Art and Archaeology

Abstract

I am no doubt showing my prejudice, but I didn't expect a book on Greek acroteria to make for such exciting lockdown reading. Because of their position high up on temple buildings, extant sculpted materials tend to be fragmentary – and hence pushed to the literal and metaphorical corners of modern-day museums. Look to scholarly publications, moreover, and there is a tendency towards classificatory catalogues, markedly less in the way of theoretical discussion (whether about architectural and cultic framing, for example, historical aesthetics, or the intersection between ‘ornamental’ and ‘figurative’ representational modes).