Architecture

This paper summarizes the evidence for cooking and dining at the Late Bronze Age (Late Minoan IIIC) settlement of Kavousi Vronda in eastern Crete, Greece. It focuses on cooking installations such as hearths and ovens -- features within the archaeological record that are often incompletely preserved -- and discusses how they relate to issues of private versus communal food storage, preparation, and consumption.

This paper explores Cretan religious architecture ca. 1200-700 B.C., focusing on the evidence for the display of cult statues, ritual equipment, and votive offerings. Starting with the Late Minoan IIIC shrine at Vronda (Kavousi) and concluding with the Late Geometric temple of Apollo at Dreros, the authors investigate how the analysis of architecture can provide insights into religious experience by defining ritual space, focusing attention on special locations, and facilitating cult practices. The cult buildings included in this survey provide solid archaeological evidence for dedication and display, including cult objects found in situ on benches and platforms. The permanent nature of these stone-built architectural features, whether interior or exterior, suggests that their function was an integral part of the cults served by their respective buildings. The authors also challenge some long-held notions about the definitions of “shrine” and “temple” in Early Iron Age Greece.

Nancy L. Klein and Kevin Glowacki. 2009. "From Vronda to Dreros: Architecture and Display in Cretan Cult Buildings 1200-700 B.C.", in Archaeologies of Cult: Essays on Ritual and Cult in Crete (Hesperia Suppl. 42), ed. A.L. D’Agata and A. Van de Moortel, Princeton 2009, pp. 153-167 (+ bibliography).

In this paper, we use the Late Minoan IIIC settlement at Kavousi Vronda as a case study to explore the importance of the built environment and the role of architecture as a signifier of social dynamics within a ‘Dark Age’ settlement in eastern Crete. By noting the ways in which the private domestic buildings at Vronda were originally designed and subsequently modified over time, and then by comparing them to buildings with a more communal character, we discuss the ways in which the community at Vronda established and negotiated architectural space.

Glowacki, K.T., and N.L. Klein. 2011. “Analysis of Domestic Architecture in Dark Age Crete: The LM IIIC Settlement at Vronda, Kavousi,” in The ‘Dark Ages’ Revisited: Proceedings of an International Symposium in Memory of William D.E. Coulson, University of Thessaly, Volos, 14-17 June 2007, ed. A. Mazarakis Ainian, Volos, pp. 408-418.

This volume presents the papers of an international colloquium on the archaeology of houses and households in ancient Crete held in Ierapetra in May 2005. The 38 papers presented here range from a discussion of household activities at Final Neolithic Phaistos to the domestic correlates of "globalization" during the early Roman Empire. These studies demonstrate a variety of methodological approaches currently employed for understanding houses and household activities. Key themes include understanding the built environment in all of its manifestations, the variability of domestic organization, the role of houses and households in mediating social (and perhaps even ethnic) identity within a community or region, household composition, and of course, household activities of all types, ranging from basic subsistence needs to production and consumption at a supra-household level.

CONTENTS and FRONT MATTER. "This is the second of three planned volumes in the final report on the cleaning and excavations at the Late Bronze Age site of Vronda near Kavousi in eastern Crete. It describes the excavation, stratigraphy, and architecture of the buildings on the slopes of the Vronda ridge: Building Complexes E, I-O-N, and L-M, Building F, and the pottery kiln, as well as areas excavated on the periphery that did not belong to any of these buildings. It also presents lists, catalogs, and images of artifacts and ecofacts that were uncovered at the site.

Contents: 1. Building Complex E, 2. Building F, 3. Kiln and Surrounding Area, 4. Building Complex I-O-N, 5. Building Complex L-M, 6. Other Areas in the Environs of the Vronda Ridge, Appendix A. Archaeomagnetic Results from Kavousi, Bibliography, Index, Tables, Charts, Figures, and Plates.

Hardback: 444 pp., 28 tables, 70 B/W charts, 136 B/W figs, 30 B/W pls.
(Prehistory Monographs 39, INSTAP Academic Press, December 2012)

ISBN 978-1-931534-69-7

This article presents previous research at Gournia, the overall goals of our project, a new plan of the settlement, and our 2010–2012 excavations in eight areas: the Pit House, the Northwest Area, the North Cemetery, North Trench, the Northeast Area, House Aa, several rooms in the palace, and House He. Analytical sections discuss the textual evidence; the painted plasters; and the botanical remains. Our excavations indicate that Gournia was first settled in the Final Neolithic period and grew into an industrial town by the Protopalatial period. Following a Middle Minoan II destruction, the town was reorganized in Middle Minoan IIIA to include the palace, which in Late Minoan IB employed Linear A.

Museum -have drawn the world's attention once again to the genius of Roman-born Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. Designed in 1957, MASP flouted European museological and museographical conventions. In the dissolution of structural, temporal and hierarchical boundaries, Bardi's expressive architectonic forms and revolutionary exhibition schemes allowed space to manifest as a substantive property. Within the thickness of the space, paintings attached to glass stelae hovered in a state of veneration, as objects liberated completely from the tyranny of scholarly text. This collaborative paper interrogates the intersections and interstices between the building as object and the objects within, with both experienced through "reactions of curiosity and investigation" aroused by the fully realized desire for affective freedom and the "conquest of nothing." By tracing the museum's development from conception through its first full permanent collection exhibition, the paper examines the philosophical, theoretical, practical and formal elements of what John Cage termed "the architecture of freedom." The paper then situates the museum and its collections within broader discourses of de/colonization, in order to demonstrate the degrees to which Bardi's gestures redefined notions of space and form within and beyond the context of the museum as mausoleum, archive and treasury. The paper concludes with an interpretative synthesis of principles of spatiality as codified by Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty, Lotman, et al., as their tenets complicate and enrich our reading of MASP and its objects as architectural interjection. The paper also debates the incongruent modifications that Lina's original project has suffered over the last 15 years.