X Modern Urbanism and Primitive Cultures from the PastX Tsoni Tsonev* Department of Interdisciplinary Studies and Archaeological Map of Bulgaria, ‘National Institute of Archaeology and Museum - Bulgarian Academy of Sciences’, Bulgaria *Corresponding author Tsoni Tsonev, Interdisciplinary Department of Interdisciplinary Studies and Archaeological Map of Bulgaria, ‘National Institute of Archaeology and Museum - Bulgarian Academy of Sciences’, 2 Saborna str., 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria. Published by Iris Publishers United States Date: February 14, 2020 Page No: 2 F Index S 1. Introduction Chapter 1. Intentionality of Social Agency 1. Introduction 2. Order and Disorder in Material Record Left by the Actions of Social Agencies from the Past 2.1. Methods used in the present study 2.1.a. Assumptions for straight-line-model 2.2. Initial case studies, particularities of the in-put data and their analyses through simple Kriging and unconditional Gaussian simulation 2.3. Spatial autocorrelation of the data from the four examples 3. Cause-Effects interactions 3.1. Particularities of the spatial distribution of populated places in Bulgaria 3.2.3.3. Particularities of the spatial distribution of churchesrock-cut tombs in Sofia 3.4. Particularities of the spatial distribution of dolmens 4. Conclusion Chapter 2. Social Agency and Identities 1. Introduction 2. Archaeological Evidence 2.1. Palaeolithic Art in Local Contexts 2.2. Matrix-Like Notation and Intentionality of Human Agency 2.3. The Individuality of Horse Heads and the ‘Initiation’ of Long Blades 3. Conclusion Chapter 3. Human Presence 1. Introduction 2. Human Presence in the Remote Past 2.1. Triticum aestivum/durum and Local Development of Prehistoric Cultures 2.1.1. Human Presence in the Asikli - Musular Pre-pottery Neolithic Complex 2.1.2. The Untold History of Neolithic Knossos 2.2. Human Presence and Alpine and Aegean Jade Axeheads 3. Conclusion Chapter 4. Geometry of Human Presence 1. Introduction 2. The Concepts of ‘Cultural Gradient’ and ‘Central Place’ of Aggregated Communities 2.1. How central is a central place? 2.2. Early Neolithic sites’ distribution Page No: 3 Modern Urbanism and Primitive Cultures from the Past 3. Conclusion Chapter 5. Foundation Myths - Foundation Pits and Pitfalls 1. Introduction 2. Foundation Pits and their Context 2.1. Foundation pits and social change 2.2. Foundation myths and the wider social contexts of culture change 3. Conclusion Chapter 6. From Homo Habilis to Humans that Perform 1. Introduction 2. Prehistory of Human Performance 2.1. Drama and space 3. Conclusion Chapter 7. Modern and Neolithic Skyscrapers 1. Introduction 2. Archaeology of Skyscrapers 3. Conclusion Chapter 8. ‘Zero Ground’ and Archaeology of Landscapes 1. Introduction 2. Archaeology of Landscapes 3. Conclusion Chapter 9. Archaeologist - the Lonely Researcher 1. Introduction 2. The Inverted Relationship with the Past 3. Conclusion Chapter 10. Consuming the Past, Consuming the Present, and Cannibalism of the Self 1. Introduction 2. The Archaeology of Vampires 3. Conclusion Conclusions References Page No: 4 Modern Urbanism and Primitive Cultures from the Past Introduction This is an unusual perspective from which prehistory could be approached and better understood. As a starting point it bears not only traces of a research area that requires rigorous analyses, corrected through the prism of archaeological interpretations based on the novel the- conceptual richness drawn in parallel from these seemingly standing far away scientific, educational, and cultural domains, but intellectual Daniel Miller’s work ‘Material Culture and Mass Consumption’ [1]. The signs of modernization have always been recognized within the ways of oretical developments. The intellectual sources on which I ground the conceptual richness of this approach can be found in the first place in the practicing of mass consumption that have different appearances. The diversity of signs that appear in the praxis of mass consumption becomes understood in an inverse order: modern people tend to transfer their knowledge about the present to their knowledge about the past. This - problematic conceptualization of the past by modern urban culture pre-defines a logical sequence of investigation steps that creates a radically novel research area. Its logical framework evolves in the following way: first, it has to outline various object domains; second - define the asso ciated with them ideology; third, to reveal the interests of the social actors involved in the processes of knowing, documenting, managing and terms of their co-presences as assemblages of human and social actions that act through built in them internal logic. This approach has several presenting the past. Contrary to the traditional archaeological approaches that create abstract entities of object domains, I consider them in features. First, it does not lead to a deterministic model of social evolution but it is used as an instrument that allows analyzing in better way human and social activities in the past and in the present. Second, this logic cannot be called ‘fuzzy’ as this term implies total ‘unpredictability’. I shall provide examples that will show that the logic behind human and social actions can be modeled and predicted in approximate terms. Unlike the exact sciences, the formal rules in social sciences tend to change after any sequence of few steps made in one direction, reaching a point from where the rule changes and the resultant direction and the associated with it pattern also changes. D. Miller sees social patterns in question why people show such a whimsy nature in their cultural choices of ‘consuming’ their human-nature interaction. This leads to better the changing material expression of human consumption that are objectified through human agency, while my approach tries to answer the ways of observation and analyses of the variation of the rules of formal logic that stay behind social actions whose rationality become modeled through the ideology and interests of the social agents. I consider ideology not only as a means for balancing political power, but as a way of forging diverse human identities that stabilize communities and are able to integrate the ‘foreignness’ into local contexts. In my understanding ideology has primary formative function that shapes social action through building strategies of success. These strategies go through creating various personal and social identities leaving behind material traces that express the complex interplay of symbolic complexes. Traditional archaeological approaches see symbolic complexes only in their role of regional and supra-regional constituents that predefine homogeneous - social actions. In this light the most common use of this notion is the vague definition of archaeological culture as ethnic, cultural and symbolic sociated with it such as Gothic, Baroque, Stalinist, etc. Yet, the meaning of public symbology in an urban space remains in tense relations with entity. This traditional understanding also borrows insights from the modern definition of urban architecture and the public monuments as culture of urban centers, associated with true cultural activities and knowledge. the notion of archaeological culture that is considered to evolve in less cultural, rural environment − seen as primitive counterpart of the high This tension is somewhat mitigated by the insights drawn from the book ‘The Corrupting Sea’ Horden and Purcell [2]. The notion of cor- ruption here was taken in its positive meaning as something that provides easy access to valuable resources. Sea is presented as such valuable resource and as a constellation of dispersed cultural artifacts that promotes the appearance of urban spaces in the Mediterranean world. The most important feature of the sea is its integrative role in uniting the disintegrated (patchy) Mediterranean societies. The cultural landscapes of their dispersed inhabitants are carved by traces of intense agricultural activities associated with terraced steep slopes, irrigation and plant and animal diversity. The accent is put on the idea that people were united through their diverse practices and identities, but their unification from rural spaces, they show how inhabitants in both places complement one another’s activities or, in rare cases, alternate their residences process happens not on the ground of any artificially created, abstract uniformity. Rather than providing a dividing line that separates urban between towns and villages. They present Mediterranean communities as mobile and dynamic societies that web diverse cultures and identi- ties. I take and apply the idea that not the homogeneity of cultural entities but the symbolic diversity of local contexts shapes the long-distance communication and exchange networks. Landscapes are no longer seen as physical constraints that consist of slopes, altitude and visibility, but as cognitive artifacts that through human action structure the social life of neighboring communities that live both in rural and urban areas. The notion of ‘duality of social structure’ I take from the A. Giddens’ book ‘The Constitution of Society’ [3]. The key element in it is the ‘regionalization of human action’ where space is not understood as a container of agents’ activities but as a symbolic landscape that is carved up by human ability to separate in different areas his/her daily activities and thus unite them with the activities of the other members of the Page No: 5 Modern Urbanism and Primitive Cultures from the Past