Modern tech unlocks secrets of ancient art

UC College of Arts and Sciences Assistant Professor Florence Gaignerot-Driessen is leading an archaeological project at the ancient Greek site of Anavlochos on the island of Crete where she and her collaborators study clay fragments.

Atop the mountain she found figurines and molded plaques embedded deep in the crevices of the bedrock, all of female figures.

“We call them ‘the ladies of Anavlochos,’” she said.

Gaignerot-Driessen and her international research partners are examining whether these terracottas were broken deliberately or accidentally. They were deposited ritually high atop a mountain featuring breathtaking views of the countryside and the Mediterranean Sea. Climbing to the top of the ridge takes some effort, but it’s worth it, she said.

“The view is just incredible,” she said.

Now Gaignerot-Driessen is using modern resins and the latest 3D scanning and printing technology to reproduce the ancient molds, figurines and plaques. By doing this she hopes to learn more about how they were produced for a mass audience in ancient Greece. Researchers have not found the workshop where these ancient ceramics were made. But the figurines and their deposition or placement in the crevices of the bedrock have their own story to tell.

“They were produced with little care,” she said. “They had little intrinsic value as they were produced from clay rather than precious materials like metal or ivory. They were modest offerings. So you didn’t need to be a rich or important person to buy your little figurine to deposit.”

Gaignerot-Driessen worked with Sabine Sorin from the French National Center for Scientific Research to create 3D models of the figurines. She also collaborated with UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning to reproduce the figurines at the college’s Rapid Prototyping Center using its 3D printers. In the college’s ceramics lab, she uses clay to make new molds of the figurines to try to rediscover the steps and methods of mass production three millennia ago.

Anavlochos was settled between 1200 and 650 B.C. The figurines date between 900 B.C. and 350 B.C., which means that many of them were deposited after people left the settlement.

Sorin used geographic land-mapping tools such as global-positioning satellites, photogrammetry and lasergrammetry to create 3D simulations of the terrain identifying the locations and placement of the pottery fragments in the crevices of the bedrock. Researchers could then simulate how the pottery was inserted into the crevices.

Among the pottery are flat plaques featuring the mythological sphinx: a fantastic creature with a woman’s head and a lion’s winged body. Others are figures of women wearing traditional clothing, including a large decorative hat called a polos and a cloak called an epiblema over a belted dress.

“It’s a typical representation of a feminine figure in the seventh century B.C. They wear a long dress with a decoration imitating the weave of the fabric,” she said.

The style of plaques found at Anavlochos demonstrate Near Eastern influences on Greek culture.

“We know that in the seventh century, imported objects arrived to Crete from the Near East. And immigrant craftsmen also came from the Near East,” she said.

When it comes to the significance of rituals that might have taken place there, archaeologists and historians can only speculate.

“We don’t have any written text about these practices. But they may have been rites of initiation or passage for women: daughters and mothers,” she said.

“Perhaps, they were offering these terracotta votives to a deity to protect themselves,” she said. “The devotees perhaps were mothers and young maidens in the process of reaching one of these important points in their lives.”

The project is under the auspices of the French School at Athens in association with the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Gaignerot-Driessen hopes to determine whether the undecorated backs of figurines depicting a mother nursing her baby were molded or modeled, which could give clues about ancient mass production techniques and technology.

Donning an apron over her lecture attire, she demonstrated molding in the ceramics lab. She rolled a handful of modeling clay back and forth on a table to soften it up and then filled in the voids in the front and rear molds, flattened the edges and used a dowel to hollow out the centers. Then she removed the molds, applied a liquefied clay to the backs of each piece to help cement them together and added more clay to make the seams disappear.

Modeling by comparison is more time-consuming, she said, and involves shaping the backs of each figurine by hand before it is attached to the molded fronts.

“It’s much easier and quicker to use a mold to mass produce these objects,” she said.

“But to prove that this is what the craftsmen have done, the next step is to break the replicas I produced and compare the interior parts,” she said. “This comparison should allow me to find out if the figurines were made from molds or modeled individually.”

This year Gaignerot-Driessen is taking five UC students to Crete for fieldwork. They will work with specialists and technicians to study the archaeological remains excavated at Anavlochos. The students will be learning more about an ancient burial place, settlement and sanctuaries that she and her team brought to light. They also will examine the many vessels, weapons and organic remains those places yielded.

Students also will use locally sourced clays to mold and model new figurines and experiment with breaking them to find out whether they were broken deliberately before the pieces were deposited or by accident once they were interred.

Gaignerot-Driessen said she is looking forward to experimenting and comparing the new clay figurines with the ancient ones.

“This is experimental archaeology,” she said. “We try to reconstruct ancient techniques and practices.”

The collaboration with UC Classics is a first for Nicholas Germann, manager of UC’s Rapid Prototyping Center at DAAP.

“We’ve worked before with civil, mechanical and biomedical engineering,” he said. “But her project is all about process. We’re creating a true-to-form artifact that mimics the original in almost every way. So we had to consider materials choices. Our printers use engineering resins that mimic ‘real’ materials like wood.”

Germann said the project reminds him of the way archaeologists had to relearn the lost art of flint-knapping, the process of chipping away flakes of stone like flint to craft tools or weapons like arrowheads.

“This project brings together ancient and cutting-edge methods,” Germann said.

“It’s recreating lost techniques of ceramics and revolutionary processes to observe degradation,” he said. “It’s absolutely amazing.”

Featured image at top: UC Classics Assistant Professor Florence Gaignerot-Driessen is unlocking the secrets of ancient Greek mass production. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand