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Structure and Meaning in Human Settlements. Tony Atkin and Joseph Rykwert, eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2005. 370 pp.
EDWARD SWENSON
University of Lethbridge
More than a century ago, Lewis Henry Morgan correlated different house forms with distinct types of social organization. It was relatively recently, however, that anthropologists turned their attention to the cultural and political significance of settlement and architecture. Today, it is widely accepted that the built environment materializes social relations, shapes conceptions of place and social memory, inculcates cultural values, and expresses a diverse array of meanings, ranging from the ecological and psychological to the aesthetic and ideological. Tony Atkin and Joseph Rykwert have successfully assembled a cross-disciplinary team of leading anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers, architects, and urban planners to explore these complex and important issues.
The 24 chapters in the volume cover everything from the origins of settlement (Rykwert and Atkin) and the history of settlement-pattern studies in archaeology (Gordon Willey) to engaging architectural criticism. The latter are commonly grounded in the social lessons that past building traditions and even animal architecture (Juhani Pallasmaa) hold for contemporary urban renewal plans and landscape design. In fact, an exciting goal of the compendium is to encourage dialogue among archaeologists and planners to promote culturally meaningful, ecologically responsible, and socially relevant architectural projects. Rykwert and Atkin pose the question of whether "meaningful structures continue to exist in human settlements after they are transformed by international consumer culture and place-defying technology...