The Power of Technology in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean - The Case of the Painted Plaster (Volume 12) - Ann Brysbaert

The Power of Technology in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean - The Case of the Painted Plaster (Volume 12) - Ann Brysbaert

Archaeometric Approaches to Technologies and Materials

The Power of Technology in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean - The Case of the Painted Plaster (Volume 12) - Ann Brysbaert

Ann Brysbaert [+-]
University of Leiden
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Ann Brysbaert is Professor of Ancient Technologies, Materials and Crafts and Principle Investigator of the ERC SETinSTONE project (Leiden University, 2015-2020). Previously, she has been PI of one of the sub-projects of “Tracing Networks” (Leicester University, 2008-2013). Her main research interests are linked to pre-industrial technologies, materials and social practices, painted plaster, pyrotechnological and relating crafts, and combining material culture with landscape approaches in economies of building. Apart from her monograph (2008: Power of Technology in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. The Case of Painted Plaster. Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology 12.London: Equinox Press), her recent publications include five edited volumes on these themes. The most recent two are: Constructing Monuments, Perceiving Monumentality and the Economics of Building. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Built Environment. Leiden: Sidestone Press (2018: edited with V. Klinkenberg, A. Gutièrrez Garcia-M. and I. Vikatou); and Building BIG – Constructing Economies: from Design to Long-Term Impact of Large-Scale Building Projects. Heidelberg: Propylaeum (in press: edited with J. Pakkanen).

Description

This chapter outlines and explains how an interdisciplinary study of the technology of painted plaster by means of a scientific multivariate analysis, combined with experimental replication, may reveal multiple strands in social relationships influencing and crisscrossing each other. The core of these relationships reflects human action in all its variety and colour, and it is exactly this human ‘way of life’ that we want to understand better in archaeological research. Ultimately, one of the reasons for studying human action is to attempt to answer questions about why people acted the way they did. The point is to explain the social phenomena that are expressed in the material culture under study (see Chapter Two), to understand the processes of interaction between society, culture, artifacts and landscape and, by so doing, to also refine our ways of understanding.

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Citation

Brysbaert, Ann. Archaeometric Approaches to Technologies and Materials. The Power of Technology in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean - The Case of the Painted Plaster (Volume 12). Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 52-76 Jan 2009. ISBN 9781781792537. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=22598. Date accessed: 18 Apr 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.22598. Jan 2009

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