It’s taken more than a year, but the questions that have been puzzling some art history and archaeology students at Kennesaw State University have finally been solved.
At issue was the origin of about 40 ancient bronze artifacts that classical archaeology teacher Philip Kiernan had borrowed from the Buffalo Museum of Science. Part of a larger collection purchased as early as 1890, the oldest pieces dated to 2500 to 1000 B.C. and were identified as coming from Iran, Syria, Israel and Turkey.
“I knew they’d be great pieces for our students to work with,” he said. “Kennesaw has an internal grant program that funded the bronzes’ being shipped so I could teach a class on methods in the study of ancient artifacts.”
When the pieces arrived in the spring of 2018, Kiernan and about 15 students launched an investigation worthy of a CSI episode, drawing and measuring the pieces, hunting for similar designs, paging through historical documents and making conclusions about their purpose and age.
“Some of the pieces had been donated to the museum as far back as the 1940s and were just sitting in a drawer; they didn’t have any documentation,” said Katie Kennedy, an art history major who recently delivered a presentation on her findings as part of her senior capstone project. “I went to Buffalo and took pictures of others there. We spent a lot of time at the Emory library, flipping through ancient art history books and what other historians had said about them. Some pieces came with excavation reports we studied.”
But being able to handle such ancient objects put a different spin on the class, she said.
“I’ve never actually gotten to work with and touch things like this,” she said. “It was intriguing to have a piece to hold rather than just seeing it in an exhibit or a picture.”
Their investigations turned up some startling information, said Kiernan.
“In some cases, the museum’s identifications were completely wrong,” he said. “We know they’re much older; the newest ones are from A.D. 500 to 600. One piece was identified only as Greek or Roman, and we can confidently pin it down as a Roman piece from the second century. Another case was a figurine thought to be from Hungary and sixth century, but it is, in fact, from Spain and more likely second century. So our knowledge of these pieces has changed.”
The research was also able to pinpoint the purpose of many pieces. “Bronze in the ancient world was used in all kinds of things,” said Kiernan. “We have brooches, figurines of dogs and people, functional objects – tools, belts, a mirror, even a little scraper used to get soap and oil off the body.”
The class’s work also created an exhibition, “Discovering Bronzes,” that will be on display at Kennesaw library’s rare book museum through the end of this year. While the public can get a close-up look at the artifacts, they will not get to hold them, said Kiernan, who hopes to teach a similar course again next year.
“From my perspective, it’s a powerful teaching tool to have students hold something in their hands that’s more than 1,000 years old.”
Information about Kennesaw State is online at Kennesaw.edu.
SEND US YOUR STORIES.
Each week we look at programs, projects and successful endeavors at area schools, from pre-K to grad school. To suggest a story, contact H.M. Cauley at hm_cauley@yahoo.com or 770-744-3042.
About the Author
