The Creation Of Monuments

Neolithic Causewayed enclosures are amongst the oldest, rarest and most enigmatic of the ancient monuments found in Europe. First recognised as a distinct type in the 1920s, sixty-nine certain or probable examples have now been identified in the British Isles. As a class, they are of outstanding importance, for while their precise functions remain unclear, they represent the first non-funerary monuments and the earliest instance of the enclosure of open space. This book presents an overview of the findings of a systematic national programme of research, carried out by the RCHME, now merged with English Heritage. Every certain, probable and suggested causewayed enclosure in England has been investigated through integrated aerial and field survey. Specialist reconnaissance flying has been undertaken, along with the thorough analysis of aerial photographs taken from the 1920s onwards. This has greatly increased the number of sites known, turning the spotlight onto many that have received little or no archaeological attention in the past. The aerial surveys now available offer a new basis for improved understanding. Analytical field investigations of the few causewayed enclosures that are well preserved as earthworks have also squeezed fresh information out of even those long familiar to archaeologists. Far from merely ‘dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s’ of past fieldworkers, these detailed surveys have led to the rejection of some long-held theories and the proposal of new interpretations. This book significantly advances the understanding of causewayed enclosures both as individual monuments and as a class. It is a major contribution to the understanding of the British Neolithic, and to ‘landscape archaeology’ more generally.

In many societies monuments are associated with dynamic socio-economic and political processes that these societies underwent and/or instrumentalised. Due to the often large human and other resources input involved in their construction and maintenance, such constructions form an useful research target in order to investigate both their associated societies as well as the underlying processes that generated differential construction levels. Monumental constructions may physically remain the same for some time but certainly not forever. The actual meaning, too, that people associate with these may change regularly due to changing contexts in which people perceived, assessed, and interacted with such constructions.These changes of meaning may occur diachronically, geographically but also socially. Realising that such shifts may occur forces us to rethink the meaning and the roles that past technologies may play in constructing, consuming and perceiving something monumental. In fact, it is through investigating the processes, the practices of building and crafting, and selecting the specific locales in which these activities took place, that we can argue convincingly that meaning may already become formulated while the form itself is still being created. As such, meaning-making and -giving may also influence the shaping of the monument in each of its facets: spatially, materially, technologically, socially and diachronically.This volume varies widely in regional and chronological focus and forms a useful manual to studying both the acts of building and the constructions themselves across cultural contexts. A range of theoretical and practical methods are discussed, and papers illustrate that these are applicable to both small or large architectural expressions, making it useful for scholars investigating urban, architectural, landscape and human resources in archaeological and historical contexts. The ultimate goal of this book is to place architectural studies, in which people's interactions with each other and material resources are key, at the crossing of both landscape studies and material culture studies, where it belongs.

The Neolithic period, when agriculture began and many monuments - including Stonehenge - were constructed, is an era fraught with paradoxes and ambiguities. Starting in the Mesolithic and carrying his analysis through to the Late Bronze Age, Richard Bradley sheds light on this complex period and the changing consciousness of these prehistoric peoples. The Significance of Monuments studies the importance of monuments tracing their history from their first creation over six thousand years later. Part One discusses how monuments first developed and their role in developing a new sense of time and space among the inhabitants of prehistoric Europe. Other features of the prehistoric landscape - such as mounds and enclosures - across Continental Europe are also examined. Part Two studies how such monuments were modified and reinterpreted to suit the changing needs of society through a series of detailed case studies. The Significance of Monuments is an indispensable text for all students of European prehistory. It is also an enlightening read for professional archaeologists and all those interested in this fascinating period.

Monuments as Cultural and Critical Objects explores monuments as political, psychical, social, and mystical objects. Incorporating autoethnography, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, postcolonialism, and queer ecology, Houlton argues for a radical, interdisciplinary approach to our monument-culture. Tracing historical developments in monuments alongside contemporary movements such as Rhodes Must Fall and Black Lives Matter, Houlton provides an in-depth critique of monument sites, as well as new critical and conceptual methodologies for thinking across the field. Alongside analysis of monuments to the Holocaust, colonial figures, and LGBTQIA+ subjects, this book provides new critical engagements with the work of D.W. Winnicott, Marion Milner, Jacques Derrida, Edward Said, Eve Sedgwick, and others. Houlton traces the potential for monuments to exert great influence over our sense of self, nation, community, sexuality, and place in the world. Exploring the psychic and physical spaces these objects occupy—their aesthetics, affects, politics, and powers—this book considers how monuments can challenge our identities, beliefs, and our very notions of remembrance. The interdisciplinary nature of Monuments as Cultural and Critical Objects means that it is ideally placed to intervene across several critical fields, particularly museum and heritage studies. It will also prove invaluable to those engaged in the study of monuments, psychoanalytic object relations, decolonization, queer ecology, radical death studies, and affect theory.

From the award-winning, bestselling author of Skyscrapers, Churches, and Bridges comes a stunning visual history that serves as a tribute to classic American landmarks.

A leading expert on the past, present, and future of public monuments in America. An urgent and fractious national debate over public monuments has erupted in America. Some people risk imprisonment to tear down long-ignored hunks of marble; others form armed patrols to defend them. Why do we care so much about statues? Which ones should stay up and which should come down? Who should make these decisions, and how? Erin L. Thompson, the country’s leading expert in the tangled aesthetic, legal, political, and social issues involved in such battles, brings much-needed clarity in Smashing Statues. She lays bare the turbulent history of American monuments and its abundant ironies, from the enslaved man who helped make the statue of Freedom that tops the United States Capitol, to the fervent Klansman fired from sculpting the world’s largest Confederate monument—who went on to carve Mount Rushmore. And she explores the surprising motivations behind contemporary flashpoints, including the toppling of a statue of Columbus at the Minnesota State Capitol, the question of who should be represented on the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park, and the decision by a museum of African American culture to display a Confederate monument removed from a public park. Written with great verve and informed by a keen sense of American history, Smashing Statues gives readers the context they need to consider the fundamental questions for rebuilding not only our public landscape but our nation as a whole: Whose voices must be heard, and whose pain must remain private?

Ancient Monuments and Modern Identities sets out to examine the role of archaeology in the creation of ethnic, national and social identities in 19th and 20th century Greece. The essays included in this volume examine the development of interpretative and methodological principles guiding the recovery, protection and interpretation of material remains and their presentation to the public. The role of archaeology is examined alongside prevailing perceptions of the past, and is thereby situated in its political and ideological context. The book is organized chronologically and follows the changing attitudes to the past during the formation, expansion and consolidation of the Modern Greek State. The aim of this volume is to examine the premises of the archaeological discipline, and to apply reflection and critique to contemporary archaeological theory and practice. The past, however, is not a domain exclusive to archaeologists. The contributors to this volume include prehistoric and classical archaeologists, but also modern historians, museum specialists, architectural historians, anthropologists, and legal scholars who have all been invited to discuss the impact of the material traces of the past on the Modern Greek social imaginary.

This book brings together a collection of essays from scholars and cultural critics working on the meanings of monuments and memorials in the second decade of the twenty-first century, a time of great social and political change.