Christopher P. Garraty wrote:

> I am looking for good references--ethnographic or archaeological--on
> archaism and the built environment  In other words, how were past
> architectural forms/styles, site designs, or other elements of the built
> environment reused and/or appropriated by later groups?  Along these same
> lines, I am also interested in archaism as expressed through imitation or
> "reinvention" of past architectural or spatial forms.

This is a very interesting question, and something I have been collecting
material on myself.
Some of my own thoughts, relating to archaisms and the invention of tradition in
later prehistoric Germany, are discussed (briefly) in a paper in World
Archaeology 1998. Other possible examples I have come across include the
following (I can provide references if needed)

In Thy in northern Denmark, long barrows saw a revival during the Early Bronze
Age.

Richard Hingley argued that later prehistoric people in Atlantic Scotland drew
inspiration from Neolithic chambered cairns for the design of their own houses.
This may have served as a means of claiming ancient tombs for the group's own
ancestors, and thus foster an attempt of projecting the identity of the lineage
into the distant past.

Örjan Mattsson made a case for interpreting the tradition of erecting standing
stones (bautastenar) in the Swedish province of Uppland, dating mostly from the
first century BC until the second century AD, as "part of a growing interest for,
and re-use of, megalithic monuments that can be seen on the British Isles during
the Roman and Post-Roman times". In other words, according to Mattsson,
megalithic architecture known from elsewhere was imitated in later prehistoric
Uppland in central Sweden.

In ancient Greece, the Messenians imitated in their own grave architecture the
form of ancient tumuli burials. Arguably, the tumulus at Marathon too refers back
to much more ancient tomb architecture.

In south-eastern England, both barrows and chambered tombs can be found that were
built by the Romano-British population. At Frilford, there is even a 'henge
monument' of Iron Age origin remodelled by the Romans.

Groups of barrows built successively and/or modelled on ancient prototypes can
also be seen at Bronze Age barrow sites in Britain, and at the royal sites of
Uppsala in Sweden and Jelling in Denmark.

Hermann Ament noticed that burial mounds of the Alamanni in western Germany were
spatially associated with prehistoric barrows, and that these links changed over
time. Alamanni graves were placed near prehistoric barrows from the 6th century
AD, inside them (as secondary burials) from the early 7th century AD, and in
newly built barrows since the middle of the 7th century AD, thus reflecting a
stepwise familiarisation with the ancient barrows which culminated in their
complete imitation.

The Church of Santa Sabina-Silanus on Sardinia appears to have been build with a
plan inspired by the single-tower nuraghe from the Bronze Age located next to it.

The best studied example is certainly Archaism in ancient Egypt, where it takes
many forms. See the work of Jan Assmann for a recent discussion of this. Other
relevant texts on this include
Brunner, Hellmut (1970) Zum Verständnis der archaisierenden Tendenzen in der
ägyptischen Spätzeit. Saeculum 21, 151–161.
Brunner, Hellmut (1972) Archaismus. In: W.Helck and E.Otto (eds) Lexikon der
Ägyptologie, vol. 1, column 386–395. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Manuelian, Peter Der (1994) Living in the Past. Studies in Archaism of the
Egyptian Twenty-sixth Dynasty. London: Kegan Paul.
Neureiter, Sabine (1994) Eine neue Interpretation des Archaismus. Studien zur
altägyptischen Kultur 21, 219–254.

I would love to hear about other examples myself. Anyone with more?

Perhaps the next question should then be, why archaism and imitation occur so
widely.

Cornelius



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