Built objects (2010) (original) (raw)
Related papers
NEW REFLECTIONS ON ASPECTS OF SO-CALLED PREHISTORIC "ARCHITECTURES”
VILA NOVA DE SÃO PEDRO E O CALCOLÍTICO NO OCIDENTE PENINSULAR, 2024
Abstract: This is a return to various themes that have occupied me mainly since 1978, problematising some of the issues I tackled during my doctorate (FLUP, 1982), aggregation (FLUP, 1989) and later works (up to the present). At a very general level, to question once again briefly what history is, together with a search for inspiration in a line of thought that I have been approaching for the last ten years, and which I am still studying, that of Hegel-Lacan-Zizek, that is, a materialist and dialectical perspective, and which will be the subject of other works. Specifically in the field of prehistoric archaeology, I wonder, for example, if it makes sense to talk about “architecture” with reference to the Neolithic or Chalcolithic, and in particular around the so-called Neolithic megalithic necropolises and Chalcolithic ceremonial enclosures. Apart from more basic ideas, such as the need to overcome terminologies in use, which I believe to be obsolete, constituted for example by the triad settlements / ritual sites / tombs, etc. Keywords: History; Prehistory; Neolithic and Copper Age; “Architectures”; Interpretation.
Modelling of the Neolithic settlements space of the Central Danubian Europe, regardless of its landscape or village scopes, is always linked with longhouses. This is supposed to be a feature which structured the culture of early farmers. Two important aspects of the Neolithic house – its profane social complexity on one hand, and its sacred quality on the other – have been highlighted many times. But on what data can we infer its original appearance, function and duration? The find context is limited in terms of the original wooden construction, the archaeological imprint of which consists solely in a system of post holes. The aim of this text is therefore to present the existence of ethnographic parallels of the Central European Neolithic longhouses. Our purpose is certainly not to create direct analogies, but to induce basic imagination. Three particular cultural areas and the local populations show that the dwelling form could have had many features (e.g. construction of post, rectangular ground plan, roof form) in common with the original Neolithic houses. Both ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological evidence also reopen the issue of the so far unconfirmed construction properties of the long Neolithic houses (e.g. construction material, floor level). Other, culture dependent features observed at ethnographic cases (number of inhabitants, length flexibility, and lifespan) could contribute to creation of archaeologically testable interpretation models.
Breaking the Surface: An Art/Archaeology of Prehistoric Architecture - 2018 (Chapter 1)
2018
In Breaking the Surface, Doug Bailey offers a radical alternative for understanding Neolithic houses, providing much-needed insight not just into prehistoric practice, but into another way of doing archaeology. Using his years of fieldwork experience excavating the early Neolithic pit-houses of southeastern Europe, Bailey exposes and elucidates a previously under-theorized aspect of prehistoric pit construction: the actions and consequences of digging defined as breaking the surface of the ground. Breaking the Surface works through the consequences of this redefinition in order to redirect scholarship on the excavation and interpretation of pit-houses in Neolithic Europe, offering detailed critiques of current interpretations of these earliest European architectural constructions. The work of the book is performed by juxtaposing richly detailed discussions of archaeological sites (Etton and The Wilsford Shaft in the UK, and Magura in Romania), with the work of three artists-who-cut (Ron Athey, Gordon Matta-Clark, Lucio Fontana), with deep and detailed examinations of the philosophy of holes, the perceptual psychology of shapes, and the linguistic anthropology of cutting and breaking words, as well as with cultural diversity in framing spatial reference and through an examination of pre-modern ungrounded ways of living. Breaking the Surface is as much a creative act on its own-in its mixture of work from disparate periods and regions, its use of radical text interruption, and its juxtaposition of text and imagery-as it is an interpretive statement about prehistoric architecture. Unflinching and exhilarating, it is a major development in the growing subdiscipline of art/archaeology. To buy this book, please go to the OUP site (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/breaking-the-surface-9780190611873?cc=us&lang=en&#) or Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Surface-Archaeology-Prehistoric-Architecture-ebook/dp/B07CZKYR6T/ref=sr\_1\_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1529527889&sr=8-1&keywords=breaking+the+surface+bailey) For readers who would like to receive the modified artist's version (as the volume was originally intended), please send their purchased book to Professor Bailey and he will intervene in your copy and return it to you. Send books to Professor Doug Bailey, Department of Anthropology, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Road, San Francisco, California 9413, United States.