Monumental architecture at Aguada Fénix and the rise of Maya civilization

Even today, apologists for modernist and post-modernist architecture frequently appeal to what, following Sir Karl Popper, I will call historicist arguments. Such arguments have a particular poignancy when they are used to justify the replacement of some familiar part of an ancient city with some intentionally untraditional structure; as, for example, when a familiar nineteenth century block of offices in a prime city site is swept away to make room for something supposedly more fitting to the ‘new millennium’, a ‘twentieth century contribution to monumental architecture’, a building ‘of substantial importance to the present age’. Similarly, those architects or consumers of architecture who fail to conform to whatever stylistic demands the age is held to demand are marginalized in many supposedly serious discussions of architecture, and made to feel out of place and out of time.

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The Prehistory of Hawai‘i

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199925070.013.027 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Patrick V. Kirch

Keyword(s):

Material Culture ◽

Environmental Gradients ◽

Hawaiian Islands ◽

Stone Tools ◽

Cultural Variation ◽

Sociopolitical Complexity ◽

Monumental Architecture ◽

Specialized Production ◽

The World ◽

Divine Kingship

The Hawaiian Islands are the most isolated inhabited archipelago in the world. Initially colonized around A.D. 1000, the environmental gradients of rainfall and island-age have influenced subsequent cultural variation and differentiation in the islands. Settlements are typically dispersed hamlets and integrated within agricultural facilities such as irrigated pondfields and dryland field systems. Populations were politically organized in idealized pie-shaped units or ahupua`a that typically encompass a cross-section of island resources. Material culture , including fishhooks, stone tools, and religious temples, is broadly similar within these units, but there is also much evidence for elite control of specialized production in some areas. The Hawaiian Islands are the archetypal chiefdom society, although based on changes in demography, monumental architecture (heiau) and royal centers, intensive agriculture, and divine kingship, the population had likely crossed the threshold of sociopolitical complexity to that of an archaic state prior to the arrival of Europeans in 1778.

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The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization

Books Abroad ◽

10.2307/40094392 ◽

1955 ◽

Vol 29 (2) ◽

pp. 233

Author(s):

Stephan F. Borhegyi ◽

J. Eric S. Thompson

Keyword(s):

Maya Civilization

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Swamps, canals, and the locations of ancient Maya cities

Antiquity ◽

10.1017/s0003598x00043386 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 54 (212) ◽

pp. 206-214 ◽

Cited By ~ 41

Author(s):

R. E. W. Adams

Keyword(s):

Radar Data ◽

Classic Maya ◽

Classic Period ◽

Intensive Agriculture ◽

Ancient Maya ◽

Maya Lowlands ◽

Rank Ordering ◽

Topographic Information ◽

Maya Civilization ◽

Mapping Discovery

The recent radar mapping discovery of widely distributed patterns of intensive agriculture in the southern Maya lowlands provides new perspectives on classic Maya civilization. Swamps seem to have been drained, modified, and intensively cultivated in a large number of zones. The largest sites of Maya civilization are located on the edges of swamps. By combining radar data with topographic information, it is possible to suggest the reasons for the choice of urban locations. With the addition of patterns elicited from rank-ordering of Maya cities, it is also possible to suggest more accurate means of defining Classic period Maya polities.

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Communal versus Competitive Feasting: Comment on Kassabaum

American Antiquity ◽

10.1017/aaq.2020.66 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 85 (4) ◽

pp. 795-798

Author(s):

Brian Hayden

Keyword(s):

Social Solidarity ◽

Monumental Architecture ◽

High Incidence ◽

Egalitarian Society ◽

Made In

Megan Kassabaum has developed a useful approach for interpreting feasting remains, but its application to the Feltus site demonstrates that modifications need to be made. In particular, the characterization of competitive feasting is too simplistic, and her model does not include work types of feasts, which may be responsible for the remains at the Feltus site. The interpretation of feasting at the Feltus site as resulting from social solidarity needs of a dispersed egalitarian society appear questionable on the basis of a high incidence of special meat, the occurrence of smoking pipes, monumental architecture, and indications of possible human sacrifices.

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Earthen architecture in the Iberian Peninsula: a portrait of vulnerability, sustainability and conservation

Built Heritage ◽

10.1186/s43238-021-00043-9 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Camilla Mileto ◽

Fernando Vegas López-Manzanares ◽

Valentina Cristini ◽

Lidía García Soriano

Keyword(s):

Iberian Peninsula ◽

Case Studies ◽

The Other ◽

Conservation Strategies ◽

Rammed Earth ◽

Research Projects ◽

Monumental Architecture ◽

Wide Range ◽

Earthen Architecture ◽

Earthen Buildings

AbstractFor more than a decade, a wide range of Spanish case studies, relating especially to rural inner or abandoned sites and areas, have been analysed by the authors as part of different research projects linked with traditional and monumental architecture, conservation strategies and earthen buildings. On one hand the studies have been undertaken in the framework of a project concerning the conservation of rammed earth in the Iberian Peninsula, including criteria, techniques, results and perspectives and, on the other, by a project about the conservation and rehabilitation of traditional earthen architecture in the Iberian Peninsula, providing guidelines and tools for its sustainable intervention. In all cases the researchers’ efforts focused on enhancing new perspectives and opportunities for rural earthen buildings, analysing landscapes, contexts, constructive features, decay and problems. The final common aim of this research is to stress these crucial topics to improve tangible or intangible opportunities for conservation strategies.

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