I am a Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) in the Dept. of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and a part-time lecturer in the Dept. of Classics at Brock University. 

I am currently working on a dissertation entitled Building Power:  Architecture, Interaction, and Sociopolitical Relations In Late Bronze Age Cyprus, under the supervision of Prof. E.B. Banning.  My research focuses on the relationship between architecture and development and maintenance of sociopolitical power in Cyprus during the Late Bronze Age. 

I employ a three-part approach based on space syntax, non-verbal communication and the delineation of interior viewsheds in order to analyze how the elite inhabitants of monumental buildings manipulated these environments in an effort to encode messages that structured relations with those who entered the buildings as visitors.  This manipulation was part of a program of design aimed at controlling the physical and visual accessibility of visitors through building layout and the use of particular architectural features and embellishments, including ashlar masonry.  Such design programs were further enhanced by the display and use of symbolically-charged artefacts within particular architectural contexts.  My work demonstrates that elite architecture had a vital role in mediating relations among the constituents of Late Bronze Age society, reminding individuals and groups of their relative sociopolitical positions.

Publications

2003 (forthcoming). Messages in stone:  constructing sociopolitical inequality in Late Bronze Age Cyprus, in An Odyssey of Space:  Proceedings of the 2001 Chacmool Archaeological Conference, University of Calgary Press.

1998. M. Blackham, K.D. Fisher, and D. Lasby. Report on Tell Fendi in Archaeology in Jordan, American Journal of Archaeology 102(3): 585-6.

1998. M. Blackham, K.D. Fisher, and D. Lasby. Tell Fendi, a Late Chalcolithic settlement in the lower Wadi Ziqlab, Jordan, Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 42: 161-177. 

1997. M. Blackham, K.D. Fisher, and D. Lasby. Excavations at Tell Fendi, a Late Chalcolithic site in the Jordan Valley, Jordan, Echos du Monde Classique/Classical Views 16(1): 17-21.

1996. Polity, complexity, and the organization of copper production in Late Bronze Age Cyprus,Vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology 7: 29-54.

Contact

c/o Dept. of Classics

Brock University

St. Catharines, ON

Canada     L2S 3A1

tel. 905-688-5550 ex. 3575

 

Email: