Manufacturing miniaturisation: The making of miniature deities in the GrecoRoman world

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The term "miniaturisation" implies a process: the process of reduction rather than of simply making small things. By focusing in on the role of miniaturisation in representing divine beings, I will study this process as it played out in Greek and Roman antiquity, asking crucial questions about how and why this process occurs, and whether the answers remain the same over time.There has been a burgeoning interest in tiny objects in the ancient world over the last fifteen years, with scholars building both on the literary theory of Susan Stewart (1992) and the anthropological theory of Alfred Gell (1998). Notable examples range from Susan Alcock's note on the growing importance of "small things" (2006), and John Mack's world study of "the art of small things" (2007), to more specialised, ancient-focused works, such as the World Archaeology special issue (2015) exploring 'Miniaturization'.For all that these case studies provide compelling snapshots, we still lack an overarching conceptual apparatus for understanding specimens of miniaturisation in action. Moreover, this analysis is insufficiently keyed into studies of replication in antiquity (e.g. Miranda Marvin (2008) and Salvatore Settis and Anna Anguissola (2015)) and, especially crucial as many monumental statues are only known through their miniature copies.In an age before fully mechanical reproduction, replication was as much a matter of interpretation as of repetition. As Jennifer Trimble (2011) has explored, there was no need for "copies" to look identical to the objects that they referenced; instead, sculptors worked with a set of "relational aesthetics" to meet their desired aims. "Recognisability" was the goal. Did miniaturisation make a difference?Unifying the themes of replication and miniaturisation through the framework of looking at the gods, this project will examine what makes miniaturisation so bonnes à penser. Spanning from Britannia to Bactria, from the Archaic period to Late Antiquity, this project will perform what Jas Elsner (2020) terms the "conceptual heavy-lifting" for a comprehensive treatment of the gods in miniature.Utilising both material culture, and literary sources ranging from Posidippus to Pliny, I aim to explore how the focus of an encounter with an image of a god shifts from epiphany to exquisite delight by means of shrinking. For visual data, I begin before the Hellenistic period, applying the lessons learned to everything from the miniature alabaster kouroi from Naucratis to the bronze statuettes of the gods which came to prominence in the age of Alexander and find their home on the table-tops of Pompeii. These miniature gods, whether they function as devotional artefacts, souvenirs, or both, will be explored diachronically, seeking to discover what drove the need for such devices. Engraved gemstones also provide a productive avenue to compare the function of miniature representations across time, having been in use from the Bronze Age onwards, and themselves participating in replication. Through this, my work will explore the cultural context required for understanding the miniature, and seek to destabilise the idea that the "miniature was born out of necessity rather than volition." (Bartman, 1992, p. 147)