Constructing Monuments, Perceiving Monumentality and the Economics of Building: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Built Environment

In many societies monuments are associated with dynamic socio-economic and political processes that these societies underwent and/or instrumentalised. Due to the often large human and other resources input involved in their construction and maintenance, such constructions form an useful research target in order to investigate both their associated societies as well as the underlying processes that generated differential construction levels. Monumental constructions may physically remain the same for some time but certainly not forever. The actual meaning, too, that people associate with these may change regularly due to changing contexts in which people perceived, assessed, and interacted with such constructions.

These changes of meaning may occur diachronically, geographically but also socially. Realising that such shifts may occur forces us to rethink the meaning and the roles that past technologies may play in constructing, consuming and perceiving something monumental. In fact, it is through investigating the processes, the practices of building and crafting, and selecting the specific locales in which these activities took place, that we can argue convincingly that meaning may already become formulated while the form itself is still being created. As such, meaning-making and -giving may also influence the shaping of the monument in each of its facets: spatially, materially, technologically, socially and diachronically.

This volume varies widely in regional and chronological focus and forms a useful manual to studying both the acts of building and the constructions themselves across cultural contexts. A range of theoretical and practical methods are discussed, and papers illustrate that these are applicable to both small or large architectural expressions, making it useful for scholars investigating urban, architectural, landscape and human resources in archaeological and historical contexts. The ultimate goal of this book is to place architectural studies, in which people’s interactions with each other and material resources are key, at the crossing of both landscape studies and material culture studies, where it belongs.

Table of Contents:
Editors’ Biographies List of contributors Editors’ Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations used in references   Part 1. Theoretical and practical considerations on monumentality   Constructing monuments, perceiving monumentality. Introduction Ann Brysbaert   Mounds and monumentality in Neolithic Europe Chris Scarre   Architectural conspicuous consumption and design as social strategy in the Argolid during the Mycenaean period Kalliopi Efkleidou   Outer Worlds Inside Lesley McFadyen   Part 2. Methodological approaches to studying architecture   Interpreting architecture from a survey context: recognising monumental structures. Yannick Boswinkel   Three-dimensional documentation of architecture and archaeology in the field: combining intensive total station drawing and photogrammetry Jari Pakkanen   Set in stone at the Mycenaean Acropolis of Athens. Documentation with 3D integrated methodologies Elisavet P. Sioumpara   Labour mobilization and architectural energetics in the North Cemetery at Ayios Vasilios, Laconia, Greece Sofia Voutsaki, Youp van den Beld, Yannick de Raaff   Part 3. Architectural energetics methods and applications   Comparative labour rates in cross-cultural contexts Daniel R. Turner   Rethinking monumentality in Teotihuacan, Mexico Maria Torras Freixa   Economic choice in Roman construction: case studies from Ostia Janet DeLaine   Large-scale building in early imperial Tarraco (Tarragona, Spain) and the dynamics behind the creation of a Roman provincial capital landscape Anna Gutiérrez Garcia-M., Maria Serena Vinci   Building materials, construction processes and labour: The Temple of Isis in Pompeii Cathalin Recko   The construction process of the republican city walls of Aquileia (northeastern Italy): a case study of the quantitative analysis on ancient buildings Jacopo Bonetto, Caterina Previato   Index

About the Author :
Ann Brysbaert is Professor in Ancient Technologies, Materials and Crafts at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University (NL), and since 1/3/2022 also the Director of the Netherlands Institute in Athens (NIA). She is Principal Investigator of the SETinSTONE project (ERC-CoG, grant nbr 646667) held at Leiden University. Previously, she held permanent and senior research positions at the Universities of Leicester, Glasgow, Heidelberg and Leiden. In 2014, she was Professeur Invitée at Bordeaux Montaigne University. Her main book publications to-date are: (2021) Building BIG – Constructing Economies: from Design to Long-Term Impact of Large-Scale Building Projects. Panel 3.6. (Archaeology and Economy in the Ancient World. Heidelberg: Propylaeum (with J. Pakkanen); (2018) Constructing Monuments, Perceiving Monumentality and the Economics of Building. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Built Environment. Leiden: Sidestone Press (with V. Klinkenberg, A. Gutièrrez Garcia-M. and I. Vikatou); (2017) Artisans versus Nobility? Multiple identities of elites and ‘commoners’ viewed through the lens of crafting from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean. Leiden: Sidestone Press (with A. Gorgues); (2014) Material Crossovers: Knowledge Networks and the Movement of Technological Knowledge between Craft Traditions. London: Routledge (with K. Rebay-Salisbury and L. Foxhall); (2011) Tracing Prehistoric Social Networks through Technology: A Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean. London: Routledge; (2008) Power of Technology in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. The Case of Painted Plaster, London: Equinox. Victor Klinkenberg received his PhD in Near Eastern Archaeology at Leiden University in 2017. His research interests include digital archaeology, spatial analysis, and household archaeology. Currently a post-doc at Leiden University, he works as project manager in the ‘SETinSTONE’ project and as field director at the excavations of a Chalcolithic settlement at Palloures, Cyprus.

Review :
"The authors present not only an analysis of monumental construction but also a study of humanity overcoming the natural environment. [...] The editors have put together a body of research that should become important for any archaeological study of monumentality, especially for students of architectural energetics."-- "American Journal Of Archaeology" (4/1/0123 12:00:00 AM)