The Monastic Landscape of Late Antique Egypt
An Archaeological Reconstruction

This book traces changing perceptions of Egypt's monastic landscape through an analysis of archaeological and documentary evidence from late antiquity.

Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom (Author)

9781316614082, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 November 2021

454 pages, 78 b/w illus. 2 maps
25.4 x 17.8 x 2.4 cm, 0.855 kg

'Brooks Hedstrom's work is a compelling assessment that displays the diversity of monastic spaces in Egypt and undermines previous pictures that relied on simple narratives, derived from the literary material, of a divide between anchorite and organized monasticism in terms of their built spaces.' Gareth Sears, Medieval Archaeology

Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom offers a new history of the field of Egyptian monastic archaeology. It is the first study in English to trace how scholars identified a space or site as monastic within the Egyptian landscape and how such identifications impacted perceptions of monasticism. Brooks Hedstrom then provides an ecohistory of Egypt's tripartite landscape to offer a reorientation of the perception of the physical landscape. She analyzes late-antique documentary evidence, early monastic literature, and ecclesiastical history before turning to the extensive archaeological evidence of Christian monastic settlements. In doing so, she illustrates the stark differences between idealized monastic landscape and the actual monastic landscape that was urbanized through monastic constructions. Drawing upon critical theories in landscape studies, materiality and phenomenology, Brooks Hedstrom looks at domestic settlements of non-monastic and monastic settlements to posit what features makes monastic settlements unique, thus offering a new history of monasticism in Egypt.

Introduction
1. Monastic archaeology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
2. Archaeology and twentieth century perceptions of the monastic landscape
3. An ecohistory of the Egyptian landscape
4. Late antique documentary evidence and the monastic landscape
5. Telling stories about the Egyptian monastic landscape
6. The archaeology of late antique buildings in Egypt
7. Looking at Egypt's monastic built environments
Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Landscape archaeology [HDL], Egyptian archaeology / Egyptology [HDDG], Archaeology by period / region [HDD], Archaeology [HD], Humanities [H]