by Tom Palaima
FSA 2007- MacArthur fellow 1985-90
Robert M. Armstrong Centennial Professor of Classics
Director, Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory
We are happy to announce that Winter 2021 MASt@CHS Summaries of Presentations and Discussion edited by Rachele Pierini and Tom Palaima is now on-line.
You may access it and the past Fall and Summer reports at:
MASt@CHS – Winter Seminar 2021 (Friday, February 5): Summaries of Presentations and Discussion
The contents of the Winter 2021 MASt@chs session include:
– *a-mo-te-u and related terms and important derivatives ἁρμόζω ‘to join, to fit together’ and ἁρμονία ‘union, order, harmony’ and their implications in historical Greek textual sources (Hesiod and Homer and Sappho)
– textiles and economic power in the Bronze Age Aegean and the Near East and Anatolia
– sea silk and yarn dyed with shellfish purple dye
– kosmos
– Kadmos and Harmonia and the Indo-European and Semitic explanation of Kadmos
– thronos, throna seats and flowers
– Aeolian and Hittite connections with the garment offering in Iliad 6
– up-to-date bibliographies
– links to previous MASt@CHS reports and related papers on Classical Inquiries
– credits to each participant’s contributions (these included UT’s Michele Mitrovich & Jared Petroll).
Discussion touched upon Linear B, Homer, Hesiod, Indo-European, Hittite, Semitic, Aegean iconography, royal purple on display on garments worn by distinguished women at the Biden inaugural, the intellectual history of the concepts of joining and fitting down into historical Greek, and ‘flowers’ representing luxury-purple-dyed garments.
Rachele and Tom are happy that MASt@chs Zoom sessions are an environment where we all are able to discuss highly technical matters in a way that makes them accessible to classicists and beyond; that we can disagree politely for the benefit of others who may see ways clear to solid ground and who will know that all is not set in stone; and that we can demonstrate that good minds are generally those minds that have the deepest doubts, even, or perhaps especially, about their own ideas.
We thank especially Greg Nagy and Lenny Muellner for their initial push and encouragement, and Lanah Koelle, Keith DeStone, Jill Curry Robbins, and Angelia B. Hanhardt for all their help with holding the seminars and then putting the reports and related material up on-line.
We would be remiss not to thank our ‘regulars’: Gregory Nagy, Roger Woodard, Leonard Muellner, Hedvig Landenius Enegren, Vassilis Petrakis, Brent Vine, Sarah Morris, Doug Frame and Georgia Flouda.
For Winter 2021 MASt@CHS the two main topics were:
Topic 1: Mycenaean *a-mo-te-u, Greek ἁρμόζω, and the Ideology of Joining
Presenter: Tom Palaima §§1-8, 13 Discussion §§9-12
Topic 2: Presenting The Purpled World: Marketing Haute Couture in the Aegean Bronze Age – a dialogue with Morris Silver §§ 14-21, 31 Discussion §§22-30
The upcoming Spring 2021 MASt@CHS seminar is scheduled for Friday April 16 10:30 AM-12:30 PM EDT and will feature:
Morris Silver presenting the second and last part of The Purpled World and Sarah Morris talking about The Kingdom of Philoktetes: Archaeology meets Philology in Northern Greece.
Those interested in attending a session or presenting an idea in progress or reconsidering past published ideas, please contact Rachele Pierini at: rachele.pierini@gmail.com.
For the Fall 2020 Seminar see:
https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/mast-chs-friday-november-6-2020-summaries-of-presentations-and-discussion/
For the Summer 2020 Seminar see:
https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/mast-chs-friday-june-26-2020-summaries-of-presentations-and-discussion/