A Visual Culture Colloquium
“Eurasian Silver: Building a Digital Database of 3rd- to 13th-Century Banqueting Vessels from Hoards”
Abstract
This talk previews a digital database that catalogs 3rd- to 13th-century Iranian and Central Asian silver vessels found in hoards across northern Asia. The data collected for this database is the groundwork for a book project entitled, Creating Cosmopolitanism: the Banquet in Central Eurasia (5th–13th century CE), which explores how the silver vessels circulated at dinner and drinking parties were an integral component of negotiating relations between diverse communities. The corpus of silver vessels discovered in a hoard context is extraordinarily rich; however, only a handful of objects– most without provenance in American and western European collections– are regularly published. Thus, the author envisions this accessible, online database as a foundation from which future studies can jump by pooling together raw data on objects and essential bibliographies, as well as a network for communication between researchers, curators, archivists, and librarians.
Bio
Betty Hensellek is an art historian and archaeologist of Iran, Central Asia, and the Steppe. Her research investigates cosmopolitanism across Central Eurasia, addressing how and why material culture enabled transcultural systems of communication. Stemming from her doctoral dissertation, her first book project, Fashioning Central Eurasia (400-900 CE), explores how a particular garment, the kaftan, shaped social interactions and intertwined diverse communities from the Black Sea to the Gobi Desert in the age of the Great Silk Roads. She earned a PhD from Cornell University (2020), a MA from the Institute of Fine Arts-New York University (2013), and a BA and BFA from the University of Cincinnati (2011). She has received research funding from Cornell University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.
