Toward a Sensory Experience of Ancient Monument Architecture

This week we’ll be travelling backwards in time, discussing bodily experiences of spaces in Augusta McMahon’s ’Space, Sound and Light: Toward a Sensory Experience of Ancient Monument Architecture’. Abaan Zaidi has very kindly offered to introduce the paper and she has provided some questions to guide your reading: 

• How useful is spatiality as a historical concept?
• To what extent does the invisible power of labour influence the spatial experience? Should the history of building construction inform spatial analysis?
• How convinced are you by McMahon's approach and methodologies? To what extent do you think such a spatial approach could be applicable to other locales (e.g. Non-monumental buildings) or time periods?

As this is quite out of our usual period for discussion, Abaan has also provided some historical context for the article and a map of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. If you want to learn a bit more about the monumental space described in the article, this link will take you to a website with some images and further context.