Region

Continent second only to Asia in size with a total area of 29,800,000 sq. km and a total population of 628 million (UN estimate, 1989). This survey focuses on the art traditions of Sub-Saharan Africa (i.e. south of the Sahara Desert), especially those of pre-colonial times as they continued into colonial and post-colonial times. It should be noted here that, while the major interest of scholars has been the study of unacculturated traditions, the fieldwork that makes such studies possible has been conducted many years, even centuries, after the time of first European contact. Furthermore, the notion of 'Sub-Saharan' Africa as a cultural entity, although still useful, is to some extent an arbitrary generalization: there has been both a high degree of internal diversity within the continent and much greater economic and political exchange between Africa and the outside world than was previously thought. Africa in the late 20th century comprises more than 50 independent nation states (...

[Aegina]

Greek island in the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea, mid-way between Athens to the north and Argos to the west. It is almost triangular, occupying c. 85 sq. km. The interior is mountainous, rising to a peak of 531 m, and the soil is largely infertile. Aigina is conspicuously visible from the Athenian port of Peiraeus, although Pericles’ description of it as ‘the eyesore of the Peiraeus’ (Plutarch: Pericles, viii) stemmed from political rivalry rather than its actual appearance. The main modern settlement (Aegina) is in the north-west of the island, occupying part of the site of the ancient town of Aigina, which it has entirely obliterated, apart from the remains of some tombs. Outside the town there are two important sanctuaries, that of Zeus and that of Aphaia, a local goddess. The city-state of Aigina was important in the 7th and 6th centuries bc, when it took part in many Greek trading ventures and developed the largest navy in Greece. Aigina was for a long time a rival of Athens and was finally defeated in a naval battle in ...

Region roughly equivalent to the modern state of Turkey. The name Anatolia was first used by Byzantine writers in the 10th century ad, as an alternative to Asia Minor, and is now often used in its Turkish form, ‘Anadolu’, to describe Turkey in Asia. In this article the term ancient Anatolia covers the cultures and civilizations that flourished in the region from possibly as early as the 14th millennium bc to the 6th century bc. A wealth of remains from the Neolithic period (c. 8000–c. 5800 bc) to the Early Bronze Age (c. 3400–c. 2000 bc) testifies to the advanced prehistoric culture of Anatolia. During the 2nd millennium bc this was succeeded by the civilization of the Hittites (see Hittite), the demise of which was followed by a Dark Age lasting some two centuries. Eastern and south-eastern Anatolia were dominated from the ...

Group of Caribbean Islands comprising Cuba, Republic of, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, the last divided into Haiti, Republic of and the Dominican Republic. Prior to contact with the Spanish colonists, the art of the Greater Antilles was relatively unified. However, after colonization traditions soon separated.

Antilles, Lesser, §I: Introduction...

[Andiparos; anc. Oliaros]

Small Greek island just to the south-west of Paros, in the Aegean Cyclades. It is the site of a number of finds from the Greek Bronze Age (c. 3600–c. 1100 bc), many of which come from excavations carried out by Tsountas and Bent in the 19th century (e.g. the cemetery of Krassades, which yielded important objects from the Early Cycladic (ec) i period), and in the 20th century by the Greek Archaeological Service. Items found by Bent, including a rare lead figurine, are in the British Museum, London.

The nearby islet of Saliagos is the site of the earliest excavated settlement in the Cyclades, dating to the Final Neolithic period (c. 4000–c. 3500/3000 bc). Among the finds were marble figurines, reflecting both the previous Neolithic tradition of squatting figures (e.g. the ‘Fat Lady of Saliagos’; Paros, Archaeol. Mus.) and a standard ...

Region in which diverse cultures and civilizations flourished from c. 4500 bc to the rise of Islam in the early 7th century ac. Throughout history the term Arabia has varied according to changing political and cultural conditions. In this article it denotes the Arabian peninsula as far north as the borders of Jordan and Iraq. For regions north of this modern boundary see Syria-Palestine and Mesopotamia.

A supraregional survey is not always possible for the art forms discussed below, either because of distinct regional diversity or because archaeological excavation is more advanced in some parts of the peninsula than in others. In some cases, therefore, this article simply discusses those works of art and architecture that are most noteworthy, either stylistically, technologically or iconographically. Generally, the earliest material considered dates to the latter part of the late prehistoric period, c. 4500–c. 3400 bc. Thereafter there is a range of sites and finds that span the protohistoric (...

Region in Japan, now part of Saga Prefecture, and the name of a type of porcelain first produced there during the early Edo period (1600–1868). The ware was originally known as Imari yaki (‘Imari ware’) because it was shipped from the port of Imari (Saga Prefect.). During the Meiji period (1868–1912) porcelain was produced throughout the country. The need to distinguish it from other porcelain wares led to the use of the name Arita (Arita yaki). As a result, the names Imari and Arita wares were used interchangeably. In the West, Arita porcelain was known by several names, including Imari, Amari, Old Japan and Kakiemon (see Japan, §IX, 3, (iii)).

Porcelain production is said to have begun in Japan in 1616, when the Korean ceramicist Ri Sanpei [Jap. Kanagae Sanbei] (1579–1655), who had been brought to Japan after Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasions of Korea (...

[Lat. Barium]

Regional capital and port in Apulia, southern Italy. The site of an important Greek colony, Bari may have been inhabited from 1500 BC. After the Roman conquest, in the 3rd century BC, the port developed, and the city became an important agricultural and commercial centre with communications to both East and West. The diocese of Bari was founded in AD 347. From the 6th century to the 12th, Bari was ruled successively by the Lombards, Saracens, Byzantines, and Normans. This was a period of great prosperity when the port grew to rival Venice and, with the acquisition of the relics of St Nicholas in 1087, the city became a major religious centre. A lively diversity of cultural influences characterizes the medieval buildings, notably S Nicola (see §2 below), a typical example of Apulian Romanesque, and the cathedral (see §1 below). In 1156 the Normans razed the city when its inhabitants rebelled. It again flourished under the Hohenstaufen emperor ...

Region in La Leche Valley on the north coast of Peru, which contains numerous archaeological sites. The central part of the valley, over 55 sq. km in area, has been designated the Poma National Archaeological and Ecological Reserve because of the concentration of some thirty major Pre-Columbian cemeteries and mounds nested within dense semi-tropical thorny native forest. The most notable period of local cultural development was the Middle Sicán (see Sicán), c. 900–1100 ce, when the Sicán funerary–religious precinct (see fig.), the dominant feature of Batan Grande, was built. Delineated by some dozen monumental adobe pyramids, it covers an area extending c. 1.6 km east–west and 1 km north–south.

The long-term funerary and religious importance of the Poma Reserve is underlined by the limited evidence for widespread or intensive agricultural activity there, despite its abundant fertile alluvium. As the beginning and end of various major canals, Batan Grande controlled the vital local water supplies and thus held political control over the adjacent valleys. Although a Late Sicán shift of settlement away from Batan Grande removed much of this political significance, the site clearly retained its eminence as a key burial and metallurgical center up to the Spanish conquest. The Spanish name for the area in fact derives from the hundreds of large ...

American centre of ceramics production and generic name for the pottery produced in and around Bennington, VT, since the late 18th century. The principal companies were Norton Stoneware and the United States Pottery Company. The first pottery was established in 1785 by Captain John Norton, who initially made earthenware and by 1815 had begun to make stoneware; thereafter the company was called the Norton Stoneware Company. On John Norton's retirement in 1823 the company was taken over by his sons (Luman and John), and remained a family business until 1894, when pottery production was ended; the company continued to operate as a wholesaler until 1911. Norton stoneware was brightly decorated, usually with flowers, birds and animals. Some of its finest pottery was painted by John Hilfinger (fl 1852–88), a native of Württemberg who migrated to America, where he worked for five potteries, including Bennington (1855–64); his birds and animals are characteristically painted in cobalt blue....

German centre of ceramics production.The term ‘Bernburg Pottery’ is used to describe both Prehistoric pottery made in Thuringia c. 3000 bc, and the product of two faience factories that flourished in the 18th century. The first operated from c. 1725 to c. 1775, and produced blue-and-white wares (e.g. chinoiserie vase, ...

[Broachanc. BarygazaBharukachchha]

Port and district at the mouth of the Narmada River on the Gulf of Khambhat in Gujarat, India. Bharuch is mentioned under the name of Barygaza in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a seafaring manual of the 2nd century ad (see Huntingford), as a city in the territory of Arianke. It produced iron and steel, cotton cloth and vessels of murrhine ware, possibly of agate or cornelian. In 1959–60 excavations carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India produced evidence for occupation during early historical times with finds of Northern Black Polished Ware (7th–3rd centuries bc), black-and-red ware and a contemporary bead-manufacturing industry. Stratified above this material was Red Polished Ware and other material of the early centuries ad, including Kshatrapa coins of the 2nd–4th centuries. This was followed by medieval and pre-modern deposits. No Bronze Age material has yet been found, although it is possible that an undiscovered settlement of this era exists. The seafaring tradition of the city was evident in the 17th century, when both English and Dutch factories were established. The fortifications ascribed to Sidda Raj Jaisinghji (...

English county noted for its lace production. The Buckinghamshire towns of Aylesbury, Great Marlow, Hanslope, Newport Pagnell, Olney and Stony Stratford were important centres of a domestic lace industry. Bobbin lace had been made in the county since the 16th century. By the 19th century it had established a county style (similar to the laces of Lille) consisting of a ground mesh of two threads twisted into either a hexagon or a six-pointed star, with simple floral patterns in thicker thread....

Region of central Anatolia, now in Turkey.

The region known in ancient times as Greater Cappadocia extends from Lake Tatta eastwards to the River Euphrates. It was bordered to the south by Cilicia, and to the north lay Pontus, which before the late 4th century bc had also formed part of Cappadocia. The region consists largely of a plateau divided by the Taurus and Antitaurus mountains, with volcanic areas in the west and around Erciyas Dağı (anc. Mt Argaeus) in the centre. Cappadocia has been continuously inhabited since prehistoric times, and during the 2nd millennium bc it was part of the Hittite empire. Conquered by the Persians in 585 bc, it was ruled during the 4th–1st centuries bc by the descendants of the satrap Ariarathes (b c. 404 bc). In ad 17 Cappadocia became a Roman province, with its capital at Caesarea (now Kayseri).

Material from the Greco-Roman period is mostly limited to funerary stelae of poor quality found at various sites, but an inventory of Greco-Roman necropoleis has revealed that there was continuity between the pagan and Christian population. The medieval development of ...

Region of north-west France, centre of the principal concentration of prehistoric megalithic monuments (see Megalithic architecture, §2) in Brittany. Situated south-west of Vannes, the area includes the parishes of Carnac and Locmariaquer, extending to Quiberon. The monuments include more than a hundred passage graves (dolmens) and many standing stones (menhirs) arranged singly or in groups including large alignments (see also Dolmen and Menhir). Curiously, these numerous and often huge stones did not attract the attention of scholars before the 18th century.

The typical large alignments, three of which are at Carnac and another at Erdeven, have one or two oval structures of contiguous stones at each end. Between these, ten to twelve apparently parallel lines of more or less equally spaced stones extend over a distance that can exceed a kilometre (see fig.). In reality, these lines are irregular and undulating, and the structures are very ruined; some stones are missing, while others have been restored. The stones decrease in size from the ends of the alignments towards their centres. Neolithic-period material, including flints, stone axes and pottery, has been found in the packing around their bases. The blocks are of local granite; a few are quite large and heavy. Wild speculations concerning their alignments’ ritual or symbolic significance have flourished, particularly in the 19th century, when the first theories about astral worship and astronomical use originated. The alignments differ in orientation, however, and there is no scientifically conclusive evidence to support even the most recent hypotheses, although some large isolated menhirs could have served as foresights for solar or lunar observation....

Swiss centre of ceramics production. There were three potteries producing creamware in 19th-century Carouge, which was part of Savoy from 1786–1816 and thereafter joined the Swiss canton of Geneva, of which it is now a suburb. The first ran from 1779–1829, the second from 1803–c. 1820 and the third (founded by Abraham Baylon) from 1813 till the early 20th century. Some of the finest pottery was made between 1813 and 1820 at the second of the three potteries; during this period Johann Jakob Dortu owned the pottery, and the manager was Jacques-François Richard. In the 20th century the most important potter was Marcel Noverraz (1899–1972), who settled in Carouge in 1922. The Musée de Carouge has a collection of earthenware produced by the Carouge factory between 1810 and 1930 and of Noverraz Art Deco ceramics made between 1930 and 1960. Carouge is still an important pottery centre, and since ...

[Inner]

Region of the Asian land mass. Largely through its location, topography and hydrology, it has served for millennia as the carrier of human communications between the societies and civilizations of south, west, north and east Asia. Its position at the junction of these lines of communication and the favourable environmental conditions for the establishment and maintenance of settled societies there produced a region with a distinct identity, amalgamating the various intellectual, artistic, political and ethnic currents that flowed through it and fashioning a comparatively pluralistic and syncretistic civilization. In historical thought and writing from Herodotus (5th century bc) onwards, the region is often depicted simultaneously as a frontier—the region where West encountered East (from Medean and Achaemenid times onwards), where oasal city met the steppe, the civilized the barbarian, the farmer the nomad, and the monotheistic and pantheistic religions of West and South Asia encountered animism and shamanism—and as connector and link (...

Archaeological zone of Pre-Columbian towns and roads in North America, in the San Juan Basin, north-western New Mexico. Chaco Canyon was the centre from c. ad 850–1150 of Chacoan culture, one manifestation of the Anasazi tradition, and considered ancestral to contemporary Pueblo peoples of the Southwest. A community of at least 12 multi-storey, tiered ‘great houses’ and hundreds of contemporaneous single storey ‘small house sites’ were built within a 15 km sector of the canyon. ‘Great houses’ were constructed with core walls with veneer masonry and ranged from 80 to 580 rooms. Small houses were of simpler masonry and averaged about 20 rooms each. Both types were domestic structures, but also contained round ceremonial rooms known as kivas (see Kiva). ‘Great kivas’, up to 18 m in diameter, are restricted to ‘great houses’ or occur as isolated buildings. ‘Great houses’ are associated with elaborate water-control systems that collected and diverted rainfall run-off to gridded agricultural fields. ‘Great houses’ in the canyon itself were linked to ‘outlier’ communities on the peripheries of the San Juan Basin by wide (...

Largest island in the Greek archipelago and home of the Minoan civilization (see fig.) and subsequently associated with an important school of Byzantine iconographers (see §4). The island, which is the fourth largest in the Mediterranean, owes its historical importance primarily to its focal position between Europe, Asia and Africa. Lying at 35° latitude, some 100 km south-east of the Peloponnesian mainland of Greece, Crete forms the southern boundary of the Aegean Sea and links the Peloponnese to the mainland of Asia Minor through a chain of smaller islands; the Libyan coast is c. 300 km to the south over open sea.

Crete extends c. 250 km east–west and a maximum of 57 km north–south, with sheltered anchorages chiefly along the north coast. Four mountain ranges constitute the island’s spine: westernmost are the White Mountains, with ten peaks above 2000 m; then Mt Ida (2456 m); the Lasithi Range, with Mt Dikte (2148 m); and finally, east of the narrow (12 km) isthmus of Ierapetra, Mt Ornon (1476 m). Isolated upland plains drained by swallow-holes include the Omalos in the White Mountains, 1100 m high and snowbound in winter, and the Lasithi Plateau (...