Rock Reliefs and Landscape Monuments

Abstract

Fieldwork at rock reliefs and the study of stone monuments date to the earliest episodes of the archaeology of the Near East as a discipline. Yet network model-based and macro-scale perspectives on rock monuments also have the effect of removing rock-cut images and inscriptions from the specific context of the cultural landscapes that surround them. The archaeological evidence demonstrates that rock relief sites are never really created through a single moment of act, or a state-sponsored inscription of a previously untouched place. Carving reliefs and inscriptions on the living rock is a practice attested across a wide geographical area in the ancient Near East in distinct episodes during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Carving the rock is associated with coloniality and colonial violence, where constructed notions of “nature” appear in the colonial discourse. The chapter describes rock relief sites as political ecologies, where local cultural practices and imperialist interventions clash.

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