Architectural Energetics in Archaeology ― Analytical Expansions and Global Explorations

Archaeologists and the public at large have long been fascinated by monumental architecture built by past societies. Whether considering the earthworks in the Ohio Valley or the grandest pyramids in Egypt and Mexico, people have been curious as to how pre-modern societies with limited technology were capable of constructing monuments of such outstanding scale and quality. Architectural energetics is a methodology within archaeology that generates estimates of the amount of labor and time allocated to construct these past monuments. This methodology allows for detailed analyses of architecture and especially the analysis of the social power underlying such projects.

Architectural Energetics in Archaeology assembles an international array of scholars who have analyzed architecture from archaeological and historic societies using architectural energetics. It is the first such volume of its kind. In addition to applying architectural energetics to a global range of architectural works, it outlines in detail the estimates of costs that can be used in future architectural analyses.

This volume will serve archaeology and classics researchers, and lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses related to social power and architecture. It also will interest architects examining past construction and engineering projects.

Leah McCurdy is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art + Art History at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) and a Research Associate with The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). Leah earned her PhD from UTSA in 2016 with her dissertation focused on the application of energetics and labor analysis to the ancient Maya site of Xunantunich, Belize. Leah has been excavating at Xunantunich since 2008 to collect data relevant to her research interests in ancient construction practices, cooperative labor, the intersections of monumentality and community, as well as the meaning of the ancient built environment.

Elliot M. Abrams is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Ohio University. He refined and promoted the methodology of architectural energetics in How the Maya Built Their World (1994). In addition to his archaeological research in Mesoamerica, he has conducted excavations in the Ohio Valley for over three decades. He co-edited (with AnnCorinne Freter) The Emergence of the Moundbuilders: The Archaeology of Tribal Societies in Southeastern Ohio (2005), which outlines the formation of sedentary tribal communities. He also studies environmental change, economic institutions, and social power through the lens of anthropological archaeology.