Monumental Times
Monumental Times

Author: Richard Bradley

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2024-01-31

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13:

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Richard Bradley's latest thought provoking re-examination of familiar monumental archaeology drawing on latest discussions of multi-temporality and the implications of new levels of analysis afforded by developments in archaeological sciences such as DNA, radiocarbon dating and isotopes. This book is concerned with the origins, uses and subsequent histories of monuments. It emphasises the time scales illustrated by these structures, and their implications for archaeological research. It is concerned with the archaeology of Western and Northern Europe, with an emphasis on structures in Britain and Ireland, and the period between the Mesolithic and the Viking Age. It begins with two famous groups of monuments and introduces the problem of multiple time scales. It also considers how they influence the display of those sites today – they belong to both the present and the past. Monuments played a role from the moment they were created, but approaches to their archaeology led in opposite directions. They might have been directed to a future that their builders could not control. These structures could be adapted, destroyed, or left to decay once their significance was lost. Another perspective was to claim them as relics of a forgotten past. In that case they had to be reinterpreted. The first part of this book considers the rarity of monumental structures among hunter-gatherers, and the choice of building materials for Neolithic houses and tombs. It emphasises the difference between structures whose erection ended the use of significant places, and those whose histories could extend into the future. It also discusses ‘megalithic astronomy’ and ancient notions of time. Part Two is concerned with the reuse of ancient monuments and asks whether they really were expressions of social memory. Did links with an ‘ancestral past’ have much factual basis? It contrasts developments during the Beaker phase with those of the early medieval period. The development of monumental architecture is compared with the composition of oral literature.

Monumental Seattle
Monumental Seattle

Author: Robert Spalding

Publisher: Washington State University Press

Published: 2021-06-22

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1636820565

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Beginning with the 1899 installation of a stolen Tlingit totem pole at Pioneer Square and stretching to artist Lou Cella’s Ken Griffey Jr. sculpture erected at Safeco Field in 2017, Seattle offers an impressive abundance of public monuments, statues, busts, and plaques. Whether they evoke curiosity and deeper interaction or elicit only a fleeting glance, the stories behind them are worth preserving. Private donors and civic groups commissioned prominent national sculptors, as well as local artists like James A. Wehn (who sculpted multiple renderings of Chief Seattle) and Alonzo Victor Lewis, who produced a number of bas-reliefs and statues, including one of the city’s most controversial--a World War I soldier known as “The Doughboy.” The resulting creations represent diverse perspectives and celebrate a wide array of cultural heroes, dozens of firsts, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, aviation, and military and maritime service. Author Robert Spalding provides the history surrounding these works. Beyond the words chiseled into granite or emblazoned in bronze, he considers the deeper meaning of the heritage markers, exploring how and why people chose to commemorate the past, the selection of sites and artists, and the context of the time period. He also discusses how changing societal values affect public memorials, noting works that are missing or relocated, and how they have been maintained or neglected. An appendix lists the type, year, location, and artist for sixty monuments and statues, and whether each still exists. Another useful appendix offers maritime plaque inscriptions.

Newspaper Titan
Newspaper Titan

Author: Amanda Smith

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 721

ISBN-13: 0375411003

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A portrait of the newspaper proprietress shares details of her high-profile family life, her famous merger of the "Washington Herald" and "Washington Times, " and her considerable role in influencing period politics and society.

From Concept to Monument: Time and Costs of Construction in the Ancient World
From Concept to Monument: Time and Costs of Construction in the Ancient World

Author: Simon J. Barker

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2023-07-13

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 178969423X

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21 papers focus on modelling the costs of construction over the course of 2,500 years, from Bronze Age Greece to the early Middle Ages. They discuss both broader issues of methodology and particular case studies, with particular attention to the exploitation of raw materials (e.g. quarries), transport, and construction processes on building sites.

Monumental Fury
Monumental Fury

Author: Matthew Fraser

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-11-15

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1633888118

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Recent years in America have seen Confederate monuments toppled, statues of colonizers vandalized, and public icons commemorating figures from a history of exploitation demolished. Some were alarmed by the destruction, claiming that pulling down public statues is a negation of an entire cultural heritage. For others, statue-smashing is justified vandalism against a legacy of injustice. Monumental Fury confronts the long-neglected questions of our relationship with statues, icons, and monuments in public spaces, providing a rich historical perspective on iconoclastic violence. Organized according to specific themes that provide insights into the erection and destruction of statues — from religion, war, and revolution to colonialism, ideology, art, and social justice — author Matthew Fraser examines the implications of our monuments from the Buddhas of Bamiyan to those of Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Vladimir Lenin, and many more. Above all, the book endeavors to frame moments of statue-toppling throughout history so we can better understand the eruptions of iconoclastic violence that we are witnessing today. Statues are erected as expressions of power, and the impulse to destroy them is motivated by a desire to defy, reject, and eradicate their authority. However, the symbolic power of statues can stubbornly persist even after their destruction. This enduring paradox — between destruction and resurrection – is at the heart of this book. Fraser concludes with reflections that propose new ways of thinking about our relationship with statues and monuments and, more practically, about how we can creatively integrate their legacy into our collective memory in a way that inclusively enriches shared historical experience.

Rainbow Bridge to Monument Valley
Rainbow Bridge to Monument Valley

Author: Thomas J. Harvey

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2012-09-04

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0806185716

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The Colorado River Plateau is home to two of the best-known landscapes in the world: Rainbow Bridge in southern Utah and Monument Valley on the Utah-Arizona border. Twentieth-century popular culture made these places icons of the American West, and advertising continues to exploit their significance today. In Rainbow Bridge to Monument Valley, Thomas J. Harvey artfully tells how Navajos and Anglo-Americans created fabrics of meaning out of this stunning desert landscape, space that western novelist Zane Grey called “the storehouse of unlived years,” where a rugged, more authentic life beckoned. Harvey explores the different ways in which the two societies imbued the landscape with deep cultural significance. Navajos long ago incorporated Rainbow Bridge into the complex origin story that embodies their religion and worldview. In the early 1900s, archaeologists crossed paths with Grey in the Rainbow Bridge area. Grey, credited with making the modern western novel popular, sought freedom from the contemporary world and reimagined the landscape for his own purposes. In the process, Harvey shows, Grey erased most of the Navajo inhabitants. This view of the landscape culminated in filmmaker John Ford’s use of Monument Valley as the setting for his epic mid-twentieth-century Westerns. Harvey extends the story into the late twentieth century when environmentalists sought to set aside Rainbow Bridge as a symbolic remnant of nature untainted by modernization. Tourists continue to flock to Monument Valley and Rainbow Bridge, as they have for a century, but the landscapes are most familiar today because of their appearances in advertising. Monument Valley has been used to sell perfume, beer, and sport utility vehicles. Encompassing the history of the Navajo, archaeology, literature, film, environmentalism, and tourism, Rainbow Bridge to Monument Valley explores how these rock formations, Navajo sacred spaces still, have become embedded in the modern identity of the American West—and of the nation itself.

Monument Wars
Monument Wars

Author: Kirk Savage

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2011-07-11

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0520271335

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Traces the history of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., discussing its plan and structures, and considering how the concept of memorials and memorial space has changed since the nineteenth century.