Making Sense of Monuments : Narratives of Time, Movement, and Scale

Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, Confederate statues, Egyptian pyramids, and medieval cathedrals: these are some of the places that are the subject of Making Sense of Monuments, an analysis of how the built environment molds human experiences and perceptions via bodily comparison. Drawing from recent research in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and semiotics, Michael J. Kolb explores the mechanics of the mind, the material world, and the spatialization process of monumental architecture. Three distinct spatial-cognitive metaphors―time, movement, and scale―comprise strands of knowledge that when interwoven create embodied contours of meaning of how human interact with monumental spaces. Comprehensive, lucidly written, and thoroughly illustrated, Making Sense of Monuments is a vibrant, extraordinary journey of the monuments we have constructed and inhabited.

Michael J. Kolb is Professor of Anthropology at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and Presidential Teaching Professor Emeritus at Northern Illinois University. His scholarship focuses on the political economy of emerging societies, and has conducted field research around the world. He has examined the energetics of monumental building for thirty years in both the Pacific and the Mediterranean.