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Beyond Design and Style: Enhancing the Material Dimension of Artefacts through Technological Complexity

Levantine ivories of the Iron Age have been the topic of much research aimed at answering basic questions. The role assigned to style as the main criteria for classifying ivories and assigning them to different places of manufacture (city-based workshops/production areas) provided an important frame of reference. But the art of crafting involves many other aspects, among which is the stringent relationship between humans and artefacts. This special interaction traverses the borders of typological, stylistic, and technical aspects; it assigns to artefacts a hermeneutic value no less important than that of processes in human culture. Materials had a special significance in pre-industrial societies: a symbolical or even magical value could result from the transformation of an artefact’s material or the exaltation of its materiality. This contribution presents very preliminary remarks concerning the role of materiality and the potential increase in meaning of multi-component ivories.