Art History within Anatolian Studies. An Approach to Lycian Images

International audienceLycia is an area of Southern Anatolia famous for its stone monuments and sculpture, dating to between the 6th and the 4th centuries BC, under Achaemenid rule of Anatolia. The geographical and historical context of Lycia, and a cultural history with signs of an outward-looking attitude to Greek culture, has meant that many academic treatises have focused either on the Greek elements in Lycian art or on the Persian ones (see for example: Jacobs 1987). Lycian art is thus often seen as a “peripheral” phenomenon to Greek and/or Persian art. The history of Lycian studies, more specifically the field of Lycian sculpture, is heavily dominated by traditional academic fields. Accordingly, Lycian studies have long been promoted by Hellenists, and sometimes Orientalists, but much less by Anatolia specialists. This paper will focus on historiography and methodology. It will develop a methodological and conceptual approach that can be used to study images in specific Lycian and Anatolian contexts, allowing us to reassess the concepts of “Hellenization” and “Iranization”. “Images” are understood as figurative representations. From an art historical vantage point, this paper aims to illustrate how iconography and iconology can improve our knowledge of Lycian culture and history during the 1st millennium BC, and highlight the fact that Lycian culture is an original Anatolian culture