Materiality Of Stone, The

Christopher Tilley

Bloomsbury UK Academic

2004

1 páginas

2m

ISBN-10: 1859738974

The fact that prehistoric stones have meanings and relationships beyond their sheer physical being is perhaps already widely accepted, but the challenge is to attempt to define and explain this further. In his new book, Christopher Tilley explores how ancient stones look, feel and smell; in other words, how they are experienced and how the body reacts to them, as well as setting them in their geographical and temporal context. Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty, he outlines a theory of landscape phenomenology which is then applied to regional and local case studies. Through examining the menhirs of western Brittany, the Neolithic temples of the Maltese islands and the Bronze Age rock carvings of south-east Sweden, he looks at how these stones embodied ideas and acted as material metaphors for expressing and forming social identities and human experience. `An intriguing and original contribution to the study of ancient monuments and places... a sophisticated blend of social theory and fieldwork' - Richard Bradley.