Luminous Debris - Reflecting on Vestige in Provence & Languedoc (Paper)

1. Auflage 2000
ISBN: 978-0-520-22245-8
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 204 mm, Gewicht: 390 g

Interpreting vestige with the eloquence of a poet and the knowledge of a field archaeologist, Gustaf Sobin explores his elected terrain: the landscapes of Provence and Languedoc. Drawing on prehistory, protohistory, and Gallo-Roman antiquity, the twenty-six essays in this book focus on a particular place or artifact for the relevance inherent in each. A Bronze Age earring or the rippling wave pattern in Massiolite ceramic are more than archival curiosities for Sobin. Instead they invite inquiry and speculation on existence itself: Artifacts are read as realia, and history as an uninterrupted sequence of object lessons.

As much travel writing as meditative discourse, Luminous Debris is enhanced by a prose that tracks, questions, and reflects on the materials invoked. Sobin engages the reader with precise descriptions of those very materials and the messages to be gleaned from their examination, be they existential, ethical, or political.

An American expatriate living in Provence for the past thirty-five years, Gustaf Sobin shares his enthusiasm for his adopted landscape and for a vertical interpretation of its strata. In Luminous Debris he creates meaning out of matter and celebrates instances of reality, past and present.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sobin, Gustaf

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART 1: SILEX
Terra Amata

Reading Prehistory: The Search for Antecedents

The First Hunters and the Last

Neolithicizing Provence: Cardia!, a Culture That Came from the Sea

Archeological Rhetoric

Moon Goddess: Speculations on a Pictograph

The Skull with the Seashell Ear
West-Southwest

A Twilight Industry

Stelae: The Emergence of Human Figuration

PART II: BRONZE AND, SOON AFTER, IRON
On a Bronze Age Earring

Echoes in Clay: Interpreting Pictographs in Late Bronze Age Ceramics
Baby Burials: Domestic Inhumation in the Iron Age

Terremare

On the Longevity of Toponyms

The Cult of Skulls: From Severance to Sculpture

PART Ill: UNDER THE RAISED TRELLISES
Negative Architecture

Undulant-Oblique: A Study of Wave Patterns on Ionico-Massalian Pottery

Tracking Hannibal

What the Thunder Said

Aeria the Evanescent

Votive Mirrors: A Reflection

Dream Incubation: The Temple at Riez

Fervor and Residue: Chastelard-Lardiers

Le Pont Flavien: An Instance of Passage

PART IV: AQUAEDUCTUS
Aquaeductus

Notes

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Gustaf Sobin's books include Voyaging Portraits (1988), Venus Blue: A Novel (1991), Breaths' Burials (1995), By the Bias of Sound (1996), and Towards the Blanched Alphabets (1998). A novel, The Fly-Truffler, set in Provence, is forthcoming this year.