This article proposes an interpretive framework of paradox and wonder as a new approach to understanding the affective properties social consequences miniature objects in archaeological record. Building upon current scholarly theories miniatures inherently intimate, this accounts for how small-scale artworks were also designed deliberately manufactured elude user attempts at full sensory access...

Abstract A 191, a Neo-Assyrian tablet from the Haus des Beschwörungspriesters in Aššur, preserves instructions for performance of an apotropaic ritual called Bīt mēseri (“house enclosure”). The tablet, which is edited here first time, offers version ceremony that markedly different standard known other first-millennium sources found at Nineveh, and various Babylonian sites. Whereas core rites w...

Photos and/or copies of one hundred Upper Paleolithic (45,000-40,000 to 10,000 BP) statues were studied, the photos having been taken from the frontal, lateral and back view. Among the 97 female idols studied, 24 were skinny (mainly young women), 15 were of normal weight, while more than half of them (51) represented overweight or very obese females whose breasts were also extremely large. The ...