VESA PEKKA HERVA - THE LIFE OF BUILDINGS MINOAN BUILDING DEPOSITS IN AN ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE.pdf - Grecja - lord_ksopgiel

VESA-PEKKA HERVA

THE LIFE OF BUILDINGS: MINOAN BUILDING DEPOSITS IN

AN ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Summary. This paper discusses the interpretation of the objects deliberately

hidden and sealed up in the structure of Minoan buildings. These building

deposits are usually interpreted in terms of religion and ritual but this

conventional view may actually be based on fallacious assumptions about the

nature of human-environment relations in Bronze Age Crete. The present paper

outlines an alternative ecological approach, which allows a degree of sociality

between humans and non-human entities, and treats building deposits as an

essentially practical means of manipulating the relations between humans and

the (built) environment in situations of potential stress. It will be argued that

buildings and other artefacts can, in some respects, be understood to live and

grow similarly as organisms. Thus, in order to appreciate their signiﬁcance,

Minoan building deposits need to be related to the life-cycle of buildings.

INTRODUCTION

The study of deposition practices and structured deposits has become an integral part

of European archaeology since the 1980s, and rightly so, as deposition practices can arguably

illuminate how people in the past perceived the world around them (e.g. Jones 1998; Thomas

1999, 62–88; Brück 2001). In Minoan Crete, on which this paper focuses, special deposits of

various kinds were made, and the practices associated with them have recently attracted

scholarly attention (e.g. Day and Wilson 1998, 2002; Hamilakis 1998; Hallager 2001). The type

of special deposit discussed here is best termed as building deposits. Building deposits are not

functional in terms of mechanical causation and consist of objects deliberately hidden under or

in buildings (Ellis 1968, 1). The term building deposit is preferred here instead of the more

familiar ‘foundation deposit’ because the former includes all objects intentionally incorporated

into architecture, whether or not they are found literally in the foundations of buildings.

The purpose of the present paper is not to describe and analyse the structure and content

of known Minoan building deposits but to explore, in a rather theoretical manner, a more general

topic concerning the functionality of such deposits. The question why building deposits were

made is rarely discussed to any great extent in Minoan archaeology, but as will be seen below,

they tend to be associated with religion and ritual. In this paper, however, I propose to pursue

a rather different approach, which is ecological in orientation. An association between building

deposits and ecology may at ﬁrst seem surprising or perhaps downright bizarre, but the

suggestion is made that it might be useful to regard building deposits as an essentially practical

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means of maintaining human-environment relations. In order to put forward this argument, it is

necessary to relate building deposits to buildings themselves and also address a much broader

theme of human engagement with the world.

The ecological approach discussed in this paper challenges certain modernist

assumptions regarding the nature of the non-human constituents of environment, especially

regarding the life and agency of things. The notion that artefacts have their speciﬁc life-cycles,

that they are biographical entities, is an established one in archaeology today, and the life-cycles

of both buildings and objects deposited in them are also central to the approach advocated here.

Nonetheless, the concept of object biography invests artefacts with life only in a metaphorical

sense (e.g. Langdon 2001) whereas the ecological perspective has more profound implications

to our understanding of material culture. In essence, buildings and other artefacts can, in some

respects, be understood to live and grow not unlike organisms (cf. Ingold 2000, 77–88, 339–61).

Therefore, building deposits need to be related not only to the context in which they were made

but also to a more large-scale process of the development of buildings. While the approach

advocated here is, in principle, applicable to all buildings, this paper focuses primarily on so-

called Minoan palaces. This is because most Minoan building deposits derive from palatial

contexts and because long-standing and monumental palaces most clearly illustrate the

signiﬁcance of the ecological perspective.

MINOAN BUILDING DEPOSITS

Some 20 Minoan building deposits have been identiﬁed to date, and they comprise,

despite certain similarities, a rather heterogeneous group in terms of both content and structure.

An early reference is given by Evans, who describes a limestone box, which was set under the

southern wall of the Knossos palace and contained triangular tesserae of precious materials. He

considered the discovery enigmatic, but interpreted it as a possible foundation deposit (Evans

1928, 373–4). At least three other building deposits were also found at Evans’ excavations at

Knossos even though they were not explicitly treated as such.

Nonetheless, the famous Temple Repositories in the west wing of the Knossos

palace obviously formed a building deposit. The Temple Repositories consist of two

large rectangular stone-lined cists that yielded a variety of objects of which the fragments of

four faience ﬁgures are the most well known. The assemblage also contained other faience

artefacts, some 50 ceramic vessels, sealings, stone artefacts, sea shells, and various

miscellaneous ﬁnds (Evans 1921, 463–72; Panagiotaki 1993). The precise contents of the

Temple Repositories and the structure of the deposit remain a little unclear, but it is certain that

the Temple Repositories formed a structured deposit. The ceramic vessels formed the uppermost

layer of the deposit and the faience objects, which were found near the bottom of the cists, were

grouped together rather than simply thrown into the cists (Panagiotaki 1993, 84–6). The cists

were sealed by a gypsum pavement, which was built around the MM IIIB/LM IA transition

(Panagiotaki 1999, 151).

A building deposit was also found under the threshold of the Vat Room near the Temple

Repositories. This deposit dates from the late MM IA or early MM IB and thus appears to be

associated with the initial construction of the Knossos palace (MacGillivray 1998, 34–5;

Panagiotaki 1999, 273). While not quite as rich as the Temple Repositories assemblage, the Vat

Room deposit nevertheless included objects such as coarse and ﬁne ware, chipped stone, ivory,

metals, seal impressions, ostrich egg fragments and an arm of a faience ﬁgure (Panagiotaki 1999,

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7–43). Yet another building deposit from Knossos derives from the Little Palace where the

fragments of a serpentine bull’s head rhyton and a small double-axe base were discovered in a

shaft between the south-west pillar room and the stairs (Gesell 1985, 94). These objects seem

to have been deliberately built into a wall and not to have fallen from an upper ﬂoor (Rehak

1995, 439).

Building deposits are also reported from other palaces. At Phaistos, dozens of broken

and intact ceramic vessels, animal bones, carbon and ash were deposited in two pits under the

pavement of Room 50, and these features were apparently associated with the inauguration of

the second palace (Levi 1976, 405–8). Two small ‘foundation pits’ have also been recently

reported from Phaistos (Whitley 2003, 82). At Mallia, a single jug in a small stone-lined cist

was found in the foundations of the ﬁrst palace (Pelon 1986) whereas conical cups, a chalice

and a sheep bone were discovered in a niche under the west façade of the new palace at Zakros

(Boulotis 1982). Evidence of a ‘foundation ritual’ has been reported from the north wing of the

Galatas palace where a coarse ware vessel containing two cups was placed under the ﬂoor of

Room 53 (Whitley 2003, 80).

A few discoveries from Minoan ‘villas’ and some other sites have also been interpreted

as possible foundation deposits. Boulotis (1982, 158, 161) lists two ﬁnds from Nirou Chani and

one from Vathypetro, Zakros, Pyrgos and Vorou. La Rosa and Cucuzza (2001) have reported a

building deposit from the house of Volakakis in Selì where a bridge-spouted jar was placed in

a small pit under the pavement at the time of the construction of the house in MM IIIB/LM IA

transition (see also La Rosa 2002). Among the more intriguing cases are the deposits of Theran

pumice. On Pseira, pumice was deposited under the ﬂoor of a purported shrine dated to LM IB,

and a similar deposit is also known under the blocked doorway of a shrine at Nirou Chani

(Boulotis 1982, 158; Rehak and Younger 1998, 100). It seems possible that there are many other

building deposits not yet identiﬁed as such, but this brief overview of the material sufﬁces for

the purposes of the present paper. What should be clear from above survey is that Minoan

building deposits appear to be associated not only with the initial erection of buildings but also

with subsequent rebuilding and remodelling activities.

RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION OF MINOAN BUILDING DEPOSITS

Minoan building deposits are often mentioned in passing in the literature, but there are

few longer treatises of the subject (most notably, Boulotis 1982; Pelon 1986; La Rosa 2002),

and even those tend to address only superﬁcially the ‘meaning’ of building deposits. The case

of the Temple Repositories provides us with an illustrative example. The faience ﬁgures and

certain other objects from the cists have been described and studied in detail (e.g. Weingarten

1989; Alberti 2001), but one ﬁnds little thoughtful discussion of the nature of the deposit;

symptomatically, the Temple Repositories were not included in Boulotis’ list of Minoan

foundation deposits (1982, 158, 161). The deposit is simply considered ‘religious’ and associated

with the purported shrine area in the west wing of the Knossos palace, but little more is usually

said about the subject (e.g. Gesell 1985, 85–7; Rutkowski 1986, 126–7). Panagiotaki, however,

discusses the nature of Temple Repositories in some depth when trying to deﬁne whether the

deposit is a religious or secular feature. In her opinion, the faience ﬁgures and offering tables

‘argue directly and incontrovertibly for a concern with matters outside of everyday world’ while

the rest of the objects could equally well be found in a secular context (Panagiotaki 1999, 148).

Ultimately, all the ﬁnds are linked through symbolic associations to the domain of the Minoan

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goddess of nature, and the conclusion is that ‘there can be only one basic interpretation: the

religious’ (Panagiotaki 1999, 148).

Once again, the question why the deposit was made is left more or less open, but

Panagiotaki’s account is otherwise revealing, as it stresses that the Temple Repositories are

best understood in terms of religion and ritual – this is generally received wisdom where

Minoan building deposits are concerned. While the interpretations of building deposits tend

to be cautious to the point of vagueness, such terms as ‘ritual’, ‘offer’, ‘sacral’, ‘votive’,

‘consecration’ and ‘commemoration’ are used (see Boulotis 1982; Gesell 1985, 85–7; Pelon

1986; Rutkowski 1986, 126–7; La Rosa 2002). This vocabulary assumes a connection between

building deposits and the belief in supernatural beings and/or manipulation of (power) relations

in society. At least indirect support for a religious interpretation has also been sought in

references to Egypt and Mesopotamia (e.g. Boulotis 1982, 157, 159), where foundation deposits

are well attested and usually associated with apotropaic rituals and the consecration of buildings

(e.g. Ellis 1968; Nakamura 2004). The appeal of the religious interpretation of Minoan building

deposits is understandable, but it may actually be based on unsound assumptions about the nature

of human-environment relations in Bronze Age Crete.

HUMANS AND THE (BUILT) ENVIRONMENT

Animate/inanimate, agency and ‘animism’

For some centuries, the modern western worldview has built on dualistic divisions such

as those between nature and culture or body and mind. Within this view, a categorical distinction

is drawn between humans and artefacts. Humans are regarded as animate, sentient beings and

active agents whereas artefacts, such as buildings, are seen to be inanimate and passive lumps

of matter – although the human mind is considered to project ‘meanings’ outwards onto the

material world. Nonetheless, the concept of object biography is frequently used in archaeology

today to establish a useful metaphorical relationship between organisms and artefacts: like

organisms, buildings and other artefacts are recognized to have their speciﬁc life histories (e.g.

Langdon 2001). Buildings are also metaphorically likened to the human body in some societies

(e.g. Brück 2001).

These metaphors are valuable in their own right, but there appears to be more than

metaphor involved in the ‘life’ of things. To begin with, not all societies make categorical

distinctions between the animate and the inanimate or the living and non-living, but apparently

inanimate things may be perceived to possess human-like qualities. For the Ojibwa of northern

Canada, for instance, stones can be alive in some circumstances although not all stones are

regarded as living beings (Ingold 2000, 95–8; see also Tilley 1999, 183). A particularly

illustrative example is provided by Schefold, who contracted malaria while studying longhouses

among the Sakuddei in Indonesia. The anthropologist fell ill, according to the Sakuddei, because

he had molested and offended the houses by examining them too closely; the agency of houses,

in other words, was seen to be the cause for illness (cited in Brück 1999, 321). Isolated anecdotes

are of little value, but they serve a purpose here in leading us to more profound questions about

the nature of human-environment relations.

Moving stones and illness-causing buildings would seem to be about ‘animism’, which

has traditionally been understood as a form of ‘primitive’ religion characterized by a tendency

to anthropomorphize the non-human environment, and attribute human properties to entities that

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do not ‘really’ possess them. But instead of treating animism as simply religion or a

misconceived worldview, it might be more useful to understand it as a mode of engaging with

the environment (Bird-David 1999). Within this view, animism stands for two-way relatedness

between people and their surroundings:

If ‘cutting trees into parts’ epitomizes the modernist epistemology, ‘talking with trees’, I

argue, epitomizes Nayaka animistic epistemology. ‘Talking’ is shorthand for two-way

responsive relatedness with a tree – rather than ‘speaking’ one-way to it, as if it could listen

and understand. ‘Talking with’ stands for attentiveness to variances and invariances in

behaviour and response of things in states of relatedness and for getting to know such things

as they change through the vicissitudes over time of the engagement with them. To ‘talk with

a tree’ – rather than ‘cut it down’ – is to perceive what it does as one acts towards it, being

aware concurrently of changes in oneself and the tree. (Bird-David 1999, 77)

Bird-David is concerned with hunter-gatherer perceptions of the world, but relational

knowing is not limited to some phase of social evolution, although it has largely lost its authority

in the western world (Ingold in Bird-David 1999, 81).

As the above quote implies, people in some societies engage with non-human

constituents of the environment in a manner that is in some respects of a ‘social’ nature (see

also Århem 1996; Pálsson 1996). The question now arises, if such apparently inanimate things

as stones and buildings can ‘really’ be active agents, can they ‘really’ do something. Modernist

thought has limited agency strictly to the human domain, but it is becoming increasingly clear

today that this anthropocentric view is too narrow (Gell 1998; Graves-Brown 2000; Jones and

Cloke 2002). Although not ‘causing’ malaria, such inanimate things as stones and buildings are

potentially active agents, and their agency is ‘real’ rather than imagined or ‘socially constructed’

because ‘agency is a property of the environment in which we live, not only of human psyche’

(Gell 1998, 20). In other words, agency (and indeed the mind) resides in the relations between

people and their environments (Bateson 1972, 460; Ingold 2000, 16–19; Knappett 2002).

Buildings as part of the lived-in environment

These considerations are not without consequences for our understanding of buildings.

In archaeology, buildings are often viewed as passive containers of human life, vehicles of

symbolic expression, or mirrors of socio-economic conditions, and all these perspectives

undoubtedly illuminate some aspects of buildings and their social context. What should be

evident from the preceding discussion, however, is that the relationship between humans and

the (built) environment is far more complex than standard approaches assume. From the

perspective of natural science, buildings are just packed molecules, but from an ecological

perspective, buildings are part of the lived-in world of humans and other organisms. That is not

a very perceptive observation in itself, but ecological thinking does actually challenge some

assumptions deeply embedded in western thought.

Of course, the idea is a familiar one in archaeology that the relationship between

humans and buildings is dynamic and mutual (e.g. Parker Pearson and Richards 1994), and it

is also recognized that the identity of people, their ways of life, and even language are

necessarily tied to place (e.g. Gell 1995; Chapman 1997, 140–8; Jones 1998). Yet the profound

nature of the integrity between humans and their life-world may be less familiar. Namely, from

a truly ecological point of view, humans and their life-world are not separate entities in the ﬁrst

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