Last spring, the annual Bilkent Archaeology Day was cancelled, an early casualty of the pandemic. This year the Department of Archaeology will resume the tradition on Sunday, April 11 on Zoom, with a program focused on polychromy in ancient art, titled “What a Colorful World: Some Pigments and Colors in Antiquity.”
The morning program, “Polychromy: Its Context, Use and Meaning,” will be a student symposium organized by the Archaeology Club of Bilkent University. Students from Bilkent and from other universities will take part, with presentations exploring examples from different parts of the world.
The afternoon program, organized by the Archaeology Department, will feature speakers from the Louvre Museum, Tübingen University and Oxford University as well as from Bilkent. The origin, use and trade of dyes and pigments from various cultural contexts will be discussed. The speakers and their topics for both the morning and afternoon sessions are listed at the end of this article.
“Overlooked for too long, questions concerning polychromy have only recently attracted the interest of researchers,” note the program’s organizers. “We hope that this look at colors in antiquity and beyond will inspire students to learn more about this fascinating subject. As the presentations will make clear, polychromy is a large field and offers a wide and exciting choice of problems to investigate.”
Archaeology Day Program
Negin Derakhshan Houreh and Nefise Günaydın (Hacı Bayram Veli University)
The Magnificent Adventure of Pigments in History
Şehriban Yüksel (Bilkent University)
Maykhan Uul and Its Colors From the Göktürk Era
Nurgül Abut (Ankara University)
Taş Çağlarında Renkler ve Anadolu’dan Örnekler
Elif Aze Bol (Bilkent University)
The Terracotta Warrirors From China and Their Colors
Serap Yılmaz (Uşak University)
Intellectual Meanings of the Colors Preferred in Ancient Temple Architecture
Dilara Uçar Sarıyıldız (Bilkent University)
Possible Reasons for Using Color on Sculptures in the Classical World
Shiyanthi Thavapalan (Tübingen University)
Ingenious Crafts: Tricks, Tips and Techniques of Craftworking in Mesopotamia
Brigitte Bourgeois (C2RMF), Violaine Jeammet (Musée du Louvre), Yannick Vandenberghe (C2RMF)
The Painter’s Hand: New Insights on the Polychromy of Greek Terracotta Figurines
Dominique Kassab Tezgör (Bilkent University), Akın Akyol (Ankara HBV University)
“Looking for the Miltos of Sinope in Cappadocia”
Tuna Sare (Oxford University)
“Colors of Imperial Power in Ancient Nicomedia”
Jacques Morin (Bilkent University)
“From Blombos Cave to Silicon Valley”