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The Political Landscape : Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities by Adam T Smith; ebrary, Inc is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Political Landscape : Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities about?

How do landscapes--defined in the broadest sense to incorporate the physical contours of the built environment, the aesthetics of form, and the imaginative reflections of spatial representations--contribute to the making of politics? Shifting through the archaeological, epigraphic, and artistic remains of early complex societies, this provocative and far-reaching book is the first systematic attempt to explain the links between spatial organization and politics from an anthropological point of view. The Classic-period Maya, the kingdom of Urartu, and the cities of early southern Mesopotamia provide the focal points for this multidimensional account of human polities. Are the cities and villages in which we live and work, the lands that are woven into our senses of cultural and personal identity, and the national territories we occupy merely stages on which historical processes and political rituals are enacted? Or do the forms of buildings and streets, the evocative sensibilities of architecture and vista, the aesthetics of place conjured in art and media constitute political landscapes--broad sets of spatial practices critical to the formation, operation, and overthrow of polities

Who reads The Political Landscape : Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities?

Author

Adam T Smith; ebrary, Inc

Publisher

University of California Press

Published

2003

Language

EN

ISBN

9786612762857

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Architecture, Sociology, Anthropology