Abstract
Drawing in equal measure on space syntax and a theoretical framework recently advocated by Carl Knappett for the study of material culture, this paper offers an innovative approach to the fixed, semi-fixed, and mobile elements constituting the built environment. Through a case study from Bronze Age Crete, the paper deals with specific fixtures (hearths and hollowed slabs called kernoi). It first investigates their spatial contexts through configurational analysis and highlights the long history of their existence in Minoan Crete. Finally, the paper addresses the ways in which these fixtures might have acquired particular symbolic and functional meanings through recursive interactions with people. By focusing on these associations and affordances of hearths and kernoi, the paper intends to highlight the profound importance of low-level meanings of the built environment for the understanding of the complex interactions between architecture, material assemblages, and people. Furthermore, it proposes a holistic analytical method allowing the approach of interactional dynamics (people–space–objects) that do not necessarily appear conspicuously in the archaeological record.
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Notes
Of course, Rapoport (1988) himself recognized that these levels were not mutually exclusive and that, quite on the contrary, they could actually depend on one another to gain in efficiency.
The terminology grounded cognition is sometimes preferred to embodied cognition in psychological sciences because the former produces the mistaken assumption that all researchers believe that bodily states are necessary for cognition, which may be related to distinct phenomena such as simulations or situated actions (Barsalou 2008, pp. 618–619).
Chronology is here based on Manning 2010, pp. 17 and 23, Tables 2.1 and 2.2.
For a pioneering work in the analysis of Aegean Bronze Age architecture through space syntax, see Yiannouli 1992.
Through ethnographic comparisons, Kent (1990) showed that a growing architectural segmentation is usually concomitant with an increasing socio-political complexity.
Similar concerns also characterized the behavioral approach of Sanders (1990) who studied domestic buildings of the Early Bronze Age village of Myrtos Fourno Koriphi with a specific interest for haptics, smell zones, and the ways in which circulation could be altered through the placement of artifacts.
For example, although traditional interpretations of Minoans having only portable hearths or braziers in an island characterized by a warmer climate than mainland Greece (Jones 1972, p. 348) are now largely at odds with archaeological evidence, Moody (2009) nonetheless recently argued that hearths did not become prevalent in Crete until the Postpalatial period.
As previously mentioned, even if the existence of fixed hearths is attested in Neolithic houses, their position within the room does not seem to be as systematically central (Evans 1928, pp. 18–21, Fig. 8A; McEnroe 2010, pp. 12–16). LMIII central fixed hearths have also been found (see for example Shaw 1990, p. 235, n.8; Driessen and Farnoux 1994, p. 60; Driessen et al. 2009a, b; and many examples in Langohr 2009).
The plans of all subsequent buildings mentioned in the text, can also be found in more detailed versions in Letesson 2009 or on http://letesson.minoan-aegis.be.
In the same vein, Driessen (2010, p. 53) proposed that specific seal stone types may have been expressing differences in status within and between Houses.
It has been suggested, for example, that the perception of relevant objects could trigger affordances for actions stored in memory (Glenberg 1997).
It is clear that some of these dichotomies are essential features of built environment in general, but, in the case of Neopalatial architecture, it is their recurrent distribution within space and across various type of buildings that is worth noting (Letesson 2009, pp. 355–357).
This concept also originates in developmental psychology and refers to problem solving with scaffolding essentially consisting of “an adult ‘controlling’ those elements of the task that are initially beyond the learner's capacity, thus permitting him to concentrate upon and complete only those elements that are within his range of competence. The task thus proceeds to a successful conclusion.” It can however be assumed that “the process can potentially achieve much more for the learner than an assisted completion of the task. It may result, eventually, in development of task competence by the learner at a pace that would far outstrip his unassisted efforts.” (Wood et al. 1976, p. 90).
One of these kernoi was recently found associated with many pebbles during the 2013 excavation campaign at Palaikastro (East Crete).
He nonetheless later noted that these concepts add an extra dimension and that “they provide an explicit means for shifting scale from micro to macro, from part to whole” (Knappett 2011, p. 35).
It has been noted that in some cases, the substructure of hearths was made of sherds (Metaxa Muhly 1984, p. 108; Maeir and Hitchcock 2011, p. 54). In that case, it could be argued that such sherds were part of a structured deposition and manifested enchainment practices tying specific vessels (as the conical cups mentioned above) and their associated practices with the hearths.
It could be argued that, as gaming boards, kernoi could have something to do with the distribution at different locales through the placement and movement of the markers in the cup-holes while tying these markers together in a fixed layout carved on the stone. Nevertheless, it could also be noted that, if considered as practical devices for the redistribution of goods, they could be related to a part-to-whole relationship, usually associated with accumulation (Knappett 2006, p. 248).
In certain cases, this reoccurrence is even a re-appropriation (and therefore closer to layering), as it is the case in the Maison Zeta-Beta at Malia where a room with a central column dating from the Protopalatial period was perfectly integrated in the layout of the Neopalatial building (Letesson 2009, p. 136).
It is clear that this logic is function of the strength of the expression of the genotype in the built form. In other words, the stronger the program, the stronger this logic (Letesson and Driessen 2008, pp. 211–212; Hillier 1996, pp. 250–255). The latter would indeed be more strongly expressed in palaces that were a clear crystallization of the genotype than in looser materializations of it. This is indeed related to the fact that palaces were probably hosting a larger number of categories of users than other and more modest buildings. I do nonetheless believe that the same logic would have applied to Neopalatial architecture as a whole but with a variable intensity (Letesson 2009, pp. 355–357).
See Knappett (2002, pp. 108–113) about skeuomorphism.
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Acknowledgments
This paper was originally written as part of a postdoctoral project entitled Minoan Architecture: A Syntactical Genealogy founded by the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS). In a later stage, additional research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme ([FP7/2007-2013] [FP7/2007-2011]) under grant agreement no. PIOF-GA-2012-326640. I am grateful for the comments and critical reading of the two anonymous reviewers. I also warmly thank Carl Knappett for his insightful suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper, Joe Shaw for his authorization to reproduce the photograph used in Fig. 2, and Charlotte Langohr and Simon Jusseret for their support and inspiring conversations.
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Letesson, Q. Fire and the Holes: an Investigation of Low-Level Meanings in the Minoan Built Environment. J Archaeol Method Theory 22, 713–750 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-014-9206-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-014-9206-y