scholarly journals McCurdy Leah et Elliot M. Abrams (eds.), Architectural Energetics in Archaeology. Analytical Expansions and Global Explorations

2020 ◽  
Vol 106 (106-1) ◽  
pp. 281-289
Author(s):  
Julien Hiquet
Keyword(s):  
Architectural Energetics

scholarly journals Bouwen aan jezelf door te bouwen voor een ander. Een architecturale analyse van de graven uit de noordelijke begraafplaats van Ayios Vasilios

Paleo-aktueel ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 11-22
Author(s):  
Youp van den Beld
Keyword(s):  
Building Materials ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Construction Process ◽  
Architectural Analysis ◽  
The North ◽  
Labour Costs ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Architectural Energetics ◽  
Architectural Unit

Building on yourself to build for another: An architectural analysis of the graves from the North Cemetery of Ayios Vasilios. For this paper I have systematically examined the construction process of the tombs from the North Cemetery of Ayios Vasilios (Laconia, Greece) using a method called architectural energetics. This method of analysis translates an architectural unit into labour costs. The calculated workhours have been combined with a precedence diagram in order to closely examine the level of human interaction, rather than to just compare labour costs. The study concludes that the transportation of the building materials that were used for the tombs was the most labour-intensive task. It also concludes that the materials that came from farthest away seem to have played the biggest role in the creation of meaning in the funerary rituals. Furthermore, two distinct strategies of construction were identified, one that focussed on scale, using low-cost materials that would have been locally available, and one that focussed on elaboration, using high-cost materials that must have come from elsewhere. The high-cost materials are theorized to have been involved in the creation of social networks among groups.

Architectural energetics for tumuli construction: The case of the medieval Chungul Kurgan on the Eurasian steppe

2016 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 101-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Pickett ◽  
John S. Schreck ◽  
Renata Holod ◽  
Yuriy Rassamakin ◽  
Oleksandr Halenko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eurasian Steppe ◽  
Architectural Energetics

Architectural Energetics and Late Bronze Age Cretan Architecture: Measuring the Scale of Minoan Building Projects

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maud Devolder
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Sociopolitical Organization ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Time Estimates ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Architectural Energetics ◽  
Labour Time

It may appear to be asking too much of archaeological evidence to attempt an assessment of the scale of Minoan building projects, their impact on communities, or the role of the labour-time needed for the construction of various kinds of masonry. By taking a firmly materialist perspective, however, the present paper offers an exploration of some of the parameters at play in the production of Minoan architecture. Architectural energetics is a method that translates a building into the labourtime necessary for its construction, a value expressed in person-days or person-hours (abbreviated p-d and p-h). Estimations are based on standard units of time necessary to accomplish each task making up the architectural project: the procurement of raw materials, their transport, manufacture, and assembling. These are most generally expressed in volumes per hour per person, and referred to as ‘standard costs’, which are applied to the volumes of edifices and thus determine the labour-time necessary for their construction. The first assessments of the duration and manpower of ancient building projects mainly appeared in the form of subjective labour-time estimates triggered by romantic views of the grandeur of early civilizations (Andrews 1877; Humboldt 1816; Squier and Davis 1848; Stephens 1841; Webster 1997: 219). Around the middle of the twentieth century, a growing body of publications started to make use of such estimates in order to correlate the magnitude of building or agricultural projects with particular stages of sociopolitical organization (Adams 1975; Cook 1947; Cottrell 1955; Erasmus 1965; Heizer 1960, 1966; Kaplan 1963; White 1949, 1959). Among the most prominent figures of this early trend was C. J. Erasmus, who led a series of experiments that aimed to provide objective quantification of building costs (Erasmus 1965). From the 1970s onwards, largely connected with a renewed research agenda promoting scientific methods of data recovery and interpretation of the archaeological record, quantitative assessments of architectural projects flourished (Aaberg and Bonsignore 1975; Arnold and Ford 1980; Carmean 1991; Cheek 1986; Craig, Holmlund, and Clark 1998; Hard et al. 1999; Price 1982; Trigger 1990; Webster 1985; Webster and Kirker 1995).

Londinium's Landward Wall: Material Acquisition, Supply and Construction

Britannia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-50
Author(s):  
Simon J. Barker ◽  
Kevin Hayward ◽  
Penny Coombe
Keyword(s):  
Building Stone ◽  
Wall Material ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Technical Data ◽  
Supplementary Material ◽  
Local Geology ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
Architectural Energetics ◽  
Practical Implications

ABSTRACT The construction of a free-standing stone wall was a significant occasion in Londinium's history, remarkable for the quantity of masonry used and for the continuing additions to the defences over at least three identifiable phases. Since the local geology in the London Basin does not offer suitable building stone, Londinium's walls offer an exceptional example by which to examine the logistics of construction and the transportation of materials in the context of Romano-British building projects. We examine the sources of the materials used, their transport and the scale of labour and investment involved in the construction of the Landward Wall using an energetics-based methodology. Finally, we provide new insights into Londinium's Landward Wall and the socio-economic and practical implications of its construction. Supplementary material is available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X21000088) and comprises technical data related to the architectural energetics.

Labor Mobilization and Cooperation for Urban Construction: Building Apartment Compounds at Teotihuacan

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-759
Author(s):  
Tatsuya Murakami
Keyword(s):  
Construction Materials ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Labor Exchange ◽  
Labor Tax ◽  
Energetic Analysis ◽  
Lime Plaster ◽  
Communal Labor ◽  
The City ◽  
Architectural Energetics ◽  
Neighborhood Level

Teotihuacan underwent an urban renewal during the Tlamimilolpa phase (AD 250–350) in which more than 2,000 apartment compounds were constructed to accommodate its estimated 100,000 residents. Although the orderly layout and canonical orientation of the city imply top-down planning, growing evidence suggests a bottom-up process of urban transformation. This study combines architectural energetics with archaeometric analysis of nonlocal construction materials (lime plaster and andesitic cut stone blocks) to examine the labor organization behind the construction of the apartment compounds. The results of the energetic analysis suggest that residents relied on labor forces external to their compounds, whereas materials analysis indicates that the procurement, transportation, and production of building material were centrally organized and thus indicative of a state labor tax. Based on these results, I argue that compounds were assembled through corporate group labor exchange or communal (neighborhood-level) labor cooperation/obligation, with differing degrees of support from the state labor tax. Apartment compound construction was not uniform but rather a diverse process in which state labor mobilization, communal labor obligations, and corporate labor exchange were articulated in various ways.

scholarly journals MODELLING BUILDING COSTS FROM 3D BUILDING MODELS – ESTIMATING THE CONSTRUCTION EFFORT FROM IMAGE-BASED SURFACE MODELS OF DRY-STONE SHEPHERD SHELTERS (KRAS, SLOVENIA)

2019 ◽  
Vol XLII-2/W9 ◽  
pp. 691-698
Author(s):  
S. Štuhec ◽  
G. Verhoeven ◽  
I. Štuhec
Keyword(s):  
Three Dimensional ◽  
3D Models ◽  
Karst Region ◽  
Surface Geometry ◽  
Binding Material ◽  
Building Models ◽  
Surface Models ◽  
Vernacular Buildings ◽  
Architectural Energetics ◽  
Insight Into

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> In the second half of the 19th and early 20th century, sheep shepherds have built dry-stone shelters all over the Slovene Kras (or Karst) region. Despite being made out of stones that are interlocked without the use of any binding material, many of these vernacular constructions survived &amp;ndash; even though sometimes only partially &amp;ndash; the ravages of time. The fact that over one hundred fifty shepherd shelters are currently known is mainly due to the craftsmanship of their builders and thanks to (and even despite) their present location. A majority of these stone constructions can be found in areas that are nowadays forested, thus shielding them from weather-related or anthropogenic damage (because they are difficult to spot). This paper reports on the geometric documentation of those shelters using a photogrammetric computer vision pipeline, thereby mainly focussing on the difficulties that were encountered during this process. However, such image-based modelling approaches merely yield digital three-dimensional (3D) approximations of the shelters’ surface geometry (along with some sub-optimal colour data). Although these 3D surface models might be suitable to digitally preserve vulnerable vernacular buildings to some extent, they do not magically advance our understanding of them. The second part of this article focuses, therefore, on the extraction of archaeological information from these digital 3D constructions. More specifically, the total amount of stones, the total building time and the building cost regarding caloric energy expenditure are estimated for each of the digitised shelters. Although this assessment of architectural energetics provided useful insight into the building efforts and nutrient uptake of the shepherds, it also revealed many assumptions and shortcomings that often characterise archaeological information extraction from digital 3D models of buildings.</p>

Calculating Hohokam Domestic Architecture Building Costs to Test an Environmental Model of Architectural Changes

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Abbott ◽  
Douglas B. Craig ◽  
Hannah Zanotto ◽  
Veronica Judd ◽  
Brent Kober
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Building Structures ◽  
Labor Costs ◽  
Architectural Styles ◽  
Home Building ◽  
History Of Construction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Architectural Energetics

Studies of domestic architectural variation are rare in archaeological research, possibly because the essential methods remain underdeveloped. To encourage a comparative approach to explaining the construction differences in household dwellings, we designed and utilized objective and easily applied means to calculate labor costs for constructing a variety of domestic architectural styles in Hohokam society. We applied Abrams's (1989, 1994) approach, labelled “architectural energetics,” which converts architecture into its labor equivalents for building structures. By doing so, we derived standard units of measurement that promote comparative analysis. To demonstrate the method's utility, we turned to the pithouses and adobe surface structures at Pueblo Grande. We wanted to test whether the history of construction was driven by environmental degradation, and, in particular, a depletion over time of wood resources for home building (see Loendorf and Lewis 2017). Our analysis indicated that factors in addition to wood depletion likely contributed to the architectural changes at Pueblo Grande and across the Hohokam world.

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