Description
Book SynopsisThis book adopts an integrative approach to investigate the role of monumental architecture in shaping social dynamics and power relations on the island of Cyprus during the Late Bronze Age (LBA; c.1700-1050 BCE). Using such an approach, archaeologists studying ancient societies elsewhere can analyze the relationship between the built environment and human behaviour. Monumental buildings on Late Bronze Age Cyprus provided contexts for social interactions, such as ceremonial feasting and cultic rituals, that created social bonds and forged wider community identities, while also materializing social boundaries and inequalities. More than just spaces, these contexts were socially-constructed places, imbued with identity and memory, that played an integral role in social organization during this transformative period. This integrative approach emphasizes the role of buildings in configuring movement and encounter and in serving as the contexts for interactions through which sociopolitical relations are developed, maintained, transformed and reproduced. It investigates this using an interdisciplinary methodology that integrates access analysis with the study of the materiality of built environments and how they encode and communicate meanings and shape the experiences of those who interact with them.
Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgements Chapter 1. Introduction: Building Power Chapter 2. Society and Built Environment in Late Bronze Age Cyprus: Changing Perspectives Chapter 3. The Social Dynamics of Built Environments Chapter 4. An Integrative Approach to Analyzing Past Built Environments Chapter 5. Toward a Biogrpahy of the Ashlar Building at Enkomi Chapter 6. Toward a Biography of the “Fortress” at Enkomi Chapter 7. Court-centred Buildings at Kalavasos, Maroni and Alassa Chapter 8. Spaces Become Places: Monumental Place-making and Social Interaction in the Late Cypriot Bronze Age Chapter 9. The Bigger Picture: Monumentality in Context
