Monumentality, Place-making and Social Interaction on Late Bronze Age Cyprus; Kevin D. Fisher

Kevin D. Fisher [+–]

University of British Columbia

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Kevin D. Fisher is Associate Professor of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology in the Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies at the University of British Columbia. He has been involved in archaeological fieldwork in Cyprus, Greece, Jordan, Peru, Guatemala, Canada, and the US and is currently Co-director of the Kalavasos and Maroni Built Environments (KAMBE) Project in Cyprus. He is co-editor of Making Ancient Cities: Space and Place in Early Urban Societies (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

This 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.

Series: Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology

Prelims

List of Figures vii-x

List of Tables xi

About the Author xii

Preface and Acknowledgements xiii-xv

Chapter 1

Introduction: Building Power [+–] 1-20

Introduction and overview of chapters.

Chapter 2

Society and Built Environment on Late Bronze Age Cyprus: Changing Perspectives [+–] 21-55

Chapter 2 begins with an examination of the changing intellectual landscape within which Late Cypriot society has been and interpreted and (re)constructed, with particular emphasis on the role of the built environment. I note the colonial influences in early culture historical and art historical interpretations and the persistence of these paradigms in 20th-century scholarship. The rise of processual approaches frames a discussion of ongoing debates regarding the emergence and development of complex societies on the island. New studies point to the emergence of complex polities in some regions (particularly on the north coast) during the Prehistoric Bronze Age (PreBA; ca. 2500/2400–1700 BC), along with evidence for pronounced social inequalities. These developments to some extent prefigured the nevertheless revolutionary changes that characterize the transition to the Late Bronze Age or Protohistoric Bronze Age (ProBA; ca. 1700–1100/1050 BC), which include the emergence of the island’s first cities and large-scale monumental buildings. Processual approaches have brought an emphasis on settlement systems, political economy, the emergence of social hierarchy, and state formation. I address ongoing debates regarding the sociopolitical organization of the island at this time and whether it followed centralized or corporate modes of governance. The chapter concludes by highlighting promising new trends influenced by the postprocessual critique, that mark a shift from processes to people and contribute to a social archaeology of ProBA Cyprus. Studies in landscape archaeology, memory, agency, and materiality provide inspiration for a new approach to the study of monumentality and the social dynamics of built environments.

Chapter 3

The Social Dynamics of Built Environments [+–] 56-79

Chapter 3 provides a basis for what I call an integrative approach through a discussion of the social dynamics of the built environment. Using the contemporary open office as a case study, I explore the profound impact that spatial configuration and materials have on social interaction, power relations, and sensory perception and experience. The theoretical approaches of Bourdieu and Giddens are then introduced and critiqued as a way of understanding the recursive relationship between social interaction and the formation and reproduction of social structures. In order to examine this relationship and develop methods for its investigation, I turn to a number of concepts developed from environment-behaviour studies that highlight the importance of the co-presence of social actors and how it is affected by the built environment. Phenomena such as proxemics, territoriality, and privacy, provide insights into the embodied nature of social interaction. I conclude by advocating the need to see the creation and use of built space as a process of place-making, emphasizing the agency and materiality of the built environment as both a product and producer of social life.

Chapter 4

An Integrative Approach to Analyzing Past Built Environments [+–] 80-115

I introduce and integrate a suite of analytical methods in Chapter 4. Access analysis, derived from space syntax, provides a means of understanding the role of spatial configuration in determining likely contexts for interaction by revealing the patterns of access and movement within buildings. While accessibility is a significant determinant of interaction potential, it does not account for other important factors, such as room size and shape or the materiality of particular architectural features, that affect not only the likelihood of a space hosting interaction, but the types of interaction that might occur there and their effects on participants. To address this issue, a nonverbal communication approach is introduced that examines the messages encoded in various elements of the built environment, and how these messages might serve to engender particular behaviours among a building’s inhabitants and visitors. I emphasize interaction with and within built environments as a multi-sensory, embodied experience, although the available evidence lends itself to a more detailed analysis of visual perception. Viewsheds and isovists are used in order to investigate the relationship between interaction and the visibility of spaces and architectural elements such as ashlar masonry. In combination, these methods make up an integrative approach that allows us to investigate the role of the built environment in social interaction and reproduction during any period. In each case the potential and limitations of each analytical method is assessed with reference to previous applications to archaeological datasets. I discuss the mechanics of implementing the integrative approach, emphasizing the syntactic and architectural characteristics of contexts suited for public-inclusive and private-exclusive social interactions. The parameters and limitations of the dataset are also briefly considered in this chapter.

Chapter 5

Toward a Biography of the Ashlar Building at Enkomi [+–] 116-176

I apply the integrative approach to a number of monumental buildings in Chapters 5 through 7. Two buildings from Enkomi dating back to the beginning of the LBA, the Ashlar Building (analyzed in Chapter 5) and the Fortress (analyzed in Chapter 6), lend themselves to a biographical approach. Both buildings underwent a series of reconstructions during their long use lives, providing an opportunity to examine the significance of diachronic changes in monumentality and spatial configuration to processes of place-making that played out at various scales.

Chapter 6

Toward a Biography of the ‘Fortress’ at Enkomi [+–] 177-198

Chapter 7

Court-Centred Buildings at Kalavasos, Maroni, and Alassa [+–] 199-249

In Chapter 7, I analyze three court-centred buildings from the LC IIC-IIIA: Building X at Kalavasos Ayios Dhimitrios, the Ashlar Building at Maroni-Vournes, and Building II at Alassa-Paliotaverna. Each of these three buildings is assumed to be the centre of administrative and economic power for their respective sites and, probably, their wider regions. Despite some superficial formal similarities and shared functions, they materialized monumentality in quite different ways. In each case, I discuss the broader excavation and architectural history of the site, the building’s specific context, and its extant architecture. This is followed by an in-depth micro-scale analysis of the syntactic and architectural properties of the various spaces that comprise each building and my interpretation of how these properties structured social interaction within the building.

Chapter 8

Spaces Become Places: Monumental Place-making and Social Interaction in the Late Cypriot Bronze Age [+–] 250-293

In Chapter 8, I synthesize the results of these micro-scale analyses through a discussion of how monumental places were created and used. This begins with an examination of the materiality of monumental construction, taking a chaîne opératoire approach that considers the affordances and meanings of building materials. I focus mainly on how ashlar masonry came to be such an effective means of materializing monumentality and elite identity, before considering the significance of other materials, including rubble masonry, mudbrick, plaster, and wood. This is followed by a discussion of observed patterns in the spatial configuration and architectural properties of LC monumental buildings, particularly in terms of potential locations for various types of social interaction. I frame the rest of the synthesis in terms of how Late Cypriot monumental buildings were places of ritual performance, focusing on the commensal politics of feasting, which could be used to create and display social distance between host and guest or downplay difference as a means of promoting wider community identities. Cultic practice worked in a similar manner while adding an additional dimension of legitimation. I conclude the chapter by exploring the relationship between monumentality, identity and social memory during the Late Bronze Age, emphasizing the interplay of human and material agency in the creation of memorable, embodied experiences.

Chapter 9

The Bigger Picture: Monumentality in Context [+–] 294-309

I begin Chapter 9 by addressing the broader implications of the research through an examination of the role of monumental architecture within the context of changing sociopolitical dynamics over the course of the Late Bronze Age. In doing so, I explore the built environment at the meso-scale by placing the individual monumental buildings analyzed in this study within the context of emerging urban landscapes. This begins by considering the significance of the fortress phenomenon of the MC III-LC I period—the island’s first large-scale monumental buildings. A discussion of the Proto-urban period follows, during which the mortuary sphere, including intramural burials, served as the primary means of displaying status, negotiating identities and demarcating social boundaries. This changed in the fully-urban period of the LC IIC-IIIA, leading to a consideration of how monumentality and urban identities were materialized at various spatial scales within the new urban landscapes, emphasizing the diverse trajectories through which they developed. I conclude by revisiting the relationship between monumentality and social memory, this time by reflecting on the survival of LC monuments in the landscape of the Iron Age where they were used a source of power and legitimation in a prolonged period of state formation. This highlights the historically contingent nature of monumentality as a process rather than a state.

End Matter

References 310-361

Appendix 1 362-379

Index 380-394

Reviews

Overall, this is a welcome addition to the literature on Cypriot archaeology, being theoretically informed and rich in archaeological data, both of which are presented in an engaging style and accessible language. Moreover, it moves attention away from the usual (meta)narratives that have tended to focus on emerging social complexity, settlement and the economy, copper and pottery production, and international trade. Instead, the focus on the social and experiential aspects of the built environment of LBA Cyprus (albeit constrained to the better-known urban context) allows students and researchers alike to engage with a more meaningful understanding of the lived experience of the island’s second millennium inhabitants.
Journal of Near Eastern Studies

Fisher’s study offers new and fascinating insights into the role monumentality played in an increasingly complex society. The meticulous analyses in combination with various theoretical approaches will certainly be of highest relevance for comparable monumental architecture in other periods and geographical areas.
Cahiers du Centre d’Études Chypriotes

Monumentality, place-making and social interaction of Late Bronze Age Cyprus by Fisher shares a lot of similarities with its subject material in the sense that the content of the book, much like monumental architecture, is grand in scope and built upon a strong foundation.
In this thick tome, Fisher digs deep and introduces new material as well as re-examining legacy data through a novel lens, which simultaneously underlines the importance of monumentality in the Late Bronze Age and the continued academic development of Cypriot archaeology.
Antiquity

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Monumentality, Place-making and Social Interaction on Late Bronze Age Cyprus

(Volume 17)

Kevin D. Fisher [+–]

University of British Columbia

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