Monumentality by numbers

How to measure and present ancient monumentality?
By creating virtual reconstructions of ancient architecture (in contrast to physical reconstructions like a model or even life-sized rebuilding projects) we quickly loose the sense of bigness, richness and complexity. Creating virtual mud-bricks, walls, roofs or complete houses is often nothing more than a simple copy & paste function. Printed-out or even seen projected onto a wall, a reconstruction will not represent monumentality as it might have been perceived in antiquity. So how can we reconstruct monumentality and present it?
As the research group defines, monumentality (or the XXL phenomena) is not confined to physical scale: the creation of monumental architecture involves a combination of great technical ingenuity, extraordinarily high levels of skill, the devotion of vast amounts of time to build them, the type and range of the resources invested and the sheer size of the task. A simple reconstruction shown in a museum or elsewhere doesn’t convey that complexity.
Virtual models are perfect for measurement and theoretical experimentation. Based on reconstructions done for monumental architecture of ancient Uruk/Warka we were able to quantify the building materials used for very early monumental structures. In an experimental quantification of effort for each building category, we can even propose a scale of labour and value for each building. As mentioned before, size may not be the forming factor of monumentality, but rather out-of-norm effort, which can easily be visualised by linear regression modelling.
The paper has now been published in: Federico Buccellati / Sebastian Hageneuer / Sylva van der Heyden / Felix Levenson (eds.), Size Matters – Understanding Monumentality Across Ancient Civilizations, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2019, pp. 291-308: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-4538-5/size-matters-understanding-monumentality-across-ancient-civilizations/

如何衡量与呈现古建筑之宏伟？通过构建古代建筑的虚拟复原（与模型或甚至实物等比例重建项目等物理复原相对），我们迅速失去了宏伟、丰富与复杂的感知。创建虚拟的土砖、墙壁、屋顶或完整的房屋，往往不过是简单的复制粘贴功能。即使打印出来，甚至投影到墙上，这样的复原也无法代表其在古代可能被感知到的宏伟。那么，我们如何复原宏伟并将其呈现呢？
研究小组定义，宏伟（或XXL现象）并不仅限于物理尺度：宏伟建筑的创造涉及卓越的技术创新、非凡的技艺水平、投入大量时间以建造它们、投入的资源类型与范围以及任务的庞大程度。在博物馆或其他地方展示的简单复原并不能传达这种复杂性。
虚拟模型非常适合进行测量和理论实验。基于为古代乌尔克/瓦卡宏伟建筑所做的复原，我们能够量化早期宏伟结构所使用的建筑材料。在针对每个建筑类别的努力量实验量化中，我们甚至可以提出每个建筑的劳动力和价值尺度。如前所述，规模可能不是宏伟的塑造因素，而是超出常规的努力，这可以通过线性回归模型轻松可视化。
该论文现已发表在：Federico Buccellati / Sebastian Hageneuer / Sylva van der Heyden / Felix Levenson（主编），《规模之重要——理解古代文明中的宏伟》，transcript Verlag，比勒费尔德2019年，第291-308页：https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-4538-5/size-matters-understanding-monumentality-across-ancient-civilizations/。