Current Trends in Scholarship Regarding Achaemenid Material and Visual Culture
Abstract
The past two decades have seen an explosion of work on Achaemenid material and visual culture. New excavations and surveys at sites across the empire provide exciting new information, even as ongoing study of material discovered earlier offers fresh insights and ideas. Recent synthesizing studies have considered larger geographical areas as well as broader human interest issues. Among other subjects, scholarship has investigated landscapes and movement, power structures, gender, religion, imperial domination and resistance, and the knotty question(s) of identity. Communication of ideas and behaviors both within the empire and with peoples not under imperial hegemony has been of ongoing scholarly interest. The agency of non-elite individuals and groups, as well as the variety of their responses and actions in the context of imperial reality, have taken on a greater role in scholarship. With so many trends moving concurrently, this is a particularly rewarding time to engage with Achaemenid material and visual culture studies.
Citation
Dusinberre, Elspeth. "Current Trends in Scholarship Regarding Achaemenid Material and Visual Culture." Pourdavoud Center: Achaemenid Workshop 1 (April 12, 2023).
About the Speaker
Elspeth Dusinberre
University of Colorado
Elspeth Dusinberre (AB Harvard 1991, PhD Michigan 1997) is Professor of Distinction at the University of Colorado and a current Getty Villa Research Scholar. She is interested in cultural interactions in Anatolia. Her work has investigated the ways in which the Achaemenid Persian empire (ca. 550-330 BCE) affected local social structures in the give-and-take between Achaemenid and other cultures and has delved into pre-Achaemenid matters at the sites of Gordion and Sardis. Her first book, Aspects of Empire in Achaemenid Sardis (Cambridge 2003), examines the impact of Achaemenid hegemony from the vantage of the Lydian capital. Her second and fourth books focus on the Phrygian capital: Gordion Seals and Sealings: Individuals and Society (Philadelphia 2005) and (with Ellen Kohler) The Lesser Phrygian Tumuli: The Cremations (Philadelphia 2023). Dusinberre’s third book, Empire, Authority, and Autonomy in Achaemenid Anatolia (Cambridge 2013), considers all of Anatolia under Persian rule and proposes a new model for understanding imperialism. She has co-edited a Festschrift for Margaret Cool Root, The Art of Empire in Achaemenid Persia (Leiden 2020), and at the moment is co-editing a volume on Middle and Late Phrygian Gordion.