Perceptual range

Giorgio Buccellati – February 2026

The concept

Referentiality is closely linked to what perception individuals have of the referent itself. We may safely assume that in Urkesh people intuitively perceived the referntial value of a conical cup (i. e., that it was used in celebratory occasions) and this would have given a special status to the object. To use an example from our own culture, a champagne flute carries for us, intuitively, a certain prestige connotation, and would be unlikely to use it for coffee or juice.

The notion of perceptual range refers to the limits that may apply to referentiality. These limits are obvious vis-à-vis a broken tradition: we do not share the native perception, and can only re-create it, if partially, through an inferential process. But these limits may apply also within a living tradition. We will look here at both.

Limitations vis-à-vis a broken tradition

The inferential process

The role of grammar

Modern approximations

Architecture

Glyptics

The role of hermeneutics

reconstruction

Limitations within a living tradition

A given item that would have carried meaning for a person in the royal court of Urkesh might not have elicited the same response in a farmer living at the same time in a remote village of the kingdom. The “reference” would not have been operative, just as it would be for us – were we not to have the supporting evidence of the assemblages and the seal impressions from the palace context.

It is the very diversity and richness of any given culture that is bond to create what we may call “referential gaps.” The referential import of a champagne flute would resonate quite differently today in different levels of socity. Siilarly, a type of music that is familiar to a given sub-group may be wholly alien to another sub-group.

Chronological depth

Within a living tradition the passage of time is another factor that inevitably affects the referential register of the community. We may look here at two contrasting examples from Urkesh.

(1) On the one hand there is continuity, for which we may mention two parallel cases.

The great Temple of the lion and its terrace lasted with its major structural elements essentially in place for some two millennia (Buccellati 2019). This continuity meant that the referential diension, the cult of Kumarbi, remained the live focal point with a substantial identity of purpose and of means to make this purpose explicit.

Then there is the phenomenon of the potters’ “community of practice” (Kelly-Bucellati 2019 Emulation) which has been defined as “a group of craft producers, with no organizational structure, but held together horizontally across space and vertically across time by shared technical and stylistic expertise” (p. 357). Particularly significant in this case is the phenomenon of emulation (p. 356f.), where potters sought to imitate elements of an earlier tradition which had not survived within the “community of practice” but was documented by vessels and sherds found at the site, back then as theu are today. This gives evidence for a real awareness of the break and for the deliberate attempt at mending it.

(2) On the other hand, there is the recognition of a break which can create a ,loss in the intuitive referential “inventory”. A classic example in Mesopotamian archeology is that of the beveled rim bowls, which were ubiquitous in the Early Dynastic period but disappeared altogetehr in the later periods (Hopkinson 2023 Experiment)

A Grammar of the Archaeological Record (Version 2, Beta release)

Grammar