Monumental Earthen Architecture In Early Societies Technology And Power Display PDF Download

In this study, I develop an integrative approach by which archaeologists can analyze the relationship between the built environment and human behaviour in ancient societies. I then apply it to an investigation of how elites employed monumental architecture as a means of advancing their sociopolitical power during the Late Cypriot (LC) Bronze Age (c. 1750-1050 BCE). The study begins by outlining a theoretical approach that emphasizes the role of buildings in controlling movement and encounter and in serving as the contexts for interactions through which sociopolitical structures are developed, maintained, transformed and reproduced. A review of previous studies of ancient Cypriot architecture, typically dominated by art-historical and functionalist interpretations, highlights the need for such an approach. To examine these issues, I introduce a series of analytical methods derived from architectural and environment-behaviour studies. While access analysis determines likely contexts for interaction based on the integration of individual spaces within a building's layout, a nonverbal communication approach, combined with visibility analysis, addresses how meanings are encoded in various elements of the built environment and how these meanings might engender particular behaviours among a building's inhabitants and visitors. I use this integrative approach to isolate likely contexts for public-inclusive and private-exclusive social occasions in a number of monumental buildings from the sites of Enkomi, Kalavasos, Maroni and Alassa. These buildings provided contexts well suited to social occasions, such as ceremonial feasting and religious rituals, that created social bonds or emphasized social distance as the sociopolitical objectives of interaction required. I argue the necessity of seeing these contexts not simply as spaces, but as socially-constructed places, imbued with identity and memory. This study highlights the importance of ashlar masonry, doorways and hearths in the definition of physical and social boundaries that were integral to the creation and negotiation of status and individual and group identities during social occasions. I conclude that during the LC IIC-IIIA period, ruling elites on Cyprus embarked on an ambitious strategy of monumental place-making that provided contexts for interactions that ultimately supported their power. In this way, monumental buildings became the primary arenas in which the sociopolitical dynamics of LC society were played out.