Recent Titles

This guide examines America’s oldest collection of Benin art, and one of its least published. Ivory, brass, and wooden art from one of the greatest African precolonial states—the only sub-Saharan polity with 500 years of surviving art—are examined through contextual lenses that provide insight into the Ẹdo people’s creativity and world view. The guide also considers the collection’s specific history and growth, and current plans to repatriate the artworks back to Nigeria’s Benin Kingdom. For readers unfamiliar with Benin and its art, this introduces the complexities of the palace, its successive monarchs and chiefs, and interprets metaphorical motifs such as mudfish, leopards, and elephants. Artworks refer to family and court rivalries, as well as the strict court hierarchies that dictated who could use which materials and wear particular regalia. Interactions with the Portuguese in the 15th and 16th centuries, their impact on trade and luxury goods, and their introduction of Catholicism paint a portrait of a society that absorbed only what they found useful and flourished in both war and peace. Original fieldwork illuminates Benin art and culture and previously published archival material provides insight regarding major collectors and individuals who shaped the field of African art history.

Archaeology from Every Angle brings together a wide range of scholars whose work has been influenced by Richard Zettler’s career in Near Eastern archaeology. The volume includes work from various archaeological specialties including ceramics, small finds, seal impressions, mortuary practice, social identity, and zooarchaeology. Several contributors provide broader overviews of sites, architecture, and landscape features. Chronologically, this book spans the 5th millennium BCE through the Iron Age in the Near East. The breadth of the contributions to this book speak to the lasting and far-reaching impact Zettler has had on the field. Archaeology from Every Angle does what it says and brings together disparate topics and scholars to form a volume in honor of an archaeologist with a long and storied career.

This volume describes and illustrates the ceramic figurines excavated at the Maya site of Tikal, Guatemala, from 1956 through 1970. These figurines are the largest excavated collection of ceramic figurines from a Maya site, and one of the major artifact categories from the site of Tikal. The collection includes both hand modeled and mold-made figures, human and animal, as well as related ceramic objects including figurine molds, flutes, and panpipes. The figurines are classified by subject matter, and their relation to distribution and dating within the site is discussed. Most of the classifiable pieces are illustrated at a scale that allows comparison with similar objects from other Maya sites. The purpose of this volume is the presentation of the material from the site of Tikal; comparative material is limited.

Tang Taizong (Li Shimin), 2nd emperor of the Tang dynasty, commissioned six statues of his favorite warhorses to be carved in stone and serve as part of his political legacy at his mausoleum, Zhao Ling. This book traces the history and significance of these statues, from their creation in 7th-century China, through their removal from the mausoleum in the early 20th c., when two made their way to the United States antiquities market through the dealer C.T. Loo, and ultimately to the Penn Museum. Their time on the art market and subsequent stewardship by the Penn Museum are also explored.

Contemporaneous sources and archival records reconstruct the roles of different people, Chinese and Westerners, in the sale of and competition for these stone horses. While underlining their exceptional significance and reconstructing the historical path they traversed, this work serves to bridge the gaps in the shared knowledge of the historical facts pertaining to these horse reliefs and build a common foundation for intercultural dialogue and cooperation surrounding cultural heritage preservation and changing museum practice.

This book presents for the first time the complete corpus of equipment for horses excavated by The Hasanlu Project in the Iron II level at Hasanlu Tepe, Iran. The equipment is varied, extensive, and in a context sealed as buildings collapsed during the violent surprise attack and resulting fire that destroyed the town. The equipment, most still in its primary location ready for active use, make it of particular, if not unique, importance. It is also remarkable in the quantity recovered, its variety and richness, the functional types that could be identified (riding, draft, ceremonial), and the amount that could be reconstructed. Its life context gives new information about equipment and usage not otherwise available and allows suggestions for the layered importance of the horse as evidenced by the equipment. No other book presents equipment for horses in a similar context and quantity because the preservation at Hasanlu is unique for this part of the Near East in this time period.

The equipment also provides new insight into space use in Hasanlu, one of the most important Iron Age sites in northwest Iran. Findspots yield information about building use and reuse, some as stables. These and architectural alterations provide unique information regarding changes to the town over time, some of which most likely reflect changes in the dynamics of the region.