The use of cues for attention in ancient Greek art: aspects that influence concentration in the work of art and its elements

The goal of this study is to identify cues for the cognitive process of attention in ancient Greek art, aiming to find confirmation of its possible use by ancient Greek audiences and artists. Evidence of cues that trigger attention’s psychological dispositions was searched through content analysis of image reproductions of ancient Greek sculpture and fine vase painting from the archaic to the Hellenistic period - ca. 7th -1st cent. BC. Through this analysis, it was possible to observe the presence of cues that trigger orientation to the work of art (i.e. amplification, contrast, emotional salience, simplification, symmetry), of a cue that triggers a disseminate attention to the parts of the work (i.e. distribution of elements) and of cues that activate selective attention to specific elements in the work of art (i.e. contrast of elements, salient color, central positioning of elements, composition regarding the flow of elements and significant objects). Results support the universality of those dispositions, probably connected with basic competencies that are hard-wired in the nervous system and in the cognitive processes.

Antiguas comunidades judías en Macedonia, Tracia y Épiro Superior

Evidencias de carácter literario, epigráfico y arqueológico-arquitectónicas, atestiguan la existencia de comunidades judías en Macedonia, Tracia y Épiro Superior (hoy Albania) durante los períodos romano y bizantino temprano. Los Hechos de los Apostoles mencionan la presencia de comunidades judías, y sus sinagogas, en Filipos, Tesalónica y Verroia, en Macedonia. El descubrimiento de inscripciones griegas en Bizya (Tracia), en Tesalónica y Dión, y en la antigua sinagoga de Stobia, sugieren que dichas comunidades preservaron su independencia religiosa y gozaron de un seguro estatus social, económico y cultural. Una antigua tumba judía encontrada en Tesalónica, decorada con una menorah, la sinagoga de Claudius Tiberius Polycharmos en Stobia y la de Saranda (Épiro Superior), añaden pruebas arqueológico- arquitectónicas a las fuentes literarias. A pesar de que las fuentes literarias, los datos epigráficos y los hallazgos arqueológicos son relativamente escasos, parece que en estas regiones, y en otras de la Península Balcánica, existieron también otras comunidades judías.

El ritual en los "Textos de las Pirámides": sintaxis, texto y significado

Este trabajo pretende explorar la dimensión ritual en los Textos de las Pirámides, el corpus de literatura religiosa extensa más antiguo de la humanidad. La naturaleza variada de sus componentes textuales ha impedido que los egiptólogos comprendan en profundidad las complejidades de la colección y los contextos originales en los que estos textos (ritos) aparecieron. La aplicación de la teoría del ritual, principalmente la aproximación de la sintaxis ritual, ofrece a los investigadores un marco excelente de análisis e interpretación del corpus, su estructura y función. Sujeto a las reglas de la sintaxis ritual es posible exponer los múltiples niveles de significado en el corpus para la resurrección y salvación del difunto.

Standardization in the Pre-Columbian Pottery from El Caño, Panama: Specialization, Productivity and Consumption

The pottery found in the burials of El Cano is uniform in style to these made in the coclesanos valleys between 700 and 1000 AD. The coefficient of variability of the different pottery forms, evidence diverse standardizations values for polychrome and non-polychrome ceramics. Moreover, data of funerary contexts from the Cano recently excavated, suggest that elite has controlled ceramic production. This control over the production of certain goods reveals that these were important in the support or proper operational of the chiefdoms in Panama and mark the phase of splendour of this culture.

Art and Social Work: an intervention programme for transforming society’s vision to include people with early-onset dementia and Alzheimer’s

This paper presents a program centred on arts and education as tools in social work for the inclusion of people with earlyonset dementia and Alzheimer’s. The objective of the programme is to eradicate the stigma and myths associated with the disease.The program is part of the Junta de Castilla y León and the European Social Fund’s ARS Project (Arte y Salud Alzheimer; Alzheimer’s Art & Health). The programme presents a series of evaluated artistic and educational activities that can be undertaken by people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and that can also be used by caregivers and family when working with this group of people, with the aim of improving their wellbeing, self-esteem and quality of life.

About infamy: the filthiness of Art and its diogenic disease

In this paper, we postulate the direct relationship that exists between waste production and artistic objects; its manufacturing system, consumption, and subsequent waste. What arises in this relationship then, is another character of interest –and that will serve as a reference to compare its modus operandi with the place of artists and the arts–, in this sick world, the Diogenes. The obsessed that lives among the garbage. The absurdity of the conquest of the infinite of the illogical within the logical. The amount clouded and blinded, nothing is enjoyed, nothing is appreciated; the countless abandons its place in the memory –memorable– and there only exists a pathological accumulation, mountains of garbage, desires to hold on to vital faith of the belief of doing Something for themselves. Working just to work and building something that will not last, like a sand castle, accumulation of detritus and dust. A new logic is born, the enjoyment of diseases and emptiness, the destruction of a world without a history. «Artists of the world, abandon! You have nothing to lose but your own professions!» (Kaprow, 2007, p. 37).

Bailando con Dioniso: el mito de Leucipo y Daphne de Richard Strauss y Joseph Gregor

Primera parte de un artículo dividido en dos que analiza la profunda reinterpretación que del mito de Dafne llevaron a cabo, a partir del relato alternativo de Partenio de Nicea más que del célebre relato de Ovidio, Richard Strauss y su libretista Joseph Gregor en su versión operística Daphne (1938). El objetivo final es someter a examen la declaración expresa de Strauss sobre el significado de su nueva ópera y si a través de la manipulación del argumento mítico los autores lograron alcanzar su objetivo.

Temor, silencio y deliberación: la inhibición de la opinión en Tucídides

Tucídides es una de nuestras mejores fuentes de información para conocer la práctica argumentativa de la deliberación democrática. En este trabajo se analiza uno de los vicios que, según el historiador, haría su aparición en la escena política ateniense a la muerte de Pericles: la instrumentalización del miedo para obtener la victoria momentánea en la asamblea. El temor prudente, que fuera una arma periclea para conducir la deliberación racional en aras del bien común, habría desaparecido siendo sustituido por el amedrentamiento del rival, la calumnia, el obstruccionismo y la parálisis de la confrontación dialéctica. Instauradas en la ciudad la desconfianza y la sospecha de ocultación, los golpistas del 411 hallaron el terreno abonado para callar las voces contrarias y, gracias al silencio, instaurar el terror.

El color en los códices prehispánicos del México Central: identificación material, cualidad plástica y valor estético

Este artículo investiga algunos de los valores plásticos y estéticos que presidieron la selección y la preparación de las materias colorantes empleadas para iluminar los códices creados por los nahuas del México Central durante el Posclásico Tardío. Estos códices son interesantes porque análisis arqueométricos y exámenes codicológicos recientes han permitido conocer la materialidad de su capa pictórica, así como las características formales y el comportamiento de los colores en estas obras. Uno de los aportes trascendentales de estos estudios ha sido averiguar que la paleta cromática que sirvió para pintar los códices del México Central era principalmente de origen orgánico, lo que contrasta con la naturaleza de los pigmentos detectados en restos de pintura mural y en esculturas creadas por los nahuas que son sobre todo minerales. El objetivo de este artículo es reflexionar sobre las razones de esas diferencias y demostrar que el uso de los colorantes orgánicos en los códices respondía a un fin plástico específico que concordaba con el canon estético imperante en la sociedad náhuatl.

Sweat Lodges in Iron Age Iberian Peninsula: New Data, Typologies and Interpretations

Three questions on the study of NO Iberian Peninsula sweat lodges are posed. First, the new sauna of Monte Ornedo (Cantabria), the review of the one of Armea (Ourense), and the Cantabrian pedra formosa type are discussed. Second, the known types of sweat lodges are reconsidered underlining the differences between the Cantabrian and the Douro - Minho groups as these differences contribute to a better assessment of the saunas located out of those territories, such as those of Monte Ornedo or Ulaca. Third, a richer record demands a more specific terminology, a larger use of archaeometric analysis and the application of landscape archaeology or art history methodologies. In this way the range of interpretation of the sweat lodges is opened, as an example an essay is proposed that digs on some already known proposals and suggests that the saunas are material metaphors of wombs whose rationale derives from ideologies and ritual practices of Indo-European tradition.

"Lancea", Lusitanian Word, and the "Lancienses" Ethnogenesis

Analysis of the word lancea, of Hispanic origin after Varro, and of place names, people´s names and personal names derived from it. It confirms that the spear was the most important weapon in the Bronze Age, belonging to the iuventus and used as heroic and divine symbol. This analysis confirms also the personality of the Lusitanians, a people related to the Celts but with more archaic archaeological, linguistic and cultural characteristics originated in the tradition of the Atlantic Bronze in the II millennium BC. It is also relevant to better know the organisation of Broze and Iron Age societies and the origin of Indo-Europeans peoples in Western Europe and of pre-Roman peoples of Iberia.

The magical transformation contest in the ancient storytelling tradition

El concurso de transformación mágica, esquema narrativo difundido en la tradición popular, se presenta en dos variantes principales: los hechiceros que compiten pueden metamorfosearse en varios seres o crear esos seres por medios mágicos. En cualquier caso el concursante ganador da a luz criaturas más fuertes que superan las de su oponente. La segunda variante fue preferida en el antiguo Cercano Oriente (Sumeria, Egipto, Israel). La primera se puede encontrar en algunos mitos griegos sobre cambiadores de forma (por ejemplo, Zeus y Némesis). El mismo esquema narrativo puede haber influido en un episodio de la Novela de Alejandro (1.36-38), en el que Darío envía regalos simbólicos a Alejandro y los dos monarcas enemigos ofrecen contrastantes explicaciones de ellos. Esta historia griega racionaliza el concurso de cuento de hadas, transfiriendo las fantásticas hazañas de creaciones milagrosas a un plano secundario pero realista de metáfora lingüística.

Tifones y gigantes en el mundo macedonio: el rey como símbolo del orden cósmico

Este artículo analiza la existencia de un posible ritual en la antigua Macedonia que fuese similar al Akîtu babilonio. Pensamos que la victoria de Zeus sobre sus enemigos en la gigantomaquia y tifonomaquia fue celebrada por los reyes macedonios para fortalecer su posición en el poder. Aunque no hay evidencias directas de ello, tenemos una serie de diferentes fuentes en las cuales los macedonios están relacionados directa o indirectamente con Tifón y los gigantes. Además, la estratégica importancia del monte Olimpo para los macedonios nos hace pensar que la victoria de Zeus sobre las fuerzas del mal fue conmemorada de alguna forma por ellos.

Art, adolescence and Social Work: Anja, the invisible manager

This article has been written with the intention of being able to analyse the contributions of art —theatre, in this case— to the practice of social work. For this purpose, we have chosen to read the social reality in which we intervene through the lens of social constructionism. This helps us to rescue the social and subjective side of art, and, moreover, to recover the depathologization of the subject in professional intervention. Thus, using a practical case taken from work with adolescents in the German FSJ programme, hand-in-hand with a young girl called Anja we trace the developmental and sociological aspects of adolescence in order to later address certain common points of art and psychosocial work. Art will hence be redefined as a transitional object allowing questions to be addressed relating to (self-) perception, attachment, communication and changes in conduct as the ultimate goal of professional action. Lastly, we note the limitations and risks of art-based intervention, in order to conclude with a final synopsis.

Art as an educative and social tool

Since remote times, certain sectors of society have been exposed to inequality and vulnerability, where adequate intervention processes have become conspicuous because of their absence. Nowadays, current societies have the responsibility of contributing, based on their experience and knowledge, with more efficient policies and programs that improve the life quality of the most disadvantaged. It is here where art and its different tools play a very important role, not only on a physical level, but also as an education tool that allows the development of emotional, mental and communicative skills. The aim of this paper is to make clear the potential of art as an instrument of social and educational intervention. It starts by showing worldwide-collected experience related to education and arts, and then, it acquaints the reader with two parallel intervention projects that worked with youths under social vulnerability conditions. These interventions were developed based on a qualitative research (Grounded theory), using as methodology “The Artistic Mediation” with emphasis on body language. This methodology helped researchers to get close to the participants and to know their experiences and emotions. At the same time, it was possible to evidence the positive effects of educative interventions through art. These workshops were based on an artistic methodology especially focused on body language. Data in this work is qualitative, and as such, it permits a special approach to the personal and emotional experiences of the participants; clearly showing the positive effects of the referenced practice on them.