Brad Sekedat

In a discussion of place, several prominent, yet basic issues arise. One such has to do with the composition of places: what are they? through what are they constituted? What is the relationship between the human/social and the topographical? And many more. Because of their fundamental nature, these questions are necessarily broad. Drawing from E. Casey (2001), however, one position on place is that it is by its very nature a grounded, 'real' thing. As such, a discussion of place, too, should be grounded in specific and contextualized examples. This paper will attempt to do this by expanding on some thoughts that I have already started, dealing specifically with the issue of landscape modification, in this case quarrying.

Quarrying, which leaves detectable traces of specific sets of practices that engage directly with the landscape, can be looked at with respect to both specific sites and locations, but also with how the evidence for quarrying has been treated over time to help construct notions of place, both by scholars and by local inhabitants, old and recent. Examples will be drawn from Turkey, Syria, and possibly even the New World to look at how specific practices are brought into the constitution of place, and how long-term interaction with the landscape raises issues of place as negotiated and never fixed - often involved with competing discourses.

Bibliography:

Baird, J. A. 2008. 'From day-to-day to longue duree: shifting scales of space and time on the middle Euphrates.' Paper delivered at the Critical Roman Archaeology Conference, Stanford University. March 1-2, 2008.

Casey, E. 1993. Getting Back into Place: towards a renewed understanding of the place-world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

------. 1997. The Fate of Place: a philosophical history. Berkeley: University of California Press.

------. 2001. Body, Self, and Landscape: a geophilosophical inquiry into the place-world. In P. C. Adams, S. Hoelscher and K. E. Till (eds.), Textures of Place: exploring humanist geographies, 403-25. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ehringhaus, H. 2005. Gotter, Herscher, Inschriften: die Felsreliefs der hethitischen Grossreichszeit in der Türkei. VonZabern: Mainz am Rhein.

Lefebvre, L. 1991. The Production of Space. Cambridge: Blackwell.

Massey, D. 2005. For Space. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Russell, J. M. 1987. Bulls for the Palace and Order in the Empire: The Sculptural Program of Sennacherib’s Court VI at Nineveh. The Art Bulletin 69(4): 52-539.

------. 1991. Sennacherib’s Palace without Rival at Nineveh. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Posted at Apr 21/2008 11:45PM:
Hi Brad, this bibliography is great but I don't see any quarry-related work. I hope you can come up with a few things soon. Exciting topic. Jean-Claude Bessac is an important name for you to pursue. He wrote an important book called L’outillage traditionnel du tailleur de pierre de l’antiquité à nos jours... Check these out as well:

Construction en Pierre et taille rupestre monumantale antique : les differences by Jean-Claude Bessac

From Pentelicon to the Parthenon : the ancient quarries and the story of a half-worked column capital of the first marble Parthenon by Manoles Korres

Ancient stones : quarrying, trade and provenance : interdisciplinary studies on stones and stone technology in Europe and Near East from the prehistoric to the early Christian period edited by Marc Waelkens, Norman Herz and Luc Moens.