Erik Thunø:
Skeuomorphic Trees. Caucasian Steles and their Porous Identities

Arboreal imagery forms a significant yet overlooked part of early medieval steles in the Caucasus (Armenia and Georgia). This paper seeks to relate this imagery to pre-Christian cult practices as well as to its materiality and the region’s process of Christian inculturation. By contrast to similar objects from a another periphery of the medieval world, it also aims to address the issue of comparisons in global art history.

Erik Thunø is professor of medieval art history at Rutgers University. He has published widely on the visual culture of early medieval Rome (e.g. The Apse Mosaic in Early Medieval Rome, Cambridge 2015) and, more recently, on the South Caucasus (e.g. The Medieval South Caucasus: Artistic Cultures of Albania, Armenia and Georgia, with Ivan Foletti, Turnhout,  2016). Within the framework of global medieval art history, he currently explores the shaping of religious imagery during the earliest period of Christianization in Georgia.