In this dissertation I examine the various ways Athenians of several periods of antiquity purposefully reused stone artifacts, objects, and buildings in order to shape their own and their descendants’ collective ideas about their community’s past and its bearing on the present and future. I develop the concept of “upcycling” to refer to this intentionally meaningful reuse, where evidence is preserved of an intentionality behind the decision to re-employ a particular object in a particular new context, often with implications for the shared memory of a group. My investigation makes use of archaeological, literary, and epigraphical evidence to connect seemingly disparate cases of meaningful reuse within a long chronological span, treating the city of Athens as a continuously evolving cultural community.
By taking a wide view of reuse with a focus on intentionality and visibility, I fruitfully re-examine some well known cases like the North Acropolis Wall, constructed largely of material from the temples destroyed by the Persians in 480 BCE, and the “itinerant” Temple of Ares, moved from the deme of Pallene into the heart of the Agora in the late 1st century BCE, in conjunction with other case studies including the reuse of the Mycenaean Bastion beneath the Classical Sanctuary of Athena Nike at the entrance to the Acropolis, the preservation of Archaic statues burnt by the Persians and described by Pausanias in the 2nd century CE, the repeated renewal of the Monument of the Eponymous Heroes in the Agora, a group of Classical and Hellenistic portrait statues on the Acropolis rededicated to Roman honorands in the Early Roman period, and the 3rd-century CE Post-Herulian Wall, traditionally dismissed as a typically Late Antique spolia-construction.
After an introductory chapter establishing upcycling as a new approach to studying reused material culture, I organize the cases I treat by the level of visibility of the reuse and the correlate effect on social memory I identify. First is a chapter focusing on reuse that accentuates or actively displays the upcycled material in its new context. Next is a group of cases involving reuse that is more subtly visible, where the act of upcycling perpetuates and preserves social memory by making the reused object blend in more or less seamlessly with its surrounding context. In the following chapter I examine cases where the act of reuse itself was meant to be invisible, having the effect, I argue, of altering existing social memory. The final chapter comprises a chronological synthesis and a discussion of the role of upcycling within broader efforts of memory construction at Athens, concluding that reusing physical remains of the past played a key role in the clusters of memory projects that occurred in periods of profound and challenging social or political transformation.
In establishing upcycling as a distinct phenomenon of intentionally meaningful reuse, this study offers a process- and agency-focused alternative to the traditional discourses on spolia and reuse, and identifies a crucial component within the overall “work of memory” within a community. Through this interdisciplinary approach, I have identified a vital practice through which Athenians shaped social memory in the physical realm, literally building their history into their city. / Classics
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:harvard.edu/oai:dash.harvard.edu:1/33493528 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Rous, Sarah Adler |
| Contributors | Stähli, Adrian |
| Publisher | Harvard University |
| Source Sets | Harvard University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | embargoed |
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