Browsing by Author "Ryan, Adrian John."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Computer aided techniques for the attribution of Attic black-figure vase-paintings using the Princeton painter as a model.
(2009) Ryan, Adrian John.; Hilton, John Laurence.; Hough, Gavin.
Because of their abundance and because of the insight into the ancient world offered by the depictions on their decorated surfaces, Attic painted ceramics are an extremely valuable source of material evidence. Knowing the identities and personalities of the artists who painted them not only helps us understand the paintings, but also helps in the process of dating them and, in the case of sherds, reconstructing them. However, few of the artists signed their wares, and the identities of the artists have to be revealed through a close analysis of the style in a process called attribution. The vast majority of the attributions of archaic Attic vases are due to John Beazley whose monumental works set the stage for the dominance of attribution studies in the scholarship of Greek ceramics for most of the 20th century. However, the number of new scholars trained in this arcane art is dwindling as new avenues of archaeological research have gained ascendency. A computer-aided technique for attribution may preserve the benefits of the art while allowing new scholars to explore previously ignored areas of research. To this end, the present study provides a theoretical framework for computer-aided attribution, and using the corpus of the Princeton Painter - a painter active in the 6th century BCE - demonstrates the principal that, by employing pattern recognition techniques, computers may be trained to serve as an aid in the attribution process. Three different techniques are presented that are capable of distinguishing between paintings of the Princeton Painter and some of his contemporaries with reasonable accuracy. The first uses shape descriptors to distinguish between the methods employed by respective artists to render minor anatomical details. The second shows that the relative positions of cranial features of the male figures on black-figure paintings is an indicator of style and may also be used as part of the attribution process. Finally a novel technique is presented that can distinguish between pots constructed by different potters based on their shape profiles. This technique may offer valuable clues for attribution when artists are known to work mostly with a single potter.
An investigation into the use of terms aithiops and aithiopia in Greek literature from Homer to Lycophron.
(1997) Ryan, Adrian John.; Mackay, E. Anne.
The Greeks and Romans were acquainted with dark skinned people from Africa from an early stage. It has been generally accepted that such people were referred to as aithiopias; by the Greeks, and modem commentators have accepted the term to be a synonym of the English term 'Negro' . Such an assumption ignores the wide variety of connotations associated with the terms aithiops and aithiopia. Furthermore, the trend in scholarship in the field of race relations in antiquity has been to study the interaction between Greeks and foreigners based on implicit, and often invalid, theory. The aim of this study is to examine the uses of the terms aithiops and aithiopia in the context of Greek ideology. Previous studies in the field have employed naive semiological approaches to the issue of racism in Greece and Rome, whereby references to Negroes have simply been weighed up in order to determine the extent of negative attitude toward Negroes in antiquity. In this regard, the following study departs radically from the approaches of its predecessors in that, although it is not intended as a narrow linguistic study of the terms aithiops and aithiopia, the focus of the examination concerns the semantics of these terms and the connotations thereof. Through an analysis of these terms in their ideological context, not only do we gain an insight into the processes which underlie Greek perceptions of group boundaries, but we may gain a deeper understanding of our own perceptions of race and racism. The study is confined to pre-Hellenistic literature (although later works are often used to illuminate Classical and Archaic passages) since it was the perceptions of the authors from this period which shaped the ideas of subsequent authors. In addition, during the Hellenistic period, the focus of Greek literary activity shifted from Athens to Alexandria, allowing Hellenistic authors far more contact with Negroes than was enjoyed by their predecessors. For the purpose of this study, Lycophron's Alexandria has been assumed to be the last pre-Hellenistic work, although this point may be debatable.
Of men and gods : a study of masculinities represented by select characters in attic black-figure ceramics.
(2014) Lindsay, Dylan.; Ryan, Adrian John.
Is a question that has troubled scholars working in the Classics since the formalisation of masculinity as a field of study, this question has a central place in the current study. What troubles scholars is that the very nature of our understanding of masculinity is subjective, premised upon the way in which it operates in the modern societies. It is an understanding that is typically explored through the written word, with a stronger emphasis on social and cultural determinates. The problem then arises as to how we interpret sources from the ancient world, without subjecting them to modern bias, and in the case of the topic of this dissertation, how we treat a period where there is a paucity of literature. This dissertation argues for an alternate theory for the conceptualisation of masculinities for Late Archaic Athens, centring its focus on the rich corpus of Athenian Black-figure ceramics, by testing this theory with two of its popular characters, namely Herakles and Dionysos. At the core of this theory is a reorientation of sources, by focusing on the images rendered on the ceramics as a central resource. To forward this argument, I first suggest a model for the interpretation of general meaning, based on theories borrowed from the study of modern media, and secondly suggest a practical model for the interpretation of masculine meaning reflected in these ceramics by examining masculine markers and ranges of masculinity depicted on them. Both models seek to create a more inclusive understanding of masculinity, supported by investigation and comparison of other visual media of the period, as well as influential literature on the subject.