Key Pages
Main Group |Changes [Oct 12, 2008]
Symposia| Ömür Harmansah Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and the Department of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies at Brown University Box 1837 / 70 Waterman Street, Providence, RI 02912, USA. Tel: 401-863-6411 Fax: 401-863-9423 E-mail: Omur_Harmansah@brown.edu Office: Joukowsky Institute 202 |
"One could say that, in its world-forming capacity, architecture transforms geological time into human time, which is another way of saying it turns matter into meaning. That is why the sight of ruins is such a reflexive and in some cases an unsettling experience. Ruins in an advanced state of ruination represent, or better they literally embody, the dissolution of meaning into matter. By revealing what human building ultimately is up against -natural or geological time- ruins have a way of recalling us to the very ground of our human worlds, namely the earth, whose foundations are so solid and so reliable that they presumably will outlast any edifices that we build on them."
Robert Pogue Harrison, The dominion of the dead 2003: p. 3.
Bibliography on Space and Spatiality
The Looting Front: what is going on in the world of the destruction of archaeological sites and the abuse of cultural heritage.
