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The 'symbolic' meaning of walls - narrating rationality in archaeology
| Citace: |
BAUMANOVÁ, M. The 'symbolic' meaning of walls - narrating rationality in archaeology. Leipzig, Německo, 2019.
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| Druh: | PŘEDNÁŠKA, POSTER |
| Jazyk publikace: | eng |
| Anglický název: | The 'symbolic' meaning of walls - narrating rationality in archaeology |
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Místo konání: | Leipzig, Německo |
| Autoři: | Monika Baumanová M.A., Ph.D. |
| Abstrakt EN: | At the core of archaeological interpretations there is a general tendency to explain human choices in terms of past rationality. Every paradigm in the history of archaeological thought have aimed to shed light on some aspect of what past peoples might have considered rational, and the use of various types of material culture have been narrated through the lens of rationality, including symbolism. As an example, we may consider the phenomenon of walls in the context of urban public space, which enclose, separate, and demarcate connecting routes as well as boundaries, archaeologists turn to two types of hypotheses. Either, these walls served a practical purpose such as the strengthening of defences and enclosing property, and where the form and placement of walls suggest a different underlying motivation, they have been ascribed some kind of symbolic meaning. This paper presents the case study of town walls and how these have been interpreted in sub-Saharan Africa. In the context of Swahili city states on the coast of East Africa, some sites feature low town walls with maximum height of 1.7 metres. Their generally accepted purpose as perhaps the sole truly public building project in the local context, was mostly interpreted as ?symbolic?. I aim to demonstrate how the archaeological narrative of symbolic purpose comes short of providing a more detailed answer and how the concept can be elaborated further by employing sociological considerations of rational behaviour. |
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