Leaving No Ashlar Unturned: Definitions, Technical Features and Regional Synopsis of Cut-Stone Masonry in the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age

Cut-stone masonry is one of the most prominent features that characterizes monumental architecture, the appearance of which is imbued with symbolic meaning and is a corollary to wholesale changes in the societies of the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. The workshop held in Louvain-la-Neuve on the 8th and 9th of March 2018 aimed at exploring the specificities of building practices incorporating cut-stone masonry or components in Egypt, Syria, the Aegean, Anatolia, Cyprus, and the Levant in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC. Specialists of the different regions of the Eastern Mediterranean discussed topics including the structural and formal features of standing architectural remains, extraction and shaping methods, tool kits, the visual effect of ashlar use and the symbolic impact of its abandonment. Before letting the reader enter the core of the volume and explore the range of approaches to ashlar offered by contributors specialized in different geographical areas and sites, it bears upon the editors to provide a terminological and contextual framework in this introductory chapter. Characterizing the forms, techniques and building processes associated with cut-stone masonry in the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age is a daunting task. Data are spread over an extensive geographical and chronological context – the latter often debated – and the description of ashlar components and masonries is often provided with varying degrees of details and a loose terminology. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide a reminder of the terminology of cut-stone building components and masonry, to describe the specific techniques related to its production, and to provide a synopsis of ashlar use in the different regions of the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age. This regional synopsis is followed by a presentation of the challenges addressed during the workshop, and which fashioned the research questions addressed in the different, focused, contributions to this volume. These and the present introductory chapter address the research questions through varying case studies, datasets and methodologies, thus providing an in-depth understanding of the use of ashlar in the different regions of the Eastern Mediterranean in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, and providing a sound basis for discussion and comparison pertaining to this elaborate building technique.