Paper short abstract:

The paper aims at an introduction of the work of French philosopher Henri Lefebvre and German philosopher and sociologist Walter Benjamin to archaeology. A critical assessment of the work of Benjamin and Lefebvre on urban space is proposed, with regard to its potential contribution to an anthropologically oriented archaeological exploration of spatial issues.

Paper long abstract:

The issue of urbanism has been central to archaeology since at least the time of V. Gordon Childe and the concept of the "urban revolution". However, this issue still goes to a large extent theoretically unnoticed. In contrast with archaeology, architecture has embraced a significantly broad array of theories on the city and has begun to incorporate urban theory to its practices in a systematic way in the past two decades. In the proposed paper, I choose to discuss the work of two highly influential theorists in urban studies and assess the potential relevance of their work on the city to archaeology.

The paper aims at an introduction of the work of French philosopher Henri Lefebvre and German philosopher and sociologist Walter Benjamin to archaeology. A critical assessment of the work of Benjamin and Lefebvre on urban space is proposed, with regard to its potential contribution to an anthropologically oriented archaeological exploration of spatial issues. The work of Lefebvre and Benjamin remains to a great extent terra incognita for archaeologists and anthropologists. Contrary to this, architecture and urban studies acknowledge this potential and especially since the 1990s there has been rising interest in Benjamin and Lefebvre's work and their ideas on the city and urban space.

The basic tenets of Benjamin and Lefebvre on the social production of spatial relationships within the city realm are outlined. It emerges that their work has a strong potential for archaeological studies of urban space.