Search Abstracts from Past Meetings
2005 ANNUAL MEETINGSession 5B: Architecture in the Near East and Mesopotamia
Architectural Aspects and Cultural Significance of Raising Orthostats in the Ancient Near East: Formation of a Shared Architectural Practice
Ömür Harmanşah, University of Pennsylvania
The architectural practice of using sculpted orthostats in monumental buildings is a distinctive phenomenon of the Upper Mesopotamian Iron Age. Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers of this period are known for commissioning such commemorative programs in stone, which gave shape and meaning to ceremonial spaces in their cities. Raising orthostats, however, was initially an architectural technique, developed practically to consolidate mudbrick walls against the effects of weathering, especially erosion caused by rain, wind, or other forms of physical damage. Using this technique of wall-cladding, the Near Eastern craftsmen continuously improved the architectonic qualities of building surfaces and eventually transformed them into fields of pictorial representation. This paper surveys the archaeological evidence from the Middle Bronze to Early Iron Ages in Upper Mesopotamia of the use of finely finished orthostats, and argues for the subsequent formation of an architectural koine among Syro-Hittite and Assyrian cities. The well-known attestations of the technique in monumental structures at Tell Mardikh, Tilmen Hoyuk, and Tell Atchana, and the recently excavated temples at the Aleppo citadel and Ayn Dara, suggest that the practice of using upright stone slabs gradually spread in the architecture of Middle and Late Bronze Age settlements and formed the basis for the Iron Age transformation of the same technology. The paper suggests that the architectural use of stone with distinctive architectonic aesthetics was a symbolically charged activity in the making of social and ceremonial spaces within the building projects of the Near Eastern rulers and was shared cross-culturally.
