Cultures of Stone

This volume establishes a rich cross-disciplinary dialogue about the significance of stone in society across time and space. The material properties of stone have ensured its continuing importance; however, it is its materiality which has mediated the relations between the individual, society and stone. Bound up with the physical properties of stone are ideas on identity, value, and understanding. Stone can act as a medium through which these concepts are expressed and is tied to ideas such as monumentality and remembrance; its enduring character creating a link through generations to both people and place. This volume brings together a collection of seventeen papers which draw on a range of diverse disciplines and approaches; including archaeology, anthropology, classics, design and engineering, fine arts, geography, history, linguistics, philosophy, psychology and sciences. Contents: List of Figures Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Constructing Identities through Stone Part 1. Quarrying and Moving Stone Labour and Limestone: the relationship between stone and life in the 19th- and 20th-century quarry town of Texas, Maryland. Adam Fracchia Yapese Stone Money: local marble as a potential inspiration for producing limestone exchange valuables in Palau, Micronesia. Bosiljka Glumac and Scott M. Fitzpatrick Roman Colours of Power: Egyptian stones for the imperial metropolis, and beyond. Hazel Dodge Travelling Stone or Travelling Men? Models of Sculpture Production in the Early Middle Ages (8th-9th centuries). Michelle Beghelli Part 2. Making, Building and Re-imagining in Stone MAN MADE: contemporary prehistoric stone-tool design. Dov Ganchrow Stone Fisheries and Their Role in Shaping the Cultural Landscape of the Minho River Valley, Portugal. Rui Madail and Miguel Malheiro Stormont's Stones: the oratory of power through form and materiality. Suzanne O´Neill City of Stone: dialectics of impermanence in Josef Sudek's Prague. Adele Tutter 'The Living Stones': encountering the prehistoric past in West Cornwall. Elizabeth Pratt Sacred Granite: preserving the Downpatrick High Cross. Michael King Part 3. Stone in Ritual Space and Practice 'Living Stones Built Up': symbolism in Irish round towers. Sarah Kerr Flaming Torches: the materiality of fire and flames on Roman cinerary urns. Liana Brent Stone-Grave Building at the Cemetery of Les Tombes at Estagel (Pyrénées-Orientales, France): some economic, visual and symbolic aspects. Joan Pinar Gil Worship and Stones on the Cycladic Islands: a case study of the aniconic cult of Apollo and Zeus. Erika Angliker All of a Heap: Hermes and the stone cairn in Greek Antiquity. Jessica Doyle Looking through the Crystal Ball: ethnographic analogies for the ritual use of rock crystal. Thomas Hess Is It from The Dreaming, or Is It Rubbish? The Significance and Meaning of Stone Artefacts and Their Sources to Aboriginal People in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Edward McDonald and Bryn Coldrick Afterword The Flexibility of Stone Gabriel Cooney Index