University Communications
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Release date: Sept. 30, 1999
Contact: Camille Sparkman, Media Relations Coordinator, 404-727-7020, or cshearo@emory.edu

EMORY UNIVERSITY'S GREAT TEACHERS LECTURE ON OCT. 21 RECONSTRUCTS ANCIENT AMERICAN CULTURE FROM ART

Art from the ancient Americas is characterized by colorful imagery, symbolism and shamanism, but it is modern, scientific detective work that is allowing researchers such as Emory's Rebecca Stone-Miller to learn more about ancient cultures from that artwork. Stone-Miller, associate professor of art history and faculty curator of art of the ancient Americas at the Michael C. Carlos Museum will deliver the next offering in Emory's Great Teachers Lecture Series with "'Seeing With New Eyes': Ways of Reconstructing Ancient American Culture From Art Alone" at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21 in Cannon Chapel on the Emory campus. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 404-727-7020. To see a map of campus, go on-line to www.emory.edu/MAP.

By using three basic methods to study ancient South American art-scientific testing, examining plants and animals, and understanding the religious context of shamanism in the art-Stone-Miller is able to identify the artist's culture. She has tested beverage and food residue found on ancient American vessels and has analyzed the composition of bronze. The residue not only proves the function of the vessel, but also suggests the diet of the people. By determining the alloy used to make bronze, Stone-Miller is able to pinpoint the artist's culture and piece together its history. Interpreting the symbols of shamanism-a religion based on the belief in good and evil spirits controlled by a medicine man-is another method she uses to identify when and where artwork was produced, since different cultures had their own versions of the belief.

Stone-Miller, a member of the Emory faculty for more than a decade, was instrumental in acquiring a collection of ancient American art that consists of more than 1,900 pieces (1,300 from the William C. and Carol W. Thibadeau Collection). The collection has become one of the most prominent in the Southeast, and is one of the top six Costa Rican collections in the country. She has published two books, Art of the Andes From Chavin to Inca, and To Weave for the Sun: Andean Textiles in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, articles on Chavin and Wari textiles, and will soon finish the catalogue on the Thibadeau Collection at the Michael C. Carlos Museum. Her research interests include Andean art and architecture (with an emphasis on textiles), Costa Rican sculpture, perceptual theory, and art and shamanism.

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