Digital Palace of Nestor: Assessing Mycenaean Palatial Complex Construction of Socio-Political Status and Navigation Through Architecture

<p>Because architecture necessitates the conscious planning of space, its consequences for navigation and socio-political status are equally deliberate and have indirect effects. This research combines experiential and spatial syntax techniques to gain a deeper understanding of how Mycenaeans shaped space to construct status and navigation in the Palace of Nestor at Pylos. Using a digital reconstruction of the palace ensured the most accurate experiential data by utilizing a whole, albeit virtual, version of the site. Without employing a digital reconstruction, the only experiences with the site would occur in the ruinous, actual site preventing complete experiences with how the site’s architecture affects the individual. Additionally, the spatial analytics provides the ability to cross-verify, quantify, and in the future compare, the results with other Bronze Age Palaces. While the quantitative methods discern how the architecture interacts with itself and agents in an idealized, objective environment, the phenomenological data elucidates if and how people actually experience the palace and what explicitly or implicitly affects their navigation. The latter ensures the interpretations of all the data maintains plausibility in the real world and not just statistical simulations. Together, the results indicate the palace’s left side has easy local access with little ability to travel across. Conversely, the right side has an overall easy ability to access anywhere in the palace but is difficult to enter. Similarly, court, megaron, and vestibule possess the highest status in the complex with increasingly restricted access into the latter two rooms. </p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts in Anthropology (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2018

Author dc:creator

• Ward, Caleb

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kay, Marvin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Vining, Benjamin R.
• Fredrick, David

• Digital Reconstruction
• Mycenaean
• Phenomenology
• Spatial Analytics
• Biological and Physical Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/2675

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.uark.edu:etd-4229