What

Apart from establishing the when and where of our subject, we also need to describe the 'what'.

What was this art or technology? What did it look like? What was it made from? How was it made? How was it used?

Sutton Hoo replica helmet (Source)

When describing a single artifact, we might provide facts about size, shape, materials, and composition.

For example, there is a 6th-century Anglo-Saxon burial site on the rump of England called Sutton Hoo that was discovered to have an incredible set of objects buried inside, including a finely crafted helmet.

What features of the helmet are described in the snippet below?

Weighing an estimated 2.5 kg (5.5 lb), the Sutton Hoo helmet was made of iron and covered with decorated sheets of tinned bronze.

Fluted strips of moulding divided the exterior into panels, each of which was stamped with one of five designs. Two depict figural scenes, another two zoophormic interlaced patterns; a fifth pattern, known only from seven small fragments and incapable of restoration, is known to occur only once on an otherwise symmetrical helmet and may have been used to replace a damaged panel.

"Sutton Hoo helmet"

That's a replica created for dramatic effect.

The actual helmet had been crushed in the burial mound and archaeologists had to assemble more than 200 fragments to create this reconstruction:

(From Wikipedia)

Qanat (Source)

Other times we might describe a technology more generally in terms of components, function, and purpose.

For example, look at this snippet describing an ancient Persian type of water engineering, called a qanat:

The Qanat is an ancient Middle Eastern irrigation technique in which a long tunnel is dug into arid land that allows water from underground aquifers to be accessed for use by the local population, supporting large settlements in spite of hostile environmental conditions.

Qanats begin as deep wells dug into elevated land and culminate in streams flowing through outlets into a human settlement.

Outflows sustain settlements by providing water for crops and drinking water for the population. Powered only by gravity, these simple wonders of ancient architecture allowed settlements in arid climates to have dependable access to water, sometimes for centuries at a time.

Today, tens of thousands of qanats still function in around 35 countries across the globe.

Qanat(2021)

The Plum Garden in Kameido 1857 Ando Hiroshige Wikipedia

The Plum Garden in Kameido by Ando Hiroshige, 1857 (Source)

Or we might describe an art or technology in terms of processes: how it is made or used.

For example, how did Japanese artists in the 17th-19th century create their beautiful woodcut prints?

To create a woodblock print in the traditional Japanese style, an artist would first draw an image onto 'washi', a thin yet durable type of paper. The washi would then be glued to a block of wood, and—using the drawing's outlines as a guide—the artist would carve the image into its surface.

The artist would then apply ink to the relief. A piece of paper would be placed on top of it, and a flat tool called a 'baren' would help transfer the ink to the paper.

To incorporate multiple colors into the same work, artists would simply repeat the entire process, creating separate woodblocks and painting each with a different pigment.

"The Unique History and Exquisite Aesthetic of Japan’s Ethereal Woodblock Prints"(2019)

What language was used in these snippets to describe the features of different subjects?

Weighing an estimated 2.5kg...
Was made of iron and covered with...
The Qanat is an ancient...
Qanats begin as deep wells...
Powered only by gravity, these simple wonders...
To create a woodblock print...
The washi would then be glued...
The artist would then apply...

You might notice the language of 'what' is much more rich and varied than the language of 'when' and 'where'.

It's the language of noun groups and verb groups.

You have lots of options!

We're going to explore these different types of descriptions in more detail in the rest of this lesson, but first, we have one more important dimension to discuss: not the 'what', but the 'so what'.

Describing historical arts & technologies