Sidestone Press 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. 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) From the Publisher Ann Brysbaert is Associate Professor/Reader in Archaeological Sciences and Material Culture Studies at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University where she is the Principal Investigator for the ERC Consolidator Grant funded project SETinSTONE (2015-2020). Previously, she held permanent and senior research positions at the University of Leicester (Museum Studies), Glasgow University (Dept of Archaeology), Heidelberg University and Leiden University, and has been Professeur Invitée at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne, France. Her main publications to-date are: Material Crossovers: Knowledge Networks and the Movement of Technological Knowledge between Craft Traditions. London: Routledge (2014, with K. Rebay-Salisbury and L. Foxhall); Tracing Prehistoric Social Networks through Technology: A Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean. London: Routledge (2011); Power of Technology in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. The Case of Painted Plaster. (Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology, 12), London: Equinox Press (2008). She is currently finalizing: Tracing Local, Regional and Interregional Craft Networks Viewed through a Technological Lens at Late Bronze Age Tiryns. A Comparative Mycenaean Workshop Study. (Universitätsforschungen zur Prähistorischen Archäologie. Reihe Heidelberg). Bonn: Rudolf Habelt (with M. Vetters). From the Back Cover In many societies monuments a