Structure and Meaning in Human Settlements, 2005, 384 p., 220 ill. -

This groundbreaking book explores the relationships among form, space, and cultural meaning in human habitation. Authors from a variety of disciplines and international sites address the possibilities of common ground in architectural theories about place and dwelling, anthropological research on settlement archaeology, and the study of cultural landscapes and geography. Those in the practice of designing buildings and towns as well as scholars who examine settlements for evidence of social organization and structure offer their interpretations and ideas about the meanings of how societies define and organize human existence. Topics include geomancy and divinations as determinants of traditional settlements, symbolic and productive landscapes, and the interplay of climate, environmental conditions, social relationships, and ideology with settlement patterns and structures as well as geography and settlements in dynastic Egypt, ritual bathing and household organization in the ancient Indus cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, Etruscan boundaries and prophecy, and Maya cosmology and spatial distribution. Case studies on settlement practices in Dahomey, Zuni, and other surviving indigenous cultures are juxtaposed with examples of extreme settlement conditions in the Russian Arctic and ingenious methods of water collection and control in the Saharan oasis.