Art History?

This article is presented in two parts. In part I, I call into question the viability of a currently received opinion about the foundations of the subject called “Art History,” primarily by challenging assumptions that are implicit in conventional uses of the terms “art” and “work of art.” It is widely supposed that works of art are items of a kind, that this kind is the bearer of the name “art,” and that it has a history. In part II, I propose to correct this error by using the word “art” in a presently unconventional—although not unprecedented—way. The proposal relies upon a concept of cultural evolution running intellectually parallel to a Darwinian account of genetic evolution. The thesis has strong metaphysically realist implications, relating cultural evolution to what can be said and done and can properly be seen to have a history only in a universe to which real regularities are attributed. The recommended use of the term “art” is secured upon an estimate of the role of memetic innovation as radically pervasive, embracing all thought and action. “Art,” understood in the suggested way, becomes the name of a category, which has no history as kinds have histories.     

Finding Vikings in the Danelaw

Historical, artefactual and place‐name evidence indicates that Scandinavian migrants moved to eastern England in the ninth century AD, settling in the Danelaw. However, only a handful of characteristically Scandinavian burials have been found in the region. One, widely held, explanation is that most of these Scandinavian settlers quickly adopted local Christian burial customs, thus leaving Scandinavians indistinguishable from the Anglo‐Saxon population. We undertook osteological and isotopic analysis to investigate the presence of first‐generation Scandinavian migrants. Burials from Masham were typical of the later Anglo‐Saxon period and included men, women and children. The location and positioning of the four adult burials from Coppergate, however, are unusual for Anglo‐Scandinavian York. None of the skeletons revealed interpersonal violence. Isotopic evidence did not suggest a marine component in the diet of either group, but revealed migration on a regional, and possibly an international, scale. Combined strontium and oxygen isotope analysis should be used to investigate further both regional and Scandinavian migration in the later Anglo‐Saxon period.     

Inter‐Indigenous development aid: markets,corporations, and biases

The Canadian government and the Meadow Lake Tribal Council sponsored a forest extraction corporation in eastern Nicaragua that restructured 16 Miskitu and Mayangna villages and transformed local human‐environment interactions. The Central American aid project demonstrated paternalistic and interventionist tendencies and exposed biases in inter‐Indigenous aid that rendered it inseparable from conventional aid. This case encourages reflection on social and ecological impacts from the marketing of collective resources, the creation of Indigenous development corporations, and the decision‐making criteria and processes driving foreign aid. The case study demonstrates how foreign aid programs targeting Indigenous Peoples may actually thwart the self‐determination that they set out to encourage. Aid agencies and business partners, who had limited knowledge of local cultures and institutions, created externally defined rules that instigated resource conflicts and undermined the authority of customary leaders without resolving poverty or uneven development.     

From Friend to Foe: The Portrait of Licinius in Eusebius

The object of this article is to analyse the portrait of emperor Licinius in three important sources of the reign of Constantine the Great: Lactantius' De mortibus persecutorum and, especially, Eusebius' two historical works, the Historia ecclesiastica (HE) and the Vita Constantini (VC). The influence of rhetoric, with the keywords vituperatio/laudatio and progymnasmata, is emphasized in Eusebius' way of depicting Licinius, this great loser in Late Roman History.     

Reviews

Authority and Political Culture in Shi'ism, Said Amir Arjomand, ed., Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988, 393 pp., index. $19.95, paperback. $49.50, cloth.

A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and her Poetry, Michael C. Hillmann, Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press and Mage Publishers, 1987, 181 pp.

The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan, Lisa Golombek and Donald Wilber, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988; Vol. 1: 510 pp. of text; Vol. 2: 16 color plates, 481 black‐and‐white photographs, 8 maps, 162 plans and sections. $130.

Timurid Architecture in Khurasan, Bernard O'Kane, Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1987, 418 pp., numerous figures and plates. $49.95.

Iranian Immigrants in the United States: A Case Study of Dual Marginality, Abdolmaboud Ansari, Millwood, N.Y.: Associated Faculty Press, 1988, xii + 148 pp.

Aux Sources de la Nouvelle Persane, Christophe Balay and Michel Cuypers, Paris: Institut Français d'Iranologie de Teheran, 1983, 222 pp., bibiography, indexes of proper names, books and journals. 124 Fr. paperback.

Post‐Revolutionary Iran, Hooshang Amirahmadi and Manoucher Parvin, eds., Boulder: Westview Press, 1988, 262 pp. $39.50.

Islamic Art and Spirituality, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987, 213 pp., 10 monochrome plates. $75.00.

Nishapur: Some Early Islamic Buildings and Their Decoration, Charles J. Wilkinson, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986, 328 pp., num. ill., 29 col. pl. $75.00.

The Making of Iran's Islamic Revolution: From Monarchy to Islamic Republic, Mohsen M. Milani, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988, xiv + 361.

The Poet Sa'di: A Persian Humanist, John D. Yohannan, (Persian Studies Series, No. 11) Lanham, Md.: University Press of America; Bibliotheca Persica, 1987, 149 pp.

The Destiny of a King, Georges Dum´ezil (translated by Alf Hiltebeitel), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988, 155 pp. $11.95.

Revolutionary Iran, R.K. Ramazani, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, xvi + 254 pp., appendix to p. 282, notes to p. 294, bibliography to p. 302, index to p. 311. $27.50.

A Bibliography of the Iran‐Iraq Borderland, Keith MacLachlan and Richard Schofield, Cambridge, U.K.: Middle East and North African Press, 1987, 383 pp.

Tales from Luristan (Matalya Lurissu): Tales, Fables and Folk Poetry from the Lur of Bala‐Gariva, Sekandar Amanolahi and W.M. Thackston, transcribed and translated with notes on the phonology, the grammar of Luri and Luri‐English vocabulary. Harvard Iranian Series, Vol. 4, 1986, XIII + 250 pp. $19.95 paperback.

Shi'ism and Social Protest, Juan R. I. Cole and Nikki R. Keddie, eds., New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986, x + 321 pp.

My Memories of Baha'u'llah, Ustad Muhammad‐'Aliy‐i‐Salmani, the Barber, translated from the original Persian by Marzieh Gail, Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1982, 122 pp., appendices, short biographies of Baha'is mentioned in the text, as well as notes, selected bibliography and selected love poems of Ustad Muhammad‐'Aliy‐i‐Salmani.

Agricultural Change and Rural Society in Southern Iran, C. Salmanzadeh, Cambridgeshire, England: MENAS Press Ltd., 1980, 275 pp. £17.00 hardback, £10.50 paperback.

Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy‐State Relations in the Pahlavi Period, Shahrough Akhavi, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980, xx + 255 pp.

Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution, Michael M.J. Fischer, Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1980, xviii + 314 pp.