The Minoan lion: presence and absence on Bronze Age Crete

Shapland, Andrew

doi:10.1080/00438241003672989

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Verbal and visual representations are a primary source for the understanding of the interaction between humans and objects and of the potential actions they afford. Recently, Andrew Shapland applied the term affordance to Minoan art objects, especially in interpreting human-animal relationships (Shapland, 2010a(Shapland, , 2010b. Continuing this pioneering application of the concept to ancient images, I will now proceed to apply the term affordance to the usage of the sandal as a hitting object, as depicted on Athenian vases-and thereby to determine why the sandal, rather than other objects, was the painters' choice for depiction in violent, seemingly non-normative usage in this context.…”

Section: Why the Sandal?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A painful matter: the sandal as a hitting implement in Athenian iconography

Young

2020

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

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The article examines a series of images on Athenian ceramic vases in which sandals are depicted as a hitting implement. This iconographic motif appears mainly in two contexts: educational scenes, where an adult hits a subordinate, and erotic scenes, where the hitting action is almost always performed by males upon female prostitutes. The utilisation of this specific mundane object, rather than equally available others, for these violent acts is explored in light of psychologist James J. Gibson's term "affordance", which refers to the potentialities held by an object for a particular set of actions, stemming from its material properties. I suggest that the choice of the sandal is not arbitrary: it supports these aggressors' desire to cause pain to those of lower status, thereby controlling and humiliating them. The affordances of the sandal, stemming from its shape and material and the inherent potentialities for action, are perceived and exploited by the hitters. Though not designed as a hitting implement, in the hands of these privileged figures in these specific situations, the mundane, ordinary sandal becomes the medium, a social agent, by which their control attains physical embodiment. Thanks to the Athenian vase painters, we are able to register and visualise latent affordances of the sandal that previously lay out of sight. It seems that in the context of Athenian society, the supposed dichotomy between the ordinary usage and the extraordinary violent usage of the sandal collapses. In this particular case, hitting with a sandal seems as ordinary as donning it in everyday use.

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Section: Why the Sandal?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A painful matter: the sandal as a hitting implement in Athenian iconography

Young

2020

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

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“…Many have implicitly or explicitly referred to abduction when discussing IBE as a model of hypothesis formation and/or selection (Plog 1974, Kelley and Hanen 1988, Hanen and Kelley 1989, Routledge 1995, Fogelin 2007, Chadha 2010, Bogaard 2015, Dallas 2016. Some accounts make use of the term in reference to Alfred Gell's (1998) 'abduction of agency' (Alberti 2001, Shapland 2010, Herva and Nordin 2015.…”

Section: Abductionmentioning

confidence: 99%