From an Archaeology of Iconoclasm to an Anthropology of the Body

Abstract

The attack on images in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth century was not random destruction. Particular parts of the body, namely, the head and the hands, were the focus of attack. These were the same foci against which capital and the severest forms of corporal punishment were aimed. Distinct from the theological reasons for iconoclasm, these persistent foci and forms of attack reveal something about attitudes to the body in this period and the privileging of the head and hands in a number of social and cultural discourses. Iconoclasm both informs and was informed by an understanding of bodies as they were constructed in the later medieval and early modern periods. The attack on statuary and images in sixteenth-and seventeenth century England was not random destruction. It was directed against particular parts of the body, the same parts to which capital and corporal punishment was administered. I will explain why both statues and criminals were treated in these specific ways and then place this in context and attempt to develop aspects of an anthropology of the body. I draw attention to continuities and changes between the late medieval and early modern periods that may have given a particular resonance to the anthromorphism of iconoclasm. Iconoclasm has taken different forms in different contexts, among them Christian destruction of pagan images, Byzan-tine, Islamic, or French Revolutionary iconoclasm, pre-Conquest Mesoamerican ritual mutilation of sculpted and painted heads, and political erasure, both ancient and modern, such as the shelling of the Bamiyan Buddha figures by the Taliban