The Dancing Goddesses Folklore Archaeology And The Origins Of European Dance

Author : Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2013-02-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780393089219

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The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance by Elizabeth Wayland Barber Pdf

A fascinating exploration of an ancient system of beliefs and its links to the evolution of dance. From southern Greece to northern Russia, people have long believed in female spirits, bringers of fertility, who spend their nights and days dancing in the fields and forests. So appealing were these spirit-maidens that they also took up residence in nineteenth-century Romantic literature. Archaeologist and linguist by profession, folk dancer by avocation, Elizabeth Wayland Barber has sleuthed through ethnographic lore and archaeological reports of east and southeast Europe, translating enchanting folktales about these “dancing goddesses” as well as eyewitness accounts of traditional rituals—texts that offer new perspectives on dance in agrarian society. She then traces these goddesses and their dances back through the Romans and Greeks to the first farmers of Europe. Along the way, she locates the origins of many customs, including coloring Easter eggs and throwing rice at the bride. The result is a detective story like no other and a joyful reminder of the human need to dance.

Author : Barbara Ehrenreich
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2007-12-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9781429904650

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Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich Pdf

From the bestselling social commentator and cultural historian comes Barbara Ehrenreich's fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy In the acclaimed Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich delved into the origins of our species' attraction to war. Here, she explores the opposite impulse, one that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although sixteenth-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and "savage," Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks' worship of Dionysus to the medieval practice of Christianity as a "danced religion." Ultimately, church officials drove the festivities into the streets, the prelude to widespread reformation: Protestants criminalized carnival, Wahhabist Muslims battled ecstatic Sufism, European colonizers wiped out native dance rites. The elites' fear that such gatherings would undermine social hierarchies was justified: the festive tradition inspired French revolutionary crowds and uprisings from the Caribbean to the American plains. Yet outbreaks of group revelry persist, as Ehrenreich shows, pointing to the 1960s rock-and-roll rebellion and the more recent "carnivalization" of sports. Original, exhilarating, and deeply optimistic, Dancing in the Streets concludes that we are innately social beings, impelled to share our joy and therefore able to envision, even create, a more peaceable future. "Fascinating . . . An admirably lucid, level-headed history of outbreaks of joy from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead."—Terry Eagleton, The Nation

Author : Elizabeth Wayland Barber,Paul T. Barber
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2012-01-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781400842865

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When They Severed Earth from Sky by Elizabeth Wayland Barber,Paul T. Barber Pdf

Why were Prometheus and Loki envisioned as chained to rocks? What was the Golden Calf? Why are mirrors believed to carry bad luck? How could anyone think that mortals like Perseus, Beowulf, and St. George actually fought dragons, since dragons don't exist? Strange though they sound, however, these "myths" did not begin as fiction. This absorbing book shows that myths originally transmitted real information about real events and observations, preserving the information sometimes for millennia within nonliterate societies. Geologists' interpretations of how a volcanic cataclysm long ago created Oregon's Crater Lake, for example, is echoed point for point in the local myth of its origin. The Klamath tribe saw it happen and passed down the story--for nearly 8,000 years. We, however, have been literate so long that we've forgotten how myths encode reality. Recent studies of how our brains work, applied to a wide range of data from the Pacific Northwest to ancient Egypt to modern stories reported in newspapers, have helped the Barbers deduce the characteristic principles by which such tales both develop and degrade through time. Myth is in fact a quite reasonable way to convey important messages orally over many generations--although reasoning back to the original events is possible only under rather specific conditions. Our oldest written records date to 5,200 years ago, but we have been speaking and mythmaking for perhaps 100,000. This groundbreaking book points the way to restoring some of that lost history and teaching us about human storytelling.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Cambria Press
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2024-04-28
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9781621968320

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Sacred Display by Anonim Pdf

Author : E. J.W. Barber
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : Art
ISBN : 069100224X

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Prehistoric Textiles by E. J.W. Barber Pdf

This monograph attempts to revise present ideas of the origins and early development of textiles in Europe and the Near East. Using linguistic techniques as well as methods from palaeobiology, it demonstrates that spinning and pattern-weaving existed far earlier than has been supposed.

Author : E. J. W. Barber,Barbara Belle Sloan
Publisher : Fowler Museum Textile
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Art
ISBN : 0984755047

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Resplendent Dress from Southeastern Europe by E. J. W. Barber,Barbara Belle Sloan Pdf

In the past, girls from rural southeastern Europe spent their childhoods weaving, sewing, and embroidering festive dress so that upon reaching puberty they could join the Sunday afternoon village dances garbed in resplendent attire. These extremely colorful and intensely worked garments were often adorned with embroidery, lace, metallic threads, coins, sequins, beads, and, perhaps most importantly, fringe, a symbolic marker of fertility. Over time new forms of dress were added so that by 1900, a southeastern European village woman's apparel consisted of millennia of layered history. Even today this dress continues to be worn on festive occasions and by older people in rural areas. Lavishly illustrated, Resplendent Dress from Southeastern Europe features fifty stunning nineteenth- through twentieth-century ensembles from Macedonia, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, and neighboring countries, plus one hundred individual items including aprons, vests, jackets, and robes. Elizabeth Wayland Barber traces this twenty-thousand-year tradition of dress in fascinating detail.

Author : Yosef Garfinkel
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2010-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780292779969

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Dancing at the Dawn of Agriculture by Yosef Garfinkel Pdf

As the nomadic hunters and gatherers of the ancient Near East turned to agriculture for their livelihood and settled into villages, religious ceremonies involving dancing became their primary means for bonding individuals into communities and households into villages. So important was dance that scenes of dancing are among the oldest and most persistent themes in Near Eastern prehistoric art, and these depictions of dance accompanied the spread of agriculture into surrounding regions of Europe and Africa. In this pathfinding book, Yosef Garfinkel analyzes depictions of dancing found on archaeological objects from the Near East, southeastern Europe, and Egypt to offer the first comprehensive look at the role of dance in these Neolithic (7000-4000 BC) societies. In the first part of the book, Garfinkel examines the structure of dance, its functional roles in the community (with comparisons to dance in modern pre-state societies), and its cognitive, or symbolic, aspects. This analysis leads him to assert that scenes of dancing depict real community rituals linked to the agricultural cycle and that dance was essential for maintaining these calendrical rituals and passing them on to succeeding generations. In the concluding section of the book, Garfinkel presents and discusses the extensive archaeological data—some 400 depictions of dance—on which his study is based.

Author : Kimerer L. LaMothe
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 122 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2018-10-22
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004390003

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A History of Theory and Method in the Study of Religion and Dance by Kimerer L. LaMothe Pdf

LaMothe paves the way for new theories and methods in the study of religion and dance by critiquing and displacing a conceptual dichotomy between “religion” and “dance” forged in the colonial era that justified western Christian hostility towards dance traditions across six continents over six centuries.

Author : Virginia Wayland,Harold Wayland,Alan Ferg
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Art
ISBN : STANFORD:36105210630773

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Playing Cards of the Apaches by Virginia Wayland,Harold Wayland,Alan Ferg Pdf

Drawing on four decades of research, the authors present a history of the cards created by Apache Indians after playing cards were introduced into their culture by Spanish explorers and colonists. Includes reproductions of cards from more than 100 packs in museums and private collections around the world.

Author : Paul Lachlan MacKendrick
Publisher : Good Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2023-11-12
Category : Fiction
ISBN : EAN:8596547636953

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The Mute Stones Speak by Paul Lachlan MacKendrick Pdf

"The Mute Stones Speak" by Paul Lachlan MacKendrick. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Author : Barbara Freitag
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2005-08-15
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781134282494

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Sheela-na-gigs by Barbara Freitag Pdf

A study of the mysterious stone carvings of naked females exposing their genitals on medieval churches all over the British Isles.

Author : Annie Welch
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 92 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2024-04-28
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9781105542855

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The Cavern's Wise Woman: The Bear Goddess by Annie Welch Pdf

Author : Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 1995-09-17
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780393285581

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Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber Pdf

"A fascinating history of…[a craft] that preceded and made possible civilization itself." —New York Times Book Review New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies. Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture. Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion. In a "brilliantly original book" (Katha Pollitt, Washington Post Book World), she argues that women were a powerful economic force in the ancient world, with their own industry: fabric.

Author : Marija Gimbutas
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2001-01-12
Category : History
ISBN : 0520229150

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The Living Goddesses by Marija Gimbutas Pdf

Presents evidence to support the author's woman-centered interpretation of prehistoric civilizations, considering the prehistoric goddesses, gods and religion, and discussing the living goddesses--deities which have continued to be venerated through the modern era.

Author : Adrienne Mayor
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 538 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2016-02-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9780691170275

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The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor Pdf

The real history of the Amazons in war and love Amazons—fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world—were the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a powerful Amazon army. In historical times, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman general Pompey tangled with Amazons. But just who were these bold barbarian archers on horseback who gloried in fighting, hunting, and sexual freedom? Were Amazons real? In this deeply researched, wide-ranging, and lavishly illustrated book, National Book Award finalist Adrienne Mayor presents the Amazons as they have never been seen before. This is the first comprehensive account of warrior women in myth and history across the ancient world, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Great Wall of China. Mayor tells how amazing new archaeological discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with their weapons prove that women warriors were not merely figments of the Greek imagination. Combining classical myth and art, nomad traditions, and scientific archaeology, she reveals intimate, surprising details and original insights about the lives and legends of the women known as Amazons. Provocatively arguing that a timeless search for a balance between the sexes explains the allure of the Amazons, Mayor reminds us that there were as many Amazon love stories as there were war stories. The Greeks were not the only people enchanted by Amazons—Mayor shows that warlike women of nomadic cultures inspired exciting tales in ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Central Asia, and China. Driven by a detective's curiosity, Mayor unearths long-buried evidence and sifts fact from fiction to show how flesh-and-blood women of the Eurasian steppes were mythologized as Amazons, the equals of men. The result is likely to become a classic.