Bauer, Fribourg University.
9-11.12.2021
Doctoral Workshop CUSO Anthropologie historique. Mondes anciens et modernes
Fabrics, clothes, hairstyles, shoes and ornaments: adornment and textile evidence in diachrony
Organised by Alexandra Attia, Elodie Bauer, Véronique Dasen
25.9.2020. Workshop ERC Locus Ludi /Formation doctorale CUSO Etudes genre, Femmes en jeu. Regards croisés de l’Antiquité à l’époque contemporaine, with M.-L. Arnette and E. Bauer, Fribourg University.
9-11.12.2021
Doctoral Workshop CUSO Anthropologie historique. Mondes anciens et modernes
Fabrics, clothes, hairstyles, shoes and ornaments: adornment and textile evidence in diachrony
Organised by Alexandra Attia, Elodie Bauer, Véronique Dasen
Thursday 9 December
University of Fribourg, Pérolles (PER 21, F205)
Morning
Clothing and textiles in representation
9h00 Alexandra Attia, Elodie Bauer, Fribourg
Welcome and opening remarks
9h15 Chiara Bianchi, Fribourg: The hairstyles and clothing of Roman articulated dolls: current state of knowledge and
research gaps
9h45 Astrid Fendt, Munich: Not only for fashionistas! “Divine X Design. The Dress of Antiquity” – an innovative and participatory exhibition project in the museums at Munich’s Königsplatz
10h15 Sonia Klinger, Haifa: The offering of sandaled feet at the Demeter and Kore Sanctuary on Acrocorinth: context, methodology and meanings
10h45 Break
11h15 Elodie Bauer, Fribourg: A parthenos hairstyle? Study of a special headdress on classical Greek vase paintings
11h45 Alexandra Attia, Fribourg: Weaving identities: Greek and Italic fashion in Apulian iconography (5th-3rd
centuries BC)
12h15 Elisabetta Gagetti, Milano: Textiles as iconographic media between East and West. The long travel of the ‘pseudo- Senmūrw’
12h45 Lunch break
Afternoon
14h00 Louise Quillien, Paris: Royal dress in 1st millennium BCE Babylonia
14h30 Kamil Kopania, Warsaw: Christ’s skin, hair, blood and garments, that is how to make sculptures more realistic
15h00 Break
15h30 Doctoral workshop / Round table with Marion Marage-Morel, University of Geneva
16h15 Sonya Nevin and Steve Simons, Cambridge: Clothing and Ornament in the Panoply Vase Animations
Friday 10 December
Guided tour and presentations at the Abegg Stiftung, Riggisberg, Bern
Saturday 11 December
University of Fribourg, Miséricorde (MIS 02, 2122)
Textiles cultures: industry and identity
09h00 Agata Ulanowska, Warsaw: ‘Textiles and Seals’ project and online database. Recovering new relationships between textile production and seals, and sealing practices in Bronze Age Greece through the (SQL) queries
09h30 Francesco Meo, Lecce: Production, organisation and consumption of textiles in pre-Roman South Italy
10h00 Break
10h30 Magdalena Wozniak, Warsaw_Clothing and identity
11h00 Claire Bonavia, Malta: Testimony of a Bygone time: study of a gentleman’s Banyan
11h30 Doctoral workshop / Round table with Malaika Sutter, University of Bern
12h15 Lunch break