{"id":22,"date":"2007-11-12T14:37:05","date_gmt":"2007-11-12T20:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=22"},"modified":"2007-11-12T14:38:32","modified_gmt":"2007-11-12T20:38:32","slug":"diffusion-or-delusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=22","title":{"rendered":"Diffusion or Delusion?"},"content":{"rendered":"

52\u00a0 28%\u00a0 40%\u00a0 0mph\u00a0 windroseWSW\u00a0 dewpoint 20\u00a0 bar falls Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon\u00a0 Ordinary Time<\/font><\/p>\n

Sheila lectured this morning on divination and origin stories among African nations.\u00a0 The morning felt long.\u00a0 Maybe it was me; maybe it was a conflict I keep having\u00a0bewteen the art historical approach and the anthropological.\u00a0 In art history the appearance of similarity is often taken as evidence of diffusion, that is, one culture influences another.\u00a0 In fact, diffusion often does not explain similarities.\u00a0 A classic example is pyramid forms in Mayan cities.\u00a0 Early antiquarians felt the pronounced similarities\u00a0with Egyptian pyramids sealed a\u00a0 relationship.\u00a0 They did not, however, explain how Egyptians got to Central America or the Central Americans got to Egypty.\u00a0 No contact, no diffusion.\u00a0 Even though Thor Heyerdahl showed that trans-oceanic travel could occur given simple technologies, that is not the same as providing evidence that it happened.\u00a0 The anthropological approach demands broader evidence than stylistic simliarity or similarity between one set of stories and another. Why?\u00a0 Because, as humans, we often follow similar paths to problem solving–you might call them AncienTrails.<\/font><\/p>\n

After, I wandered the galleries, always happy to have the museum\u00a0to myself.\u00a0 Ran into John, a guard, whose father has some industrial design work on display in the Don Harley exhibition.\u00a0 Since I’m assigned to the Modern Design galleries for a SuperValu event this Wednesday, I’ll show off his Dad’s work which includes a plastic flyswatter, a metal flask and plastic ribbon dispensers.\u00a0 All high concept design.<\/p>\n

The other project was a magic of myth tour I’ve got coming up on Sunday.\u00a0 This one wants Roman and Greek mythology.\u00a0 A lot more objects than I’d thought.\u00a0 I wrote them down and will do some research, consider a theme.<\/p>\n

The museum speaks to me.\u00a0 When I’m alone there, the art begins to accumulate, put layers on my heart.\u00a0 Later, perhaps days or months later, my heart will work through what I learned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

52\u00a0 28%\u00a0 40%\u00a0 0mph\u00a0 windroseWSW\u00a0 dewpoint 20\u00a0 bar falls Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon\u00a0 Ordinary Time Sheila lectured this morning on divination and origin stories among African nations.\u00a0 The morning felt long.\u00a0 Maybe it was me; maybe it was a conflict I keep having\u00a0bewteen the art historical approach and the anthropological.\u00a0 In art history … Continue reading Diffusion or Delusion?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}