Description du projet
Des monuments au-delà des apparences
Les monuments peuvent être plus que des attributs d’économies politiques centralisées et hiérarchiques et de structures de pouvoir descendantes. C’est ce que le projet DAEDALOS, financé par l’UE, entend explorer. En prenant pour exemple les sociétés de la Méditerranée orientale de l’âge du bronze, les chercheurs remettront en question le récit prédominant entourant l’architecture de 35 sites en Grèce continentale, en Anatolie occidentale, en Crète, à Chypre et dans les Cyclades, où des monuments «palatiaux» ont été construits et, jusqu’à présent, considérés comme un symbole de contrôle centralisé sur la population. DAEDALOS remet en question cette hypothèse en étudiant la centralisation organisationnelle des sociétés qui géraient la main-d’œuvre et les ressources matérielles investies dans la construction. De cette manière, le projet vise à atteindre une vision plus nuancée de l’histoire.
Objectif
DAEDALOS aims to challenge the predominant metanarrative that uniformly sees monuments as an attribute of centralised, hierarchical political economies and top-down power structures, a view that exerts a strong influence on our understanding of the organisation of Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean societies. In the 2nd mill. BCE, Mainland Greece, Western Anatolia and the islands of Crete, Cyprus and the Cyclades witness a growing architectural elaboration. Impressive ‘palatial’ monuments are built, which are often interpreted as the seat of rulers exerting centralised control over the population. The surmised political power necessary for the mobilisation and management of the human and material resources invested in monumental construction is taken as further evidence for the leading function of these edifices, and for the position of their commissioners at the top of hierarchical socio-political systems. Taking into consideration the ability for human groups with no centralised leadership to efficiently manage and control resources, DAEDALOS questions the preconceived conflation of monumental architecture and centralised hierarchical power. To assess this, the project will analyse integration and segmentation patterns in 2nd mill. BCE monumental building projects of the Aegean and Cyprus, and investigate the organisational centralisation of the societies that managed the labour and material resources invested in construction. Based on the architectural study of monuments distributed over 35 sites and their examination through new, specially devised analytical parameters, DAEDALOS will explore the possibility for grassroots, bottom-up building processes and their impact on architectural creation. By doing so, the project aims to trigger a paradigm shift in the ways we approach and interpret monumental architecture while producing nuanced and compelling definitions of Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age socio-political systems.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
- monumental architecture
- monumental building projects
- building process
- ancient architecture
- palaces
- resources mobilisation
- resources management
- collective performance
- collective action
- construction sequence
- cooperation dynamics
- scale of monuments
- architectural energetics
- craftspeople
- architectural labour
- GIS
- web-GIS
- spatial analysis
- ancient leadership
- socio-political organisation
- Bronze Age societies
- dual-processualism
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régime de financement
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitution d’accueil
9000 Gent
Belgique