The Power of Technology in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean - The Case of the Painted Plaster (Volume 12) - Ann Brysbaert
Technology and Social Agency of Painted Plaster
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 final chapter demonstrates the importance of studying human agency in the context of painted plaster in order to illuminate the importance of technology and trade in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. It also shows how socio-political and economic changes in pre-industrial societies have had a direct impact upon the changes in material culture as a way of expressing, confirming and manipulating social identities and relationships.