What Shall I Say of Clothes? Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of Dress in Antiquity

The essays in this volume engage explicitly in a variety of theoretical and methodological strategies for the interpretation of dress, dressed bodies, and their representations in the ancient world. Focusing on personal ornaments, portraiture, and architectural sculpture, the collected papers investigate the visual, somatic, and semantic significance of the act of getting dressed, what it meant to be dressed in various ways, and how dress contributed to and shaped identities in antiquity. Authors draw from a wide range of disciplinary frameworks, integrating literary and archaeological evidence, experimental archaeology, social theory and the study of iconography.

This volume spans a broad area both geographically and chronologically, bringing the ancient Near East into dialogue with the classical world from prehistory through late antiquity. The breadth and inclusivity of this volume provide a strong theoretical and methodological foundation for the collaborative study of the dynamic role of dressed bodies and images that depict them. Contributors are Emma L. Baysal, Eric Beckmann, Ayse Bursali, Alexis Q. Castor, Megan Cifarelli, Laura Gawlinski, Maura Heyn, Neville McFerrin, Kiersten Neumann, Hadi Özbal, Rana Özbal, Josephine Verduci, Alissa Whitmore, Elizabeth Wueste, and Baris Yagci.

Megan Cifarelli is currently professor and chair of art history at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY. She is an art historian whose work ranges from Assyrian relief sculptures to dress items from the first millennium B.C.E. in northwestern Iran, with a theoretical focus on gender, identity, and embodied experience. Laura Gawlinski is associate professor and chair of classical studies at Loyola University, Chicago. Her research involves combining epigraphy and archaeology to investigate how ancient Greek religion was practiced. She is active in fieldwork and has been associated with the excavations of the Athenian Agora since 1995.