Publication details
Contenants tardo-antiques: anciennes problématiques, nouvelles directions
| Title in English | Late Antique Containers: Old Issues, New Directions |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2024 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The lecture series arca imaginum could not long evade the theme of boxes, baskets, and other containers that, in the Greco-Roman world and later in the Middle Ages, were hoarded and handled for various purposes. Baskets and hampers could carry fruits, grains, cakes, and other edible goods. Caskets enclosed jewelry, toiletry utensils, writing instruments, and even texts and images. These various receptacles could also, it is said, hold initiatory objects and symbols, prominent relics or simple amulets, healing or sanctifying balms, and eucharistic species. Boxes and baskets simultaneously serve to conceal, preserve, and display. They can themselves be nested within other containers or even permanently buried beneath an altar. They serve as surfaces for imagery, sometimes elaborate and linked to their contents, or become iconographic subjects themselves, representing notions of secrecy and the sacred. |