Month: March 2014

Voyage to the center of Piranesi’s imaginary prison

Multimedia, Museums, Renaissance

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the son of stonemason and nephew of an engineer, first trained under that uncle as an architect maintaining the intricate waterworks of his native Venice. Even though he only ever got one job as an architect in his all too short life, he never lost the passion for buildings. It was as an artist that he made his name. He learned etching in Rome and combined his artistic talent with his favorite subject matter to create views of the city that became popular among Grand Tourists. Piranesi’s etchings of ancient Roman architecture were not only captured with the meticulous understanding of the builder, but were drawn with such powerful chiaroscuro dynamism that Goethe, for one, who first came to know the city through Piranesi’s books, was actually disappointed when he saw the real thing.

Piranesi didn’t limit himself to depictions of Rome and its ruins for the pilgrims and tourists. In 1745, he began work on an entirely new vision, combining his artistic style and understanding of ancient monumental construction to create a unique group of etchings called Carceri d’Invenzione (Imaginary Prisons). The imaginary part is that they bear no relation to any actual prisons of the era which were mostly cramped dungeon cells in the towers and palaces of the Church and aristocracy. Piranesi’s invented prisons were cavernous labyrinths peppered with intimidatingly suggestive mechanisms where human figures are barely present and dwarfed by their surroundings.

The first edition of Carceri d’Invenzione was published in 1750. It was a collection of 14 untitled etchings drawn in a rough sketch-like style. You can see all 14 of the original Carceri in order here. Ten years later, he would return to his imaginary prisons and do a major revamp of the etchings. He added two new ones and fleshed out the others with even more complex architectural features, increased contrasts of shadow and light, arches, staircases and vaults that lead nowhere.

The prison etchings were part of an artistic tradition called the capriccio, a fantasy aggregation of structures and art works that doesn’t exist in real life. These sorts of imaginary viewpoints were popular with tourists because they compressed the “must see” ruins and artworks into one painting. What Piranesi did with the form, however, was entirely new. The prisons were expressions of visions in his mind, not of tourist bullet points. They wouldn’t be purchased as pre-photography postcards, but the prisons’ tenebrous atmosphere and emotional impact were highly influential for the Romantics of the late 18th/early 19th centuries. The irrational elements like infinitely regressing passageways would later inspire the Surrealists and if Escher’s Relativity doesn’t owe Piranesi a huge debt, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

In 2010, the Sale del Convitto in Venice held an exhibition Le Arti di Piranesi: architetto, incisore, antiquario, vedutista, designer (The Arts of Piranesi: architect, engraver, antiquarian, vedutista, designer) to coincide with the Venice Biennale of Architecture. The Carceri etchings played a central part in the show, and graphic artist Gregoire Dupond of Factum Arte brought them to virtual life with an absolutely riveting animation. He took the 16 prints of the second edition and transformed them into a three-dimensional space so viewers can travel deep into Piranesi’s imagination.

It’s 12 minutes long and it’s nothing short of riveting.

Help save unique Hopewell earthworks in Ohio

Ancient, Modern(ish), Social policy

The Junction Group earthworks complex in Chillicothe, Ohio, is one of very few remaining ancient Native American ceremonial sites that hasn’t been sliced and diced by roads or train tracks or development. Situated on the south edge of the city at the confluence of the Paint Creek and its tributary North Fork Paint Creek, the earthworks take up about 25 acres of a 90-acre plot that is going up for auction on Tuesday, March 18th. The field belongs to the Stark family who have farmed it for generations but are now reluctantly selling the entire farm, including the earthworks.

The land has road frontage and is close to city water and sewer lines, which makes it a very attractive parcel for a housing development. There’s already a subdivision kitty corner with the property. Any such construction would destroy the foundations of the earthworks of the Hopewell Culture which we know are still there just underneath the surface. The Junction Group was built 1800-2000 years ago as nine earthworks enclosures: four circular mounds, three crescents, one large square and a quatrefoil. The latter is the only known example of that shape ever discovered in Ohio.

To keep this irreplaceable historical treasure from falling into uncaring hands, the Heartland Earthworks Conservancy, the Arc of Appalachia and other non-profit organizations are working together to raise $500,000 to buy not just the earthworks parcel but the entire farm which is being sold in six lots. If they are successful in acquiring the land, the long-term plan is to turn it over to the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park which is just six miles northwest of the Junction Group. The national park already administers five Hopewell sites in the Paint Creek Valley, and although the process of transferring a sixth site to national park stewardship requires legislative action that can take years, the Arc of Appalachia has already begun the process for another Hopewell earthwork and are confident they can pull it off in the end. They have the full support of the park service in their endeavours.

The Hopewell culture, also known as the Hopewell tradition because it describes a range of different tribes who developed an extensive trade network along the rivers of the northeast and midwest, flourished from around 200 B.C. to 500 A.D. They were the inheritors of the Adena culture who inhabited the same area in the Scioto River Valley in the first millennium B.C. There are two dozen Hopewell ceremonial sites in Ross County alone, most of them consisting of at least one burial mound and several earthwork structures. There is little evidence of settlement on these sites; their purpose appears to have been almost entirely religious.

The Junction Group was first named and documented by Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis in their seminal 1848 work Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. It was the first major work on the archaeology of ancient mounds in the United States and the first publication of the Smithsonian Institution. When Squier and Davis recorded the Junction Group in 1845, the largest mound was seven feet high and some earthenwork walls were at least three feet high with deep ditches on either side.

Since then, farming has worn down the mounds and earthworks so they are no longer visible to the naked eye. It was a magnetic imaging survey in 2005 which revealed that the foundations of the complex are still crystal clear under the plough line. The survey also was the first to recognize that what Squier and Davis thought was a smaller square was actually the unique quatrefoil.

If you’d like to donate to save this irreplaceable resource, you can make a pledge on the Arc of Appalachia website here or pledge or donate on the Heartland Earthworks Conservancy page here. Pledges are very important to this project because the organizations are applying for grants that will match pledged funds and for loans that will be easier to secure with proof of financial backing.

Please spread the word! There are only a few days to go before the auction. So many of these mounds and earthworks are gone forever in Ohio. Let’s stop the Junction Group from succumbing to this tragic fate.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/HUhSdZAeGKU&w=430]

1,500-year-old tomb in Mongolia saved from looters

Ancient

Archaeologists in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have unearthed a lacquer coffin from the Northern Wei Dynasty (386 to 534 A.D.), snatching it out from under the nose of looters. The looters were caught digging a tunnel 10 meters (33 feet) long towards the tomb entrance, which is how archaeologists knew where to dig.

Tombs of aristocrats from the Northern Wei Dynasty have been found before in the Xilin Gol Grassland, a prairie region in Inner Mongolia that has been home to nomadic tribes since the Bronze Age Shang Dynasty in the 16th century B.C. Most recently, two tombs have been unearthed in the past two years in locations adjacent to the one that was just discovered. The potential for treasure in these tombs has attracted thieves who are so bold they often act as parasites on official archaeological projects, digging the same site at night that the professionals are excavating during the day. It’s a lucky break that they were caught in this instance before they destroyed the archaeological context in their search for salable goods.

On March 7th, the large black-lacquered pinewood coffin was removed from the tomb along with archaeological context material like soil and wood and brought to a laboratory at the Xilin Gol League Museum in Xilin Hot, Inner Mongolia. The next day, the coffin was gingerly opened to reveal the mortal remains of an aristocratic woman in excellent condition. She was wrapped in a silk shroud and wearing fur boots. Her thick black hair was adorned with a metal headband. She was buried with goods including a bow, a dagger and various pottery vessels.

Archaeologists have not found any indication of the identity of the deceased, but they hope that analysis will reveal much about her life and death. Samples of her hair will be tested for information about her diet, age and health. The well-preserved contents of the coffin and tomb will hopefully provide experts with new insight into the funerary customs of ancient Xianbei nomadic tribes who inhabited the area. There were many tribes under the Xianbei umbrella. Researchers hope to narrow down which clan the aristocratic woman belonged to.

One of the Tuoba tribe, Tuoba Liwei, was posthumously considered the first emperor of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Although China was briefly unified under the Northern Wei in 439 A.D., when the dynasty came to power it employed customs and practices that were foreign to the ethnic Chinese majority, like requiring would-be empresses not to be of high birth, but to be able to forge gold statues during a ceremony, and forcing the mothers of crown princes to commit suicide and instead giving princes’ wet nurses dowager empress status. As the dynasty expanded and fused with neighboring ethnic groups, these distinct practices fell out of favor.

Australia’s only surviving first banknote for sale

Modern(ish)

The only known surviving example of the first banknote issued in Australia will be going up for auction this month. The ten shilling note is conservatively estimated to sell for 250,000 Australian dollars ($225,000) and could well go for much higher considering its rarity and its excellent condition. It was found in a private collection in Scotland in 2005 and then acquired privately by another collector who is now selling it auction.

Issued by the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac Banking Corporation after merging with the Commercial Bank of Australia Limited in 1982), this banknote is number 55 of one hundred ten shilling notes issued on the bank’s first day of business, April 8th, 1817. The bank was more than seven years in the making at that point. Lieutenant-Colonel Lachlan Macquarie had arrived in New South Wales at the end of 1809 to establish a functional government and economy in a colony in chaos. The New South Wales Corps, a local regiment that was supposed to maintain order was so corrupt it was known as the Rum Corps for its illegal control of the rum trade.

With the monetary system a jumble of ad hoc local currency, unreliable promissory notes and barter goods, Macquarie sought to stabilize the economy with standardized currency. He asked for permission from London authorities to establish a bank in the colony, but his request was rejected. In 1812, he took £10,000 in Spanish dollars Britain sent him and cleverly stretched them into Australia’s first official local currency by punching holes in them and creating the famous holey dollars (the donut-like outside of the coins) and the dumps (the center plugs).

The holey dollars were in circulation from 1813 until 1822 and although they helped increase the amount of hard currency in the colony and prevent all the coin from leaving on trade ships, they were insufficient to alleviate New South Wales’ monetary woes and the unreliable promissory notes, barter and use of foreign currency continued. With London still dragging its feet, in 1816 Macquarie took matters into his own hands and forged ahead with a plan to found a colony bank. Capital was raised from 39 investors and 49 regulations adopted at a General Meeting of subscribers in February of 1817.

One of the regulations required that banknotes be issued in denominations of two shillings & sixpence, five shillings, 10 shillings, one pound and five pounds. To make the plates that would stamp these banknotes, the bank directors appointed Samuel Clayton, an Irish artist and silversmith who had been transported to New South Wales for forgery in 1816. (He wasn’t the only financial criminal to get a job producing money for the colony. William Henshall, who punched the dumps out of the holey dollars and overstamped both with their new values and mottos, had been transported for counterfeiting.)

Since there was no banknote paper in New South Wales until 1820, to make the banknotes harder to forge Clayton inscribed legends on the back of the note with a unique letterpress. Number 55 is inscribed: “When we cease to render strict and impartial Justice in the Administration of the Affairs of the Bank, as it regards the Public on the one hand, and the Proprietors on the other, be our Names and Characters branded with perpetual Infamy.”

The governor signed the charter for the new bank on March 22nd, 1817, and, after a branch location was leased from Mrs. Mary Reibey, a successful businesswoman who herself had been transported to New South Wales for horse stealing in 1790 when she was just 13 years old, the Bank of New South Wales opened its doors at 10:00 AM, April 8th. The bank was a huge success, setting the colony off on a sturdy financial footing for the first time. Macquarie considered it the signature achievement of his governorship, later describing the founding of the bank as “the saving of the colony from ruin.”

Unlike the bank, the delicate paper notes did not stand the test of time. Even the holey dollars are hard to come by these days with only 300 known to survive, and banknotes are obviously much harder used in circulation. How number 55 made it to Scotland is unknown, but it may have been brought there by Macquarie himself or at least one of his staff. He was Scottish and returned home after he resigned as governor of New South Wales in 1821.

Basketball court builders find Maya Ball Game court

Ancient

During construction of a basketball court on the campus of the West Technological University (UTP) in Maxcanú, in the Mexican state of Yucatan, workers discovered that the Maya had beat them to it by two thousand years. It was 2012 and the university had selected a grassy, flat area at the bottom of a hill to build a new basketball court. Almost as soon as work began, earthmovers encountered an unmovable object. Not being an irresistible force, the machines stopped while the people investigated. They found the obstacle was a pink stone wall that looked old so they called in the experts.

Archaeologists from the state branch of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) examined the find and confirmed it was indeed old. INAH archaeologist Eunice Uc told university president Rossana Alpizar Rodríguez: “The Maya are way ahead of you. You can’t build your basketball court because a pre-Hispanic one already exists here: it’s a Ball Game court.” Further excavations revealed two parallel rectangular structures made from the pink stone. They’re oriented north-south and are fairly narrow at, 19 meters (62 feet) long and seven meters (23 feet) wide. Between them is a flat field .

The structures are made out of stones carved in the Puuc style, veneer stones, sometimes highly decorated, over a concrete core. The interior sides that face each other start from a plaster layer over which the wall is built first in three steps and then with a slope leading up to a flat floor. The exteriors have vertical walls. The field was covered with a four-inch thick layer of stucco. The perimeter of the court is demarcated by a boundary of coarse stones of regular size (up to 60 centimeters or about 24 inches wide). About 15 meters (50 feet) south from the court, nearer the base of the hill, is a circular altar. The style of architecture identifies the court as having been built in the Early Classic period, 250 B.C. to 600 A.D.

The location at the foot of the hill was a deliberate choice. The soil there is a rich red earth called Kankab, deposited as runoff from mountain streams. It’s highly fertile and was prize land for Maya farmers. Some researchers believe the Ball Game was associated with agriculture and fertility rituals, hence the placement. A cave at the top of the hill represented the birthplace of the gods and the Ball Game linked the deities on the mountain to the agricultural land during ceremonies.

One of the activities during the Ball Games is narrated in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiche Maya of Guatemala: “It says that the mythical twins Hunahpu and Ixbalanque faced, in ball player’s getup, the lords of the underworld who are finally defeated, thus conquering death and giving way to life; this myth continues with the resurrection of the twins father who transforms into the corn god; this suggests there is a huge link between this deity and the ritual game that took place in these sacred spaces.”

More than 26 Mayan ball game courts have been discovered in Yucatan, but this is the first one found in Maxcanú, a town about 40 miles south of the state capital of Mérida. The university is thrilled with the discovery, even though it crushed their hoop dreams. In exchange for a few games, students will get to work on conservation issues and on a archaeological tourism plan that will bring new visitors to Maxcanú. The site is still being excavated and conserved by INAH in conjunction with school.