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BRONZE AGE BONES OFFER EVIDENCE OF POLITICAL DIVINATION
Cornell Chronicle, Cornell University
March 12 2015
By H. Roger Segelken
Adam T. Smith, right, and his Armenian colleague, Dr. Ruben Badalyan,
excavate the Gegharot site.
Artifacts uncovered at one of the Gegharot citadel shines are evidence
of political divination, archaeologist say.
Trying to divine the future of a precarious administration, "House
of Cards" President Frank Underwood enters the inner sanctum with a
trusted adviser. "It's really a crapshoot," the adviser says, and the
president nods. The bourbon is drained, cigars are snuffed, and the
political leader emerges with a more confident sense of what's to come.
'Twas ever thus.
"It really was a crapshoot, with very high stakes for sovereign rulers
in a turbulent time," says Cornell archaeologist Adam T. Smith,
interpreting evidence from 3,300-year-old Bronze Age shrines,
ensconced within a hilltop fortress on the Tsaghkahovit Plain of
central Armenia. Smith, a professor of anthropology in the College
of Arts and Sciences, studies the role that the material world -
everyday objects, representational media, natural and built landscapes
- plays in the political lives of ancient and modern-day people.
Dice-like knucklebones used for osteomancy and colored stones used for
lithomancy (divination with bones and stones, respectively) were found
deep within the ruins of the fallen citadel of Gegharot. Aleuromancy
(divination with freshly ground flour) is a likely explanation for
implements found in one of three shrines, Smith and Cornell Ph.D.
candidate Jeffrey F. Leon report in their October 2014 American Journal
of Archaeology article, "Divination and Sovereignty: The Late Bronze
Age Shrines at Gegharot, Armenia."
Excavations conducted at Gegharot since 2002 have turned up a variety
of ceremonial, iconic and fortune-telling objects:
censers and basins for burning aromatic plant materials that could
induce a trance state; covered storage containers made of clay where
pollen analysis found evidence of wheat; drinking vessels, probably
for long-gone wine; sculpted clay idols "with vaguely anthropomorphic
features and hornlike protrusions" and stele (standing blocks) the
archaeologists say "likely served as focal point for ritual attention";
grain-grinding implements and stamp seals to make impressions in
flour dough; dozens of knucklebones (also called astragali) of cattle,
sheep and goats with certain sides blackened like the markings on dice;
and polished stones in colors ranging from black and dark grey to red,
green and white.
The Tsaghkahovit Plain was sparsely populated until around 1500 B.C.
when a nameless people (they left no written record of what they called
themselves) began to build strongholds and new institutions of rule
there. "It was a time of radical inequality and centralized practices
of economic redistribution," Smith says, "and the political leaders
were scrambling to hold on to their power. Knowing what the future
held was critically important." The diviner, Smith says, was a kind of
primordial actuary, assessing risks and advising on pathways forward.
"We call them 'shrines' because of two distinctive qualities of
the spaces: They were quite intimate in scale, with not much room
for public spectacle," Smith explains, "yet they appear to have been
religiously charged places, designed and built to host esoteric rituals
with consecrated objects - secretive rites focused on managing risks
by diagnosing present conditions and prognosticating futures."
The Bronze Age people who tried to predict futures there had a
quarter-millennium run, until about 1150 B.C. Their divination
paraphernalia, meticulously unearthed by the archaeologists, looks
as if it had been abandoned in place, moments before the inhabitants
fled some cataclysm.
Without Bronze Age mystics to interpret the bones and stones, it's
hard to know whether the citadel's demise was presciently foreseen. As
the fictional President Underwood said: "It's not the beginning of
the story I fear; it's not knowing how it will end."
Support for the study came, in part, from the National Science
Foundation and other organizations. The study was conducted under the
auspices of Project ArAGATS, the joint Armenian-American Project for
the Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/03/bronze-age-bones-offer-evidence-political-divination
Cornell Chronicle, Cornell University
March 12 2015
By H. Roger Segelken
Adam T. Smith, right, and his Armenian colleague, Dr. Ruben Badalyan,
excavate the Gegharot site.
Artifacts uncovered at one of the Gegharot citadel shines are evidence
of political divination, archaeologist say.
Trying to divine the future of a precarious administration, "House
of Cards" President Frank Underwood enters the inner sanctum with a
trusted adviser. "It's really a crapshoot," the adviser says, and the
president nods. The bourbon is drained, cigars are snuffed, and the
political leader emerges with a more confident sense of what's to come.
'Twas ever thus.
"It really was a crapshoot, with very high stakes for sovereign rulers
in a turbulent time," says Cornell archaeologist Adam T. Smith,
interpreting evidence from 3,300-year-old Bronze Age shrines,
ensconced within a hilltop fortress on the Tsaghkahovit Plain of
central Armenia. Smith, a professor of anthropology in the College
of Arts and Sciences, studies the role that the material world -
everyday objects, representational media, natural and built landscapes
- plays in the political lives of ancient and modern-day people.
Dice-like knucklebones used for osteomancy and colored stones used for
lithomancy (divination with bones and stones, respectively) were found
deep within the ruins of the fallen citadel of Gegharot. Aleuromancy
(divination with freshly ground flour) is a likely explanation for
implements found in one of three shrines, Smith and Cornell Ph.D.
candidate Jeffrey F. Leon report in their October 2014 American Journal
of Archaeology article, "Divination and Sovereignty: The Late Bronze
Age Shrines at Gegharot, Armenia."
Excavations conducted at Gegharot since 2002 have turned up a variety
of ceremonial, iconic and fortune-telling objects:
censers and basins for burning aromatic plant materials that could
induce a trance state; covered storage containers made of clay where
pollen analysis found evidence of wheat; drinking vessels, probably
for long-gone wine; sculpted clay idols "with vaguely anthropomorphic
features and hornlike protrusions" and stele (standing blocks) the
archaeologists say "likely served as focal point for ritual attention";
grain-grinding implements and stamp seals to make impressions in
flour dough; dozens of knucklebones (also called astragali) of cattle,
sheep and goats with certain sides blackened like the markings on dice;
and polished stones in colors ranging from black and dark grey to red,
green and white.
The Tsaghkahovit Plain was sparsely populated until around 1500 B.C.
when a nameless people (they left no written record of what they called
themselves) began to build strongholds and new institutions of rule
there. "It was a time of radical inequality and centralized practices
of economic redistribution," Smith says, "and the political leaders
were scrambling to hold on to their power. Knowing what the future
held was critically important." The diviner, Smith says, was a kind of
primordial actuary, assessing risks and advising on pathways forward.
"We call them 'shrines' because of two distinctive qualities of
the spaces: They were quite intimate in scale, with not much room
for public spectacle," Smith explains, "yet they appear to have been
religiously charged places, designed and built to host esoteric rituals
with consecrated objects - secretive rites focused on managing risks
by diagnosing present conditions and prognosticating futures."
The Bronze Age people who tried to predict futures there had a
quarter-millennium run, until about 1150 B.C. Their divination
paraphernalia, meticulously unearthed by the archaeologists, looks
as if it had been abandoned in place, moments before the inhabitants
fled some cataclysm.
Without Bronze Age mystics to interpret the bones and stones, it's
hard to know whether the citadel's demise was presciently foreseen. As
the fictional President Underwood said: "It's not the beginning of
the story I fear; it's not knowing how it will end."
Support for the study came, in part, from the National Science
Foundation and other organizations. The study was conducted under the
auspices of Project ArAGATS, the joint Armenian-American Project for
the Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/03/bronze-age-bones-offer-evidence-political-divination