Approaching Monumentality in Archaeology

Edited by James F. Osborne

Subjects: Archaeology
Series: SUNY series, The Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology Distinguished Monograph Series
Paperback : 9781438453262, 474 pages, July 2015
Hardcover : 9781438453255, 474 pages, November 2014

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Table of contents

Illustrations
Tables
1. Monuments and Monumentality
James F. Osborne

Part I. Monumental Architecture and Social Transformation
2. Elamite Monumentality and Architectural Scale: Lessons from Susa and Choga Zanbil
Daniel T. Potts
3. Patronage and Reception in the Monumental Architecture of Early Christian Greece
William R. Caraher
4. The Monumentality of Text
Edmund Thomas
5. Building Monuments, Creating Communities: Early monumental Architecture and Pre-Pottery Neolithic Göbekli Tepe
Jens Notroff, Oliver Dietrich, and Klaus Schmidt
Part II. Monumentality and Landscape
6. Monuments and Landscape: Exploring Issues of Place, Distance, and Scale in Early Political Contest
Claudia Glatz
7. Roman Soliloquies: Monumental interventions in the vacant Landscape in the Late Republic and Early Empire
Älvaro Ibarra
8. Monumentality among the Mediterranean Isles
Michael J. Kolb

9. 4100–2700 B.C.: Monuments and Ideologies in the Neolithic Landscape
Johannes Müller
Part III. Monuments and Memory Work

10. Planning for the Past in Neolithic Central Europe
Peter Bogucki
11. Death and the City: Asiatic Columnar Sarcophagi in Context
Annetta Alexandridis
12. Function and Impact of Monumental Grave Vases in the Eighth Century B.C.
Dietrich Boschung
13. Mobile Monumentality: The Case of Obelisks
Grant Parker
Part IV. Monuments, Settlements, and Cities
14. Citadels in Spectacle-scapes in Bronze Age Anatolia
Christoph Bachhuber
15. The Phenomenon of Residential Cities and City Foundations in the Ancient Near East: Common Idea or Individual Cases
Mirko Novák
16. Modern Monumentality: European Experiences
Göran Therborn
Part V. The Experience of Monuments
17. The Creation and Experience of Monumentality on the Protohistoric Cyprus
Kevin D. Fisher
18. Performance and Monumentality in the “Altar of Tukulti-Ninurta”
Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper
19. Visualizing the Dynamics of Moneumentality
Willeke Wendrich
20. From Memorials to Imaginaries in the Monumentality of Ancient North America
Timothy R. Pauketat
Contributors
Index

Interdisciplinary study of monumental art and architecture in human history.

Description

Monumentality is a human phenomenon that has occurred in nearly all times and places. Because of its ubiquity, monumentality is something that has been studied by a large number of disciplines and individuals. Approaching Monumentality in Archaeology explores the phenomenon of monumental art and architecture from humankind's most ancient past to recent history, and does so using an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates the research of anthropological archaeologists, art historians, classicists, and sociologists working in a wide variety of historical and cultural contexts. The volume seeks to define what is meant by the terms "monument" and "monumentality," and to understand the social and political significance of monument-building as it has manifested around the world. By advocating for a relational approach to the topic that seeks to find monumentality in the ongoing relationship between object and person, this book offers the opportunity to begin the process of uniting these varied interests into a unified discourse.

James F. Osborne is Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University.