Levantine Stylistic Practices in Collective Memory
Levantine Stylistic Practices in Collective Memory
Drawing on Bourdieu’s practice theory, style is taken as part of embodied practices that catalyze collective memories and community identity. These stylistic practices include both the production and consumption of style(s) as separate but intersecting spheres of practice, and thus act as a generator of networks of social relations. This chapter explores how stylistic traits form a critical component of collective memory, being the product and source of shared social practices at the levels of both creation and appreciation. Through such a lens, visual similarities between first millennium Levantine art and works from the preceding Late Bronze Age (c. 1600-1200/1180 BCE), here taking a particular set of animal markings as a case study, assume heightened meaningfulness within the context of newly emerging communities of identity in the early Iron Age Levant (10th and 9th centuries). The early Iron Age arts visually and materially manifested a connection to a past “golden age” through the selection of these stylistic traits that were freighted with Late Bronze Age connotations of heroic kingship.
Keywords: Bourdieu, theory practice, stylistic practices, collective memory, Late Bronze Age, Iron Age Levant, golden ages, heroic kingship
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