Connecting Things through the Visual Arts: Medieval Crescent Moon Pendants as Horse Ornaments

Abstract

Medieval archaeology as a discipline is usually defined in relation to written sources and history, while other kinds of sources and scholarly traditions studying the same period are overlooked. With a small group of 14th-century crescent moon pendants of bronze from Finland as its focal point, the present article analyses the way in which archaeology connects with the visual arts and the discipline specialized in studying them, art history. Instead of some shared methodology, the inquiry proceeds along the tensions between the material and the visual. After the artefact and its technical qualities are examined in the framework of medieval material culture, the object is reduced, first, to an iconographical motif and, second, into a represented object. Third, the anthropomorphic features applied on the pendant are extracted and considered against the body of medieval grotesque art. This reveals how the visual is also an effective force in the sphere of material culture and human interaction. In the interdisciplinary work between archaeology and art history, the visual and the material emerge as travelling concepts destabilizing traditional approaches and inspiring new insights.

Keywords:

• Art history
• iconography
• interdisciplinarity
• medieval archaeology
• pendants
• visuality

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr Elina Räsänen, whose help with medieval paintings has been pivotal, and Jukka Tuominen for his help with revising the language.