HKAK03291U KL. ARK Klassisk arkæologisk tema 1 - Collecting in Antiquity

In archaeology an assemblage is traditionally defined as static and temporally fixed as “a group of artifacts recurring together at a particular time and place”. What happens if we instead understand assemblages as part of a collecting process?

Collecting has become a major focus of modern museum studies. These studies show that collecting represents an enormous potential for understanding the values, mentality and dynamics of a society. In this course we will discuss some of the challenges associated with introducing collecting as a way of understanding archaeological assemblages in classical antiquity. New museology studies and in particular their focus on material agency and network theory are very helpful as an offset for studying collecting in antiquity. However, the recent studies that deal with collecting in antiquity have mainly taken a logocentric approach. In contrast to these studies we will in this course discuss what the concept of collecting adds to our understanding of the material culture of the ancient world.  We will consider definitions for collections and collecting and identify and discuss theoretical frameworks which may work for antiquity and use these to analyze a series of archaeological assemblages.