Sarah Rous: Athenian Upcycling: Turning the Kaleidoscope for a New View of Reuse and Social Memory

Join us for this lecture featuring alumna Sarah Rous.

Abstract
In Ancient Athens, as throughout the Greco-Roman world, the reuse of building materials was a common and pragmatic practice. In some cases, however, decisions to reuse materials went beyond pragmatic concerns, and objects were intentionally chosen for reuse based on the message they could convey in their new context. Parts of temples conspicuously used in fortification walls, for example, became a vivid memorial of destruction and resilience. This lecture will discuss this phenomenon of intentionally meaningful reuse as “upcycling” and examine the ways in which Athenians used their cultural resources to shape their social memory—that is, their collective sense of their past and its bearing on their present and future. From column drums in walls to intentionally preserved ruins, relocated temples, and reinscribed statue monuments, Athenians were endlessly creative in meaningfully marshaling reused material, literally building their past into their city.