International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Mariel Peñaloza Moreno 
Zoetermeer, Netherlands; 
[e-mail]
Byzantine Identity through a Material Culture Case: The Cameo as a Narrative
This participation is based on an ethnological approach of material culture as a narrative that 
gives information about how objects, specifically the cameos, are carriers of an identity, in this case 
the Byzantine one. A study of the cultural biography of the cameo will allow to follow the paths 
of the Byzantine identity, its changes, influences, and its moving meanings in different contexts. 
Glyptic art is viewed as a narrative: the act of engraving precious stones as a language, being its main 
purpose to transfer meaning in context. Reading material culture as language implies considering 
the structure of the objects to be read. For the cameo, its physicality and how it communicates 
through it are fundamental. The context is key in understanding its meanings and functions, and 
therefore of how it carries one or more identities. I intend to ‘read’ the cameo as a carrier of the 
Byzantine identity and to unravel the influences in its original context and how it moved toward 

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new ones. The cameo is an object whereby agreed meanings and functions are used to communicate 
a message that can only work when both sender and receiver have a common code. A historical 
review will show that the change of context provides new elements of interpretation, enriching the 
‘readings’ of the cameo and its identities. Hence, the cameo is a code relying on agreed rules of use 
and meaning moving dynamically to function in other contexts.
If we ‘read’ the cameo, we must understand its language. Though the fundamental elements of 
a language are letters and the earliest written language was cuneiform script, images appeared earlier 
in petroglyphs. Two kinds: pictographs, depicting significant events; and ideographs, representing 
a concept. They became cylinder seals, which in turn became stamp seals, Egyptian scarabs and 
cameos. Thus we can consider the art of glyptic as a language with an own system, bearing in mind 
that meanings ascribed to words and objects change constantly. But a change of context changes 
its meanings and functions, and in turn its physicality. It is my purpose to deepen into the paths 
the cameo and the identity it carries have followed. New materials brought new colors and thus 
new meanings to the cameo, which added new layers of interpretation, such as those offered by 
chromosemiotics. The development of technique had an impact too, broadening the possibilities of 
expression. Every time, the cameo is literally and symbolically a functional carrier of the identities 
it contains. It embodies meanings from personal affirmation to political or apotropaic, which are 
present even simultaneously, making the cameo a multilayered object and inviting to a multilayered 
reading of it. The phenomenon of collectionism illustrates this, adding the concept of authenticity 
to the layers. What is a copy? How are there different levels of copies? What is the value of the cameo 
in terms of its materials, technique, meaning and use? How did this influence its physicality? How 
and when did the cameo move from an active function to a passive musealized one? Did it undergo 
this phase simultaneously with being actively worn? Does this passive phase apply to the identities it 
carries? Has the Byzantine identity of the cameo being musealized, disappeared, or is it still present? 
These are some of the questions I want to reflect upon in the presentation.