Placemaking: Production of Built Environment in Two Cultures (Ethnoscapes)

This comparative study, a product of more than a decade of work, approaches the prehistoric and vernacular architecture of two widely separated peoples in an entirely new way. The ancient Anasazi of the present American southwest and the "Rock Dwellers" of Cappadocia in Anatolian Turkey evolved solutions to problems of dwelling in geologically identical environments, solutions alike in certain ways and decidedly different in others. This book traces the development of settlements in these two locations, allowing environmental and cultural determinisms to be weighed against each other and against alternative explanations, including classical dialectical materialism and sequence hierarchies. "Placemaking" is about the context of built form: the production of architecture and settlement. These are analyzed in terms of the social forces that have given rise to physical artifacts, rather than the artifacts themselves. Much has been written about monuments, sacred architecture (churches, kivas) ritual, and symbolic meaning in these two regions, and much less about the generative forces and purposes of ordinary building activity. this book, an attempt to "right the balance", also builds upon the results of this comparative case study to produce a general framework for interpretation.