A01=Gustaf Sobin
ancient history
ancient world
anthropology
antiquity
archaeology
Author_Gustaf Sobin
bronze age
Category=DSBB
Category=JHM
Category=NHC
Category=NHD
Category=NK
Category=NKD
classicism
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
europe
france
gallo roman
gallophilia
historical artifacts
history
iron age
languedoc
massiolite ceramic
material culture
nonfiction
prehistoric
prehistory
provence
religion
religious cult
roman antiquity
romans
skulls
temples
wave patterns
worship
Product details
- ISBN 9780520222458
- Weight: 408g
- Dimensions: 152 x 203mm
- Publication Date: 11 Jan 2000
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Interpreting vestige with the eloquence of a poet and the knowledge of a field archaeologist, Gustaf Sobin explores his elected terrain: the landscapes of Provence and Languedoc. Drawing on prehistory, protohistory, and Gallo-Roman antiquity, the twenty-six essays in this book focus on a particular place or artifact for the relevance inherent in each. A Bronze Age earring or the rippling wave pattern in Massiolite ceramic are more than archival curiosities for Sobin. Instead they invite inquiry and speculation on existence itself: Artifacts are read as realia, and history as an uninterrupted sequence of object lessons. As much travel writing as meditative discourse, Luminous Debris is enhanced by a prose that tracks, questions, and reflects on the materials invoked. Sobin engages the reader with precise descriptions of those very materials and the messages to be gleaned from their examination, be they existential, ethical, or political. An American expatriate living in Provence for the past thirty-five years, Gustaf Sobin shares his enthusiasm for his adopted landscape and for a vertical interpretation of its strata.
In Luminous Debris he creates meaning out of matter and celebrates instances of reality, past and present.
Gustaf Sobin's books include Voyaging Portraits (1988), Venus Blue: A Novel (1991), Breaths' Burials (1995), By the Bias of Sound (1996), and Towards the Blanched Alphabets (1998). A novel, The Fly-Truffler, set in Provence, is forthcoming this year.
