Fragmentation and the body's boundaries

Abstract

This chapter explores the potential range of functions and meanings of anatomical votives by drawing together a number of interrelated themes. It suggests that ancient anatomical votives served as ritual prostheses, deployed to render the body whole and healthy again. Because ancient attitudes towards prostheses are so poorly known, people turn to modern case studies in order to gain insights. The chapter examines more closely the relation between the parts of the physical body and the whole, extending to the wider concept of personhood. It also explores the complex relations between the parts and the whole and the body's boundaries. Anatomical votives are one kind of body part; by setting them against other ways in which the body has been fragmented. Preserving anatomical specimens and attempting to avert the natural process of decomposition and fragmentation is the opposite of sculptural reconstruction; both negotiate the question of the body in parts from different angles.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 32 citations exist upstream.