Overview
From ca. 1600 – 1000 BC, builders across southern Greece crafted thousands of rock-cut chamber tombs similar to earlier and contemporary ‘beehive’ tholos tombs. Both tomb styles were designed with multiple uses in mind, filling with the remains of funerals forgotten over generations of reuse. In rare cases, the tombs were used once or seemingly not at all, cleaned thoroughly or sealed and abandoned entirely. Rather than focus on the missing or muddled record of funeral and post-funeral activities, this book re-examines Mycenaean tomb architecture and the decisions that guided it. From minimalistic to monumental, builders designed tombs with forethought to how commissioners and witnesses would react and remember them. Patterns suggest that memories of what tombs should look like heavily influenced new construction toward recurring shapes and appropriate scales. The wider debates over cost from ‘architectural energetics’ and perception in Aegean mortuary behaviour are thus revisited. Both can find common purpose in labour measured through a relative index and collective memory – how labourers and patrons saw their work. That metric for comparison lies within a median standard: in this instance, tombs expressed in terms of correlative shape and simple labour investment of the earth and rock moved to create them. This was accomplished here through photogrammetric modelling of 94 multi-use tombs in Achaea and Attica, verifying a cost-effective alternative for local authorities warding off information loss through site destruction from looting and earthquakes. Since most labour models suggest the tombs were not burdensome, commissioners held extravagant building in check by weighing the social risks and rewards of standing out from the crowd.
Full Product Details
Author: Daniel R. Turner
Publisher: Sidestone Press
Imprint: Sidestone Press
ISBN: 9789088909832
ISBN 10: 9088909830
Pages: 330
Publication Date: 16 December 2020
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Author Information
Dr Daniel R. Turner holds a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Alabama (2010) with specialisations in medieval history and the archaeology of complex societies. He received an M.Phil. in Archaeological Research from the University of Cambridge (2012) after completing a dissertation on comparative labour costs of early medieval earthworks in the British Isles. From 2012 to 2015, he served as a Staff Archaeologist for the cultural resource management firm, Panamerican Consultants, Inc. (PCI), directing more than 60 surveys and excavations across the south-eastern U.S. In 2016, he joined the ERC-funded SETinSTONE project as a PhD candidate within the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University, continuing with the project as a postdoctoral researcher in early 2020. From July 2020, he will begin a funded postdoctoral project for the Anchoring Innovation research agenda within OIKOS, The Netherlands National Research School in Classical Studies. That project, “Anchoring mimetic design as a building guide during the Aegean Bronze Age”, will apply similar themes from his PhD research on Late Bronze Age tombs to Early Bronze Age fortifications.
