Preserving Ancient Statues from Jordan - brochure


		Preserving Ancient Statues from Jordan - brochure - text only Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		Preserving Ancient Statues from Jordan Exhibition brochure Cover Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Smithsonian Institution July 28, 1996&shyp;April 6, 1997



		\|Page 1\| In 1985 a buried cache of plaster statues was recovered from the prehistoric site of 'Ain Ghazal (AYN ga-ZAHL), located on the outskirts of Amman, the capital of Jordan. The site was exposed in 1974 during bulldozing operations for a new road. Begun in 1982 and still in progress as a joint American-Jordanian expedition, excavations at 'Ain Ghazal have also uncovered houses, stone tools and weapons, stone and clay figurines, sun-dried clay vessels, human burials, plant remains, and animal bones. Study of this evidence reveals that 'Ain Ghazal was an important early farming village in central Jordan, shedding new light on the architecture and technology, economy, art, and ritual life of this ancient culture. \|A Village of Farmers, Herders, and Hunters\| An Arabic name meaning "spring of the gazelles," 'Ain Ghazal is located on a stream bed east of the fertile Jordan River valley. About 720 meters above sea level, it lies within an environmental zone that receives sufficient annual rainfall to support farming without irrigation. 'Ain Ghazal covers an area of over 30 acres and is one of the largest early agricultural villages known in the Near East. The site was occupied continuously from about 7200 to 5000 B.C., and its inhabitants lived in multiroomed houses built of stone walls and timber roof beams and equipped with cooking hearths. Fine plaster made from limestone, often decorated with patterns applied by hand in red paint, covered the walls and floors of these houses. Archaeologists were able to date the occupation at 'Ain Ghazal through carbon-14 dating of plant remains recovered from cooking hearths and other contexts. (Image caption) Archaeologists and a conservator excavate a pit containing plaster statues at the site of 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, in 1985. Courtesy of 'Ain Ghazal Research Institute and Yarmouk University Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology. Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 2\| The people of 'Ain Ghazal lived year-round at the site, relying for their subsistence on hunting, herding, and farming. They ate meat and milk products from the goats they herded and grew wheat, barley, lentils, peas, and chickpeas. About half of the meat came from hunting wild animals, including cattle, boar, and gazelle. They also gathered wild plants, almonds, figs, and pistachios. The economy and culture of 'Ain Ghazal share many traits with a prehistoric culture archaeologists call Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) (around 8500&shyp;5500 B.C.), which has been identified at many sites in what are now parts of Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. Like other Neolithic cultures of the Near East, the PPNB culture is characterized by year-round villages whose populations used advanced stone tools and survived by farming grains and legumes, herding sheep and goat, and hunting and gathering wild animals and plants. But the PPNB culture was a kind of Neolithic "golden age," with large and prosperous settlements, abundant evidence for long-distance exchange of obsidian, shells, and other materials, impressive lime-plastered houses, and a rich assemblage of objects with symbolic functions. Around 6000 B.C., most settlements were abandoned. Only a few-including 'Ain Ghazal-continued to flourish. What brought about the end of the PPNB culture? Some archaeologists believe there was an environmental change, brought about either by a natural climatic shift or by ecological degradation caused by destruction of forests and other vegetation. Villages located on the margins of zones receiving adequate rainfall for farming would have been severely affected by minor environmental shifts, causing inhabitants to migrate. (Image caption) One of two full statues recovered from the statue pit at 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, in 1985. Plaster and bitumen, height 104 cm, around 6500 B.C. Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 3\| \|Art and Society at `Ain Ghazal\| At 'Ain Ghazal, as at other sites of the PPNB culture, people continued earlier traditions of making small figurines of stone and clay depicting animals and humans. A new feature of the PPNB culture was the making of human-form figures in a scale much larger than the small figurines that could be held in one hand. Of all the objects recovered to date from 'Ain Ghazal, the most remarkable are the statues and busts made of plaster and carefully buried in pits under the floors of abandoned houses. Fragments of similar statues, also carefully buried, have been found at Neolithic Jericho and at the Nahal Hemar cave site in Israel. The statues from 'Ain Ghazal, however, are unique in their quantity and state of preservation. In 1983 a cache containing about twenty-five statues was lifted from the site and shipped to the Institute of Archaeology in London, where most are still being uncovered and preserved. In 1985 a second cache of seven statues was recovered and subsequently shipped to the Smithsonian Institution's Conservation Analytical Laboratory in suburban Washington, D.C., where they were uncovered, studied, and preserved for museum display. Together these two buried caches form the largest, best-preserved group of plaster statues from any site in the Near East. (Image caption) One of three two-headed busts recovered from the statue pit at 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, in 1985. Plaster and bitumen, height 88 cm, around 6500 B.C. Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 4\| The 'Ain Ghazal statues consist of two types: full statues and busts. Conservation work carried out in London and at the Smithsonian Institution revealed many details concerning their manufacture. Both types were formed by modeling plaster over an armature, or internal framework, made of bundles of reeds wrapped with twine. Although now completely disintegrated, the armature materials are preserved as impressions on the interior surface of the statues. Facial features were probably shaped by hand or with simple tools made of stone, bone, or wood. Eyes were outlined and pupils indicated with a black paste containing bitumen, a natural asphalt. Some of the faces preserve traces of paint. What do the statues depict? They lack arms and specific indications of gender. Their large size and careful burial at the site suggest that they represented important individuals, perhaps family or clan ancestors. The two-headed busts could represent human couples, but they could also point to a nonhuman-perhaps a superhuman-world. Perhaps the statues and busts served as images of heroes, gods, or goddesses and were worshiped as part of religious ceremonies, then later buried when new images were considered necessary. Art historians and archaeologists are still trying to answer these and other questions about the meaning and purpose of the statues. (Image caption) These three plaster faces, also found at 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, in 1985, were modeled on human skulls. Buried in a group, these decorated skulls may point to an ancestor cult. Plaster and bitumen, height 12&shyp;16 cm, around 7000 B.C. Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 5\| \|Preservation of the Statues\| Buried for thousands of years under many meters of soil, the statues had become broken and deformed. At the Smithsonian Institution's Conservation Analytical Laboratory, conservators carefully uncovered the plaster statues from the block of earth in which they were embedded. Every step of this lengthy, painstaking process was recorded in drawings, photographs, videotape, and detailed notes. After each piece was removed and cleaned, conservators applied a strengthener so that it could be handled safely and, later, joined to other fragments. Conservators also used a scanning electron microscope and other analytical instruments to determine how the statues were made as well as the materials used in making them, and to develop a method of strengthening the plaster. Conservators restored missing portions of the statues with a filler "dough" made of acrylic putty. These new pieces were tinted a lighter tone to distinguish them from ancient fragments. To provide load-bearing internal support, conservators applied layers of acrylic and epoxy putty to the interior surface of the statues, allowing the figures to be displayed upright. (Image caption) A conservator at the Smithsonian's Conservation Analytical Laboratory conserves the eye of one of the plaster statues dating from around 6500 B.C. and excavated at 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, in 1985. Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 6\| \|Plaster and Its Uses at `Ain Ghazal\| Chemical analysis of the statues reveals that they are made of clay-containing limestone powder mixed with lime plaster made from the same stone. Plaster can be defined as any plastic material used in a wet state which becomes hard when dry. In the ancient Near East, early plasters were made from mud or from the rocks gypsum and limestone. Mud plaster requires no heating and can be used almost without alteration as a building material or for modeling figurines or large-scale statues, but it is not durable. Gypsum plaster, commonly called "plaster of paris," is made by heating gypsum to temperatures slightly above those required to boil water, about 100---200 degrees centigrade. Plaster made from limestone, by contrast, requires many additional steps and a more sophisticated mastery of technology. The limestone must be heated to a temperature sufficiently high for it to decompose from calcium carbonate to calcium oxide. For this to happen, temperatures in the range of 600---900 degrees centigrade are needed, depending on the type of limestone. The product is then combined with water. Lime plaster becomes a durable, water-resistant material when it dries and absorbs carbon dioxide from the air. Lime plaster was used extensively at 'Ain Ghazal for covering walls and floors and for making simple vessels, pendants, and tokens. Its most important nonarchitectural use was for human-form statues. The production of lime plaster is closely linked to advances in pyrotechnology, which is the application of heat in manipulating the properties of materials. The control over high temperatures required to produce lime plaster may have been a key step in the development of ceramic technology. By about 5500 B.C., pottery was produced in kilns at 'Ain Ghazal and other sites in the vicinity. Later, by about 4000 B.C., Near Eastern metalworkers would also draw on advances in pyrotechnology brought about by the manufacture of lime plaster and pottery. Ann C. Gunter Associate Curator of Ancient Near Eastern Art Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 7\| \|Suggested Reading\| "Preserving Ancient Statues from Jordan," an interactive computer program, is available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.si.edu/Asia. Bar-Yosef, Ofer. "The Neolithic Period." In The Archaeology of Ancient Israel, ed. Amnon Ben-Tor, pp. 10&shyp;39. New Haven: Yale University Press; Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, 1992. Grissom, Carol. "Conservation of Neolithic Lime Plaster Statues from 'Ain Ghazal." In Archaeological Conservation and its Consequences, eds. Ashok Roy and Perry Smith. London: Butterworth, 1996. Roaf, Michael. "Early Farmers." In Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, pp. 18&shyp;35. Oxford: Equinox and Facts on File, 1990. Rollefson, Gary O. "The Uses of Plaster at Neolithic 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan."Archeomaterials 4 (1990): 33&shyp;54. Simmons, Alan H., Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, Gary O. Rollefson, Rolfe Mandel, and Zeidan Kafafi. " 'Ain Ghazal: A Major Neolithic Settlement in Central Jordan." Science 240 (1 April 1988): 35&shyp;39. Cover and photos of statues by John Tsantes, Smithsonian Institution Original brochure design by Beth Schlenoff, Smithsonian Institution Copyright © 1996 Smithsonian Institution Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



	[Sackler/Freer Home]

	[Smithsonian Home]
The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C, 20560.

Comments to Sackler/Freer Webmaster


		Preserving Ancient Statues from Jordan - brochure - text only Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		Preserving Ancient Statues from Jordan Exhibition brochure Cover Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Smithsonian Institution July 28, 1996&shyp;April 6, 1997



		\|Page 1\| In 1985 a buried cache of plaster statues was recovered from the prehistoric site of 'Ain Ghazal (AYN ga-ZAHL), located on the outskirts of Amman, the capital of Jordan. The site was exposed in 1974 during bulldozing operations for a new road. Begun in 1982 and still in progress as a joint American-Jordanian expedition, excavations at 'Ain Ghazal have also uncovered houses, stone tools and weapons, stone and clay figurines, sun-dried clay vessels, human burials, plant remains, and animal bones. Study of this evidence reveals that 'Ain Ghazal was an important early farming village in central Jordan, shedding new light on the architecture and technology, economy, art, and ritual life of this ancient culture. \|A Village of Farmers, Herders, and Hunters\| An Arabic name meaning "spring of the gazelles," 'Ain Ghazal is located on a stream bed east of the fertile Jordan River valley. About 720 meters above sea level, it lies within an environmental zone that receives sufficient annual rainfall to support farming without irrigation. 'Ain Ghazal covers an area of over 30 acres and is one of the largest early agricultural villages known in the Near East. The site was occupied continuously from about 7200 to 5000 B.C., and its inhabitants lived in multiroomed houses built of stone walls and timber roof beams and equipped with cooking hearths. Fine plaster made from limestone, often decorated with patterns applied by hand in red paint, covered the walls and floors of these houses. Archaeologists were able to date the occupation at 'Ain Ghazal through carbon-14 dating of plant remains recovered from cooking hearths and other contexts. (Image caption) Archaeologists and a conservator excavate a pit containing plaster statues at the site of 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, in 1985. Courtesy of 'Ain Ghazal Research Institute and Yarmouk University Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology. Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 2\| The people of 'Ain Ghazal lived year-round at the site, relying for their subsistence on hunting, herding, and farming. They ate meat and milk products from the goats they herded and grew wheat, barley, lentils, peas, and chickpeas. About half of the meat came from hunting wild animals, including cattle, boar, and gazelle. They also gathered wild plants, almonds, figs, and pistachios. The economy and culture of 'Ain Ghazal share many traits with a prehistoric culture archaeologists call Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) (around 8500&shyp;5500 B.C.), which has been identified at many sites in what are now parts of Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. Like other Neolithic cultures of the Near East, the PPNB culture is characterized by year-round villages whose populations used advanced stone tools and survived by farming grains and legumes, herding sheep and goat, and hunting and gathering wild animals and plants. But the PPNB culture was a kind of Neolithic "golden age," with large and prosperous settlements, abundant evidence for long-distance exchange of obsidian, shells, and other materials, impressive lime-plastered houses, and a rich assemblage of objects with symbolic functions. Around 6000 B.C., most settlements were abandoned. Only a few-including 'Ain Ghazal-continued to flourish. What brought about the end of the PPNB culture? Some archaeologists believe there was an environmental change, brought about either by a natural climatic shift or by ecological degradation caused by destruction of forests and other vegetation. Villages located on the margins of zones receiving adequate rainfall for farming would have been severely affected by minor environmental shifts, causing inhabitants to migrate. (Image caption) One of two full statues recovered from the statue pit at 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, in 1985. Plaster and bitumen, height 104 cm, around 6500 B.C. Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 3\| \|Art and Society at `Ain Ghazal\| At 'Ain Ghazal, as at other sites of the PPNB culture, people continued earlier traditions of making small figurines of stone and clay depicting animals and humans. A new feature of the PPNB culture was the making of human-form figures in a scale much larger than the small figurines that could be held in one hand. Of all the objects recovered to date from 'Ain Ghazal, the most remarkable are the statues and busts made of plaster and carefully buried in pits under the floors of abandoned houses. Fragments of similar statues, also carefully buried, have been found at Neolithic Jericho and at the Nahal Hemar cave site in Israel. The statues from 'Ain Ghazal, however, are unique in their quantity and state of preservation. In 1983 a cache containing about twenty-five statues was lifted from the site and shipped to the Institute of Archaeology in London, where most are still being uncovered and preserved. In 1985 a second cache of seven statues was recovered and subsequently shipped to the Smithsonian Institution's Conservation Analytical Laboratory in suburban Washington, D.C., where they were uncovered, studied, and preserved for museum display. Together these two buried caches form the largest, best-preserved group of plaster statues from any site in the Near East. (Image caption) One of three two-headed busts recovered from the statue pit at 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, in 1985. Plaster and bitumen, height 88 cm, around 6500 B.C. Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 4\| The 'Ain Ghazal statues consist of two types: full statues and busts. Conservation work carried out in London and at the Smithsonian Institution revealed many details concerning their manufacture. Both types were formed by modeling plaster over an armature, or internal framework, made of bundles of reeds wrapped with twine. Although now completely disintegrated, the armature materials are preserved as impressions on the interior surface of the statues. Facial features were probably shaped by hand or with simple tools made of stone, bone, or wood. Eyes were outlined and pupils indicated with a black paste containing bitumen, a natural asphalt. Some of the faces preserve traces of paint. What do the statues depict? They lack arms and specific indications of gender. Their large size and careful burial at the site suggest that they represented important individuals, perhaps family or clan ancestors. The two-headed busts could represent human couples, but they could also point to a nonhuman-perhaps a superhuman-world. Perhaps the statues and busts served as images of heroes, gods, or goddesses and were worshiped as part of religious ceremonies, then later buried when new images were considered necessary. Art historians and archaeologists are still trying to answer these and other questions about the meaning and purpose of the statues. (Image caption) These three plaster faces, also found at 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, in 1985, were modeled on human skulls. Buried in a group, these decorated skulls may point to an ancestor cult. Plaster and bitumen, height 12&shyp;16 cm, around 7000 B.C. Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 5\| \|Preservation of the Statues\| Buried for thousands of years under many meters of soil, the statues had become broken and deformed. At the Smithsonian Institution's Conservation Analytical Laboratory, conservators carefully uncovered the plaster statues from the block of earth in which they were embedded. Every step of this lengthy, painstaking process was recorded in drawings, photographs, videotape, and detailed notes. After each piece was removed and cleaned, conservators applied a strengthener so that it could be handled safely and, later, joined to other fragments. Conservators also used a scanning electron microscope and other analytical instruments to determine how the statues were made as well as the materials used in making them, and to develop a method of strengthening the plaster. Conservators restored missing portions of the statues with a filler "dough" made of acrylic putty. These new pieces were tinted a lighter tone to distinguish them from ancient fragments. To provide load-bearing internal support, conservators applied layers of acrylic and epoxy putty to the interior surface of the statues, allowing the figures to be displayed upright. (Image caption) A conservator at the Smithsonian's Conservation Analytical Laboratory conserves the eye of one of the plaster statues dating from around 6500 B.C. and excavated at 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, in 1985. Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 6\| \|Plaster and Its Uses at `Ain Ghazal\| Chemical analysis of the statues reveals that they are made of clay-containing limestone powder mixed with lime plaster made from the same stone. Plaster can be defined as any plastic material used in a wet state which becomes hard when dry. In the ancient Near East, early plasters were made from mud or from the rocks gypsum and limestone. Mud plaster requires no heating and can be used almost without alteration as a building material or for modeling figurines or large-scale statues, but it is not durable. Gypsum plaster, commonly called "plaster of paris," is made by heating gypsum to temperatures slightly above those required to boil water, about 100---200 degrees centigrade. Plaster made from limestone, by contrast, requires many additional steps and a more sophisticated mastery of technology. The limestone must be heated to a temperature sufficiently high for it to decompose from calcium carbonate to calcium oxide. For this to happen, temperatures in the range of 600---900 degrees centigrade are needed, depending on the type of limestone. The product is then combined with water. Lime plaster becomes a durable, water-resistant material when it dries and absorbs carbon dioxide from the air. Lime plaster was used extensively at 'Ain Ghazal for covering walls and floors and for making simple vessels, pendants, and tokens. Its most important nonarchitectural use was for human-form statues. The production of lime plaster is closely linked to advances in pyrotechnology, which is the application of heat in manipulating the properties of materials. The control over high temperatures required to produce lime plaster may have been a key step in the development of ceramic technology. By about 5500 B.C., pottery was produced in kilns at 'Ain Ghazal and other sites in the vicinity. Later, by about 4000 B.C., Near Eastern metalworkers would also draw on advances in pyrotechnology brought about by the manufacture of lime plaster and pottery. Ann C. Gunter Associate Curator of Ancient Near Eastern Art Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



		\|Page 7\| \|Suggested Reading\| "Preserving Ancient Statues from Jordan," an interactive computer program, is available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.si.edu/Asia. Bar-Yosef, Ofer. "The Neolithic Period." In The Archaeology of Ancient Israel, ed. Amnon Ben-Tor, pp. 10&shyp;39. New Haven: Yale University Press; Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, 1992. Grissom, Carol. "Conservation of Neolithic Lime Plaster Statues from 'Ain Ghazal." In Archaeological Conservation and its Consequences, eds. Ashok Roy and Perry Smith. London: Butterworth, 1996. Roaf, Michael. "Early Farmers." In Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, pp. 18&shyp;35. Oxford: Equinox and Facts on File, 1990. Rollefson, Gary O. "The Uses of Plaster at Neolithic 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan."Archeomaterials 4 (1990): 33&shyp;54. Simmons, Alan H., Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, Gary O. Rollefson, Rolfe Mandel, and Zeidan Kafafi. " 'Ain Ghazal: A Major Neolithic Settlement in Central Jordan." Science 240 (1 April 1988): 35&shyp;39. Cover and photos of statues by John Tsantes, Smithsonian Institution Original brochure design by Beth Schlenoff, Smithsonian Institution Copyright © 1996 Smithsonian Institution Click here to go to Main menu \| Click here to go to brochure cover \| Click here to Return to the Freer/Sackler Menu



	[Sackler/Freer Home]

	[Smithsonian Home]
The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C, 20560.

Comments to Sackler/Freer Webmaster