Archaeolog

We live, capriciously enmeshed in a world of things. In the process of human becoming, both artists and archaeologists, as skilled negotiators, mediators and translators of things, have opportunitiesto steward, provoke and subvert our intra-relationships in the shared ecologies of our world. Today, artists and archaeologists are turning towards each other to exchange experiences, narratives and revelations. This exhibition celebrates new and also longstanding relationships between art and archaeology through the practices and processes of contemporary artists.

Continuing the collaborative exhibition of contemporary art and archaeology established by the Rosc exhibitions in Ireland in the 1960s and 70s, Ábhar agus Meon turns towards the rich etymologies of the Irish language to present the challenge of negotiating, mediating and translating the relationships entwining humans and things. 'Ábhar' carries meanings of not only materials and matters but also subjects and themes, while 'meon' hints at mentality, ethos, spirit and temperament. Rather than merely asserting polarisations of mind and body, the theme Ábhar agus Meon suggests a multiplicity of intra-relationships between mutually indistinguishable conceptions of things and thoughts.

Co-authored research by Patrick Hunt, Stanford University, and Whitney de Luna, Stanford Hospital Liver Clinic

Fig. 1 Etruscan Bronze Mirror of Chalchas the Seer Reading a Liver (Vatican: Gregorian Museum, Rome, cat # 12240)

Figure 2 Sheep’s liver in clay. 14.6 cm across. Old Babylonian, circa 1900-1600 BC. 
Provenance: likely Sippar in modern southern Iraq. British Museum, London, Western Asia Collection # ME 92668

Introduction

Divination by interpreting livers in the ancient world from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean and from the Bronze Age to the Classical world is a fascinating topic for study of religion, magic and science. Complicated long-term traditions governed haruspicy or hepatoscopy, i.e., liver interpretation or examination. One primary question to be asked is why was a liver used for divination and why a sheep’s liver, as this appears to be the most common organ used across many cultures and periods?

Here are some tentative thoughts. 1) Although it is relative to how much wealth individuals might possess, sheep were more easily sacrificed as smaller animals than expensive cattle. 2) On sacrifice or autopsy, the sheep liver is very close to the abdominal surface, is centrally located (center right) and small enough to manipulate. 3) The natural smoothness of the liver makes any abnormality easy to identify (i.e. coarseness), a surface characteristic that makes the liver relatively easier to read than other organs. 4) The ancients viewed blood as the source of life. Given that the liver is composed of dense tissue full of blood, the ancients understood the liver as vital to life. Extrapolating from human life, a severe flesh-penetrating wound to that part of the abdomen was often quickly fatal, thus supporting their perception.