Body, senses and space in Late Bronze Age - Early Iron Age Central Macedonia, Greece : Kastanas, Assiros and Toumba Thessalonikis

Tsamis, Vasileios (2007) Body, senses and space in Late Bronze Age - Early Iron Age Central Macedonia, Greece : Kastanas, Assiros and Toumba Thessalonikis. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

This thesis engages in the interpretation of bodily senses and space, putting people back in the places they created and used, identifying space as a sensual experience.  The primary task is, through the embodiment of spatial organisation and material culture, to identify potential ways of experiencing and remembering among the Late Bronze Age – Early Iron Age societies of Kastanas, Assiros and Toumba Thessalonikis (Northern Greece).

The study of the body will be used as a method of interpretation.  It will help to identify if the traits of social power relations in Kastanas, Assiros and Toumba Thessalonikis were a cultural, natural or personal course of action.  It will be an effort to find individual and collective patterns of experiencing spatial and social relations. The study of building plans and spatial distribution of material culture, the application of access analysis, and virtual reconstruction is the preferred methodology.  The data for this research is the Macedonian handmade and Mycenaean wheelmade locally produced pottery, small finds animal bones and plant remains.

The investigation of the above data showed how three communities of the same period within the same framework of organisation and evolution embodied space and material culture differently.  Kastanas revealed how corporeal experiences were directed towards the individual.  Assiros showed great effort in the preservation of past sensory experiences while Toumba Thessalonikis provided a link between memory, claims over land resources and the creation of a mound settlement.

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