An Age of Intermateriality

Intermaterial relations between individual genres of material culture are a constant phenomenon in antiquity.There are, however, specific periods of time with particularly strong interdependencies.This applies in particular to the Late Republic and Early Empire (2 nd century B.C. -1 st century A.D.).The aim of this paper is to focus on this period from a diachronic perspective by taking into account different genres of ancient 'art', such as pottery, glass or marble objects.The analysis of all these genres shows especially that the mere imitation of formal characteristics played a lesser role than the creative appropriation and emulation of these characteristics.In order to tackle the phenomenon of intermaterial relations, the concept of skeuomorphism is abandoned in favour of the art-theoretical concept of 'intermateriality', which is introduced and further developed here.Scholarship has always recognised the great variety of intermaterial relations between individual genres of ancient 'art'.However, this variety has rarely been subjected to systematic and comprehensive analysis; rather, the dependencies have often only been described, and in just a few cases have they been discussed in more detail 1 .Particularly important on this topic is the work of Michael Vickers, who in various contributions has attempted to develop a theory of intermaterial references 2 .With the term skeuomorphism, he takes up a concept that was first introduced at the end of the 19 th century 3 .In line with the term's initial use, Vickers' work focuses primarily on the interdependencies between ceramic and metal vessels.He sees the method of skeuomorphism as a scientific tool for filling in the gaps in the archaeological inventory and obtaining clues as to the appearance of the large quantity of 'luxury tableware' of gold, silver and bronze that is almost completely lost to us today 4 .He makes use of a strict material hierarchy, at the top of which are gold, silver and precious stones, and postulates that the imitation of their characteristics in simpler materials was the result of a kind of trickle-down effect.His stimulating yet highly simplistic approach, which lumps together many different skeuomorphic phenomena and often specifically disregards the diachronic perspective, has primarily attracted criticism and found few adherents 5 .As a purely imitative art, ceramics in particular lose all innovative potential according to Vickers' approach.However, various studies have recently shown that skeuomorphism is not a one-way street 6 .As Jan-Pieter Löbbing recently noted, the term skeuomorphism is in itself problematic and hardly appropriate for the subject it describes 7 .The term, which is formed from the words μορφή (form) and σκεῦος (vessel, utensils of all kinds), on the one hand doesn't refer to the principle of approximation, and on the other only emphasises formal aspects.Also, due to the use of σκεῦος, skeuomorphism is a very narrowly defined term that fails to adequately cover comparable phe-1 On this in connection with glass, see Löbbing 2015; 2016. 2

Ancient history · Empire · Classical Antiquity Studies · History

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