Transmission of Knowledge and Culture in Antiquity: the Concept of Translation in Artistic Crafts. A Case-Study of Ancient Near East and South Caucasus in III-II millennium BC.

Project leaders

Silvana Dipaolo, Marina Puturidze

Agreement

GEORGIA - SRNSF - Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation

Call

CNR-SRNSF 2016-2017

Department

Social sciences and humanities, cultural heritage

Thematic area

Social sciences and humanities, cultural heritage

Status of the project

New

Research proposal

The project is devoted to the actual problems of the developed phase of prehistory and concerns the special issues of changeovers that took place in various cultural traditions of this period. The offered research is related to the various important advances and their implementation in the local cultural environment which might be considered as a result of translation. Admitable that it was linked with the processes that have had place between the South Caucasus and bordering to it civilizations beyond the south. One of the field these achievements of the antiquity can be recorded with any certainty is the patterns of artistic craft. This seems logical, since it is a characteristic feature of the elite social class, inclined to an acquirement of the various kind of a prestigious traditions. It is evidently proved by the adopting the materials and innovational technological methods from the Near Eastern civilizations to the local environment. The elite always, in every period, aspires to the novelties which is a prestigious and thus emphasizes its exceptional high position in the community. Translation of such materials and cultural traditions from the advanced neighboring southern civilizations indicates the high social interest and passion for the prestigious elements by the local tribes of South Caucasian cultures. This point might be related as to the various traditions (funeral rites, burial structures, transport etc.), as well as certain categories of artefacts (jewelry, toreutics, weaponry etc.). The best indication of this processes reflected by the famous patterns of artistic craft of the Trialeti Culture, which provides a great deal of information about the innovations and changes in social life during the end of III-beginning of the II millennium BC. With the rise of mentioned culture we find, for the first time in the South Caucasus, large amounts of precious items of artistic craft that reflects a clse interaction with the Near Eastern world. This research project will examine the most essential changes and achieves that took place during the Middle Bronze Age and provide interpretation of the causes in context of translation. The III-II millennium BC as one of very important period of developed stage of prehistory, in general; it was characterized by an extreme activating of interrelations between the different cultural unities. From this point of view especially important seems those processes which had been progressing in the Ancient Near East and South Caucasus. Activating of interrelation, in the one hand, between the different areas of the Ancient Near East and, on the other hand, between the South Caucasus and beyond southern regions, i.e. the Near East, was an important factor which stimulate the exchange and transmission of information that were originated from the various cultural traditions. In the last few decades, the economic and cultural globalization has produced a decline in the importance of national boundaries, producing instead a revival of comparative studies and emphasizing cosmopolitan values. A particular field of enquiry is represented by material and visual world, with particular reference to the transmission of culture and communication of knowledge. It plays a very important role in shaping human experience and social relations. This project offers the opportunity to explore the concept of translation from different theoretical perspectives (exchange, perception, agency, cultural biography, and so on), as well as its numerous interpretations and implications (transformation, adaptation, domestication, displacement, foreignizing etc.). Referring to a cognitive and ideational aspect, the term 'translation' emphasizes the transfer of knowledge and traditions across social, cultural, or material divide, involving a process of decontextualization and recontextualization in different ways and places. The discussion is open to many issues and hypotheses to be tested concerning the content of translation: A) the relationship between cultural and artistic translation and interpretation (translation always produces interpretation; interpretation does not imply translation); B) the existence of a conventionalized code in the translation; the creation of a third 'hybrid' language produced by the process of translation; C) another area of enquiry will concern the use of definitions (terminology): for instance, whether translation associated to materiality must be intended (or not) as 'mediation', as mutual understanding, also changing form and content so that artifacts are recognizable by one or multiple parties. In general terms, translation means displacement, i.e. the transfer of artifacts and/or their meaning across some kind of boundary (geographical, but also historical, social and cultural) with a implied or explicit change in status, including failures (mistakes, for instance), misunderstandings or conscious strategies of re-elaboration. This process also affects the physical and material properties of artifacts undergoing translation, in primis their alteration for adaptation and repurposing, especially in a diachronic perspective: whether a material transformation (metal vs. pottery vase) constitutes always a form of translation, not necessarily translation must contemplate a change in form and/or material. In many cases, the intentionality and not merely a need depending on the available resources represents a key-factor in the material transformation. Precisely the deliberate programming is a key-concept. The three different moments of human agency represented by maker/producer, translator and user/consumer pose some questions: the possibility that artefacts are expressly created for relocation, the identification of transformation places, practices of adapting artefacts and recognizing agency in artifacts assigning them a specific role in the relation between production/translation/reception.

Research goals

The aim of our study is to deepen in those historical processes that supposing have had place in remote past and to reveal the reasons of appearance of the different traditions in artistic craft of Ancient Near East and South Caucasus. As well, research will be pointed towards the understanding of the nature and sources of cultural diversity within South Caucasian Middle Bronze Age societies. South Caucasus as the central crossroad, joining the northern and southern regions of Eurasia, appears those limited part of land which consolidate achievements of different cultural worlds and by transforming of them create an unique culture of the late III- early II millennium BC which combine certain alien and local traditions. The contacts between Caucasus and Near East for trade in both directions suggest the necessity to explain ex novo the cultural similarities between these two areas and to analyse the mechanisms of the transmission and communication of the culture. The use of the results of current research from practical point of view, undoubtedly, will support to understand processes occurred in South Caucasian and Near Eastern regions at the late III-early II millennium BC and solve problems of transmission of cultural traditions, implementation of innovations and their distribution. Perspective for the future cooperation becomes quite obvious when considering different aspects of the sense of transmission and translation of cultural traditions.

Last update: 06/08/2025