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