Review of Natural Materials of the Holy Land

3rd TMM_CH International Conference on Transdisciplinary Multispectral Modeling and Cooperation for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage: Recapturing the World in Conflict through Culture, promoting mutual understanding and Peace, 2023

Natural conditions, including geology, have a great influence on human settlements, ab initio in determining location, through their development over time, and defining the material culture of their inhabitants. The image of Jerusalem is of a stone city, serving its tangible materially and intangible character. In the city of Jerusalem, geology plays a pivotal role that nowadays is still significant. Hence, in this study, several topics were explored, focusing on the geology of the city and its vicinity, together with its early research and mapping. Two well-known geologists Leo Picard and Moshe Avnimelech identified the Turonian, Cenomanian, and the Senonian cities of Jerusalem. Based on these early publications, it is suggested that exploring the connection between the city's natural conditions, its built environment and urban development, offers a surprising interdisciplinary approach for compatible materialities. The definition of materiality in the fields of geology, architecture, and urbanism, along with material and materiality definition as a basis for a statement of significance of cultural heritage and its conservation. By analyzing the nexus of these compatible materialities and highlighting their contemporary perspective it is possible to develop an interdisciplinary cultural heritage discourse, providing a tool for the Historic Urban Landscape approach that regards the city as a multi-layered and where geology, geomorphology, and other natural and environmental resource have a great role.

This paper analyses a singular aspect of the funds and collections housed in the Society of Jesus’ Colegio Máximo Archive in Alcalá de Henares (Spain): the books and objects related to the spiritual conquest of the Indies. The inventory recording this material was drawn up in 1768 after the expulsion of the Jesuits, and describes in an unusual detailed way the materials that were kept in. These descriptions are particularly rich to allow both knowing in detail the material characteristics of the objects, as well as reconstructing some of their paths on their journey from the Indies to Europe.

Religions, 2024

Following the material turn in the studies of religion, this Special Issue approaches religions as happening in and through a broad variety of material objects and phenomena and aims to focus on how religious materiality interacts with heritagization processes. In short, the main research question proposed here would be how religious material objects and phenomena happen to be transformed into heritages in various social, political and religious settings and how these processes influence contemporary understandings of both “religion” and “heritage”. Relations between religions and heritages in the context of material culture can be fruitfully scrutinized, for example, in places where religious architecture may be seen and experienced also in terms of cultural heritage; where pilgrims and tourists interact with the same material objects, referring to religious or heritage registers; in museums that tend to frame religious materiality with heritage and artistic values. Conflicts and tensions over specific conceptualizations of religion and heritage, but also collaboration and mutual reinforcement of religious and heritage discourses and practices, can appear when various individuals, groups and institutions interact and use material culture produced in religious contexts. Cases of reusing religious materiality (e.g., objects, spaces) in explicitly secular contexts as representations of “the past” are also an interesting subject. Further tension is revealed in situations in which various religious groups use the same material object or space and apply heritage discourses to justify competing ownership claims. Referring to new materiality, this Special Issue would particularly like to encourage analysis that —apart from studying the political, social, institutional and human actors involved in the production of religious and heritage discourses and practices—attempts to scrutinize an active role and agency of material objects or spaces (e.g., architecture) themselves. The materiality of the human body and sensual experiences are also significant dimensions of the material culture of religion. How do these kinds of religious materiality reveal themselves in heritage production processes? How do various religious traditions interpret and approach materiality and what are the implications of these varying theologies in the context of globally promoted institutionalized heritage discourse? How do vernacular understandings of heritage, religion and materiality possibly challenge Western oriented interpretations of these terms?

2021

This dissertation focuses on the metal artifacts of the Kingdom of Jerusalem: their production, trade, and use, in comparison to those in the Islamic world and in Latin-Christian Europe. The study of metal artifacts offers a new avenue to broaden our understanding of the period, assessing prevailing concepts regarding cross-cultural influences and seeking to identify possible new ones. The primary focus is typological: i.e., the shape, size, and function of the artifacts, rather than their metallurgy. Drawing on Ian Hodder’s use of the concept entanglement, the relationships among different objects, humans, animals, ideas, and thoughts are traced in order to obtain insights into how and why certain objects were used.

Mark Van Strydonck, Jeroen Reyniers, Fanny Van Cleven (eds.) Relics @ the Lab An Analytical Approach to the Study of Relics, 2018

The book is from the series Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion, 20, it can be purchased here: https://www.peeters-leuven.be/detail.php?search_key=9789042936676&series_number_str=20&lang=en SUMMARY: The book Relics @ the Lab, an Analytical Approach to the Study of Relics includes a series of studies presented at the first international workshop Relics @ the Lab organized by the Royal Institute of Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels, Belgium (27-28 October 2016). The papers cover a large variety of themes as well as analytical methods. Some papers focus on the primary relics while others deal with the nature and origin of secondary as well as tertiary relics. The first group of papers emphases on the archaeological authenticity of the relics, the second group elucidate the use, additions and manipulations of the relics through the ages. The applied analytical techniques are very divers. Radiocarbon and physical anthropology are the main tools to study the primary relics, while dye analysis, imaging techniques, textile analysis and dendrochronology are used to study the secondary and tertiary relics. Sometimes unexpected techniques, like the analysis of writing ink or the determination of plants and excrements, complete the wide range of analytical methods used to understand the origin, nature and context of the relics. br />Academics as well as professionals working in archaeology, art history, museum labs and conservation sciences will find this an invaluable reference source.

Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, vol. 1 no. 1, 2018, pp. 79-102.

Materia Americana: The Body of Spanish American Images, 16th to mid 19th centuries., 2020

Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500-1500, ed. Renana Bartal, Neta Bodner, and Bianca Kuhnel (New York: Routledge), 2017

Our focus is a remarkable object – or, rather, a collection of objects, in turn housed within another object, which bears on it representations of yet other things: a reliquary box, once held in the treasury of the Sancta Sanctorum in the Lateran Palace, containing bits of stone, wood, and cloth, labeled with locations from the “Holy Land”. The box, now in the Museo Sacro in the Vatican, has been credited to sixth-century Syria or Palestine. Its sliding lid (obverse) bears a painting of the cross intersected by what appear to be a lance and a reed with a sponge, forming a schematic Christogram, inscribed within a mandorla and placed on the Golgotha hill; Christ’s initials are inscribed in the upper corners, and alpha and omega are painted on either side of the hillock. On the reverse side, which faces the relics enshrined in the box, is a series of images narrating scenes from the life of Christ: the Nativity, baptism, crucifixion, Holy Women at the Tomb, and ascension. These five scenes portray an encapsulation of Christ’s earthly experience with great economy. Altogether, the contents of the box, the monogram, and the paintings function as a threefold conjuring of Christ: in image, name, and material remains made sacred by contact with Christ. Building on Brown’s observations, we consider this box and its contents through the lenses of thing theory and theories of memory. We pay particular attention to the tensions between the individual objects and the ways their arrangement and proximity create a collective; their invocation of distant locales; and their agentic potential.

U.S. Catholic Historian, 2020

Catholic devotional objects are rare but persistent finds at archaeological sites in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. These largely personal, private objects—from medals depicting saints to rosaries and reliquaries—illustrate the vibrant spiritual world inhabited by residents of the seventeenth- through twentieth-century Middle Atlantic region. Contextual analysis of undisturbed artifacts reveals that they were treated with reverence, although not always in ways reflecting orthodox Catholicism. Moreover, analysis shows that the social context of their use among people of European, African, and Native American descent was unmistakably different. These objects of metal, wood, bone, clay, glass, and stone played pivotal roles in the way that American Catholics connected with the supernatural. Through sacramental objects, the archaeological record is populated with angels, saints, and materials used to connect with Christ and the Virgin Mary. In particular, the materials from which these objects were made—and not simply their symbolism—gave them power. Considering relationships among humans, sacramental objects, and supernatural powers provides new opportunities to interpret how these objects were used and, ultimately, how and why they ended up in the ground.