Describing historical arts & technologies

Describing methods

  • How was an Egyptian pyramid built?
  • How were Chinese silk gowns made?
  • How did Renaissance artists draw in perspective?

These are all questions about building or creating with a particular technology or artistic technique.

We can answer these questions with a step-by-step description of the process.

Egyptian mummification process

For example, here is a description of the ancient Egyptian process for creating a mummy:

THE MOST COMPLICATED MUMMIFICATION PROCESS

The technique used on royals and high officials from the New Kingdom until the start of the Late Period, about 1550 to 664 BCE, is considered the best and most complicated mummification process.

PRESERVING THE ORGANS

The first step in this technique involved the removal and preservation of most of the internal organs.

The lungs, stomach, liver and intestines were separately embalmed and placed into canopic jars. These jars were often decorated with one of the four animal-headed sons of the god Horus, with each son protecting a particular organ. Preservation of these organs was important as they allowed the dead person to breathe and eat in the afterlife. However, usually only the wealthy could afford to have their organs embalmed and stored in this way.

After about 1000 BCE the practice changed. The internal organs were then generally wrapped and put back into the body or bound with it, or put in boxes rather than being placed in jars. Canopic jars were still placed in the person's tomb but they were solid or empty and served a symbolic purpose.

PRESERVING THE BODY

The heart, representing the centre of all knowledge and emotions, was usually left untouched inside the body while the brain was often thrown away.

The body was then treated with natron (a carbonate salt collected from the edges of desert lakes) which acted as a drying agent, absorbing water from the body so as to prevent further decay.

After 40 days, the natron was removed from the skin and the body cavities were filled with linen, natron pouches, herbs, sawdust, sand or chopped straw. The skin and first few layers of linen bandages were then covered with a resinous coating.

The rest of the body was then wrapped, often with the inclusion of amulets and with a mask placed over head of the mummy. The whole process lasted about 70 days.

Those that couldn’t afford embalming generally had their bodies ‘preserved’ through drying in hot desert sands or by covering them with resin.

How were ancient Egyptians mummified?(2023)
  • This isn't a description of a specific mummy or of the properties of mummies in general—it's a description of the process of mummification: how the Ancient Egyptians made a mummy.
  • This process flows from beginning to end.
  • In this snippet, the writer has included details about space and time as well as comments about the meaning of certain steps.
Cross section of a Roman aqueduct
Cross section of a Roman aqueduct (Source)

Here's another example.

The Romans were experts at moving water from one place to another via aqueducts.

Aqueducts were really complicated to build, and one step often involved digging a tunnel through a hill or mountain.

To save time, they would have two teams dig tunnels on opposite sides of the hill and meet in the middle.

The problem is: how do you stop the two teams passing each other in the middle of the mountain? How do you actually get the two tunnels to meet each other?

Here's a description of just that one part of the process:

Eupalino's technique
Eupalino's tunneling technique top-down perspective (Source)

The Romans used a technique for tunneling an aqueduct called Eupalino’s technique. This was in order to ensure both tunneling teams would meet when making a tunnel.

The idea was that one team started on one side of a mountain and the other would start on the opposite side. The teams would tunnel to where they believed the halfway point of the tunnel would be. Once there, one of the teams would tunnel right and the other would go left.

Although this means one of the teams would miss and make a tunnel to nowhere, the other teams would make contact.

Throughout this whole process, shafts were dug to the surface in order to provide easy access and air.

From Mountain to Fountain: Rome’s Aqueducts(2022)
  • The process flows from beginning to end.
  • It's a series of steps.
  • The writer adds notes to explain the meaning of key steps.
Hawaiian navigators (Source)

Sometimes, art or technology was all action, no object.

For example, Polynesian navigation was an art of perception and interpretation:

Indigenous navigators required deep knowledge of the movement of the stars through the night sky. A rising star cuts the horizon at a low point, but can only be used as a positioning reference for a certain time before it has risen too high, and the next star to rise is then used to keep the craft on course.

By day or when the night was cloudy, canoes were steered by a combination of techniques.

The navigator sat on the left-hand side, towards the rear and would sometimes lie down to feel the swell and movement of the ocean. Waves are shorter and steeper and have a breaking crest closer to land, whereas out to sea, waves are felt as a slow undulation.

Reading the surface of the ocean was a visual aid navigators relied on to estimate the sideways drift of the waka. The white caps of waves indicate the strength of a mid-ocean current. If a wave is travelling in the same direction as the wind, for example, but the current is flowing against it, the wave will appear to be steep. Swell piloting was used as the solution to strong and shifting currents.

Polynesian Navigation & Settlement of the Pacific(2020)
  • This snippet describes different elements of the environment that an Indigenous navigator might use when sailing in the open ocean.
  • Combined they form the foundation of a navigational art.
  • The snippet provides a little explanatory detail for certain parts of the process.

500 years from now, historians are trying to figure out how to reconstruct a 21st-century food product known as "the chicken nugget".

How do they believe these "nuggies" were created? (You can be wrong about the details of the process, but write like a historian!)

Trying to reconstruct 21st-century chicken nuggets

To help you out, here are some example phrases from the snippets above:

  • The first step in this technique involved...
  • The organs were separately embalmed and...
  • Preservation of these organs was important as...
  • After about 1000 BCE the practice changed...
  • The body was then treated...
  • The Romans used a technique called...
  • The idea was that...
  • The teams would tunnel...
  • Although this means...
  • Throughout this whole process...
  • Indigenous navigators required deep knowledge of...
  • By day or when night was cloudy...
  • Reading the surface of the ocean was...
Write a 3-5 sentence historical description of the process used to manufacture chicken nuggets in the 21st century.

Our understanding of the 21st-century process for producing the "chicken nugget" is based on fragmented records and speculative reconstructions.

The first step of the production process involved creating a pliable slurry that combined protein from the common chicken (a popular household pet during this era) and the rubber from recycled sneakers.

The mixture was then mechanically shaped into small, uniform lumps to ensure consistent cooking times and ease of consumption. The lumps were flash-heated in a chemical solution to create a crispy outer layer and then flash-frozen for storage and transport to various marts and palaces.

While considered an essential nutritional source for the first half of the 21st century, nuggies fell out of favour once chickens gained voting rights in 2078.

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