Space-Making in Landscapes Not Made by Human Hands: A Theoretical Model for Byzantine Rock-Cut Architecture

As outcomes of an alternative mode of architectural expression, rock-cut spaces assume a wide range of functions and meanings in distant geographies and cultural contexts, constituting a weighty sum of surviving material evidence from Byzantium as well. In scholarship, the term “rock-cut architecture” is rather loosely applied to an ontologically diverse group of material. In this paper, I discuss what it means to define and redefine spaces in rupestrian landscapes. Rather than conceiving rock-cut space-making as a purely human endeavor, I adopt a new materialist perspective and examine the agentive roles of nonhuman beings, with a particular focus on rock and water. Rock is the material to carve; its physical properties and relations to other landscape elements afford and encourage certain forms of engagement. The flowing bodies of water carve caves, valleys, and sinkholes, among other landforms. Water not only excavates but also builds stalactites and other speleothems through dripping. In Byzantium, the conscious efforts of people to transform the available rocky material for whatever use they saw fit necessarily relied on the entanglements with nonhuman beings. As such, rock-cut spaces became products of nonhuman agency as much as human intentionality. To explore these dynamic relations, drawing on the field excursions and stimulating academic discussions of the BRIA project, I present a threefold theoretical model for rock-cut space-making strategies in Byzantium: carving spaces out of the rock, building spaces on the rock, and using spaces in the rock. Each category exemplifies distinct yet interconnected spatial approaches, illustrating together how Byzantine communities, rocks, and water were entangled in human-altered rupestrian environments.