Programme & Abstracts :: Registration Details :: Accommodation

THE CLOTHED BODY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
17-19 January 2002

Senta C. German
Monclair State University, NJ

A Reconsideration of Aegean Bronze Age Dress

The study of dress in the Aegean Bronze Age began with the first discovery of images of Minoans and Mycenaeans by Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans at the turn of the 19th century. Indeed, ever since these discoveries, scholars have remained keenly interested in Minoan and Mycenaean dress because of its provocative nature. Women dress in long flounce skirts which hide their lower body but expose their breasts completely. Men dress in loin cloths, covering little of their tall sinewy bodies. What is notable about Minoan and Mycenaean dress is not only the fact that it reveals more than it conceals but also its rigidity of style; there is almost no deviation from these specific costumes over a period of almost 700 years.

Yet, despite almost a century of scholarship, little is clearly known about the use, function, symbolism or meaning of Minoan and Mycenaean dress. What has emerged is a pattern of interpretive schemes which mirror contemporary interpretations of Minoan and Mycenaean culture. In short, approaches to Aegean Bronze Age dress have faithfully reflected approaches to Aegean Bronze Age culture over the past century.

My paper has two goals, one historiographical and one theoretical. First I shall demonstrate how the past 100 years of the study of Minoan and Mycenaean dress has mirrored the shifting and often competing interpretive schemes of Aegean Bronze Age society from matriarchy to Marxism, patriarchy to Postmodernism. Second, using the trajectory of the study of Minoan and Mycenaean dress as an example, I shall focus on how and to what extent the study of dress is a discrete field of cultural inquiry, separate from the study of other creative enterprise such as fine art, architecture or music. In doing so, I hope to not only more clearly focus our understanding of the scholarship on Aegean Bronze Age dress but also begin to ask exactly what unique contributions the study of dress in the ancient world can yield.