3d Modelling: Bodies and Buildings in Anthropology, Anatomy and Architecture

With growing popular and academic interest in the development and importance of three-dimensional modelling and technologies across a range of practices, this book advances analyses of three-dimensional models from perspectives in anthropology, anatomy, architecture and history, examining the ways in which models shape perceptions of bodies, buildings and histories. Focusing on models in practice - that is, on how they have been made, used and interpreted over time in social and cultural contexts - 3D Modelling: Bodies and Buildings in Anthropology, Anatomy and Architecture, explores the importance of models in the constitution and communication of knowledge. With attention to the multiple and changing ways in which models are created and employed, the material dimensions of models and their implications, the kinds of knowledge generated by models in action and the social relations formed through model making and use, this volume engages with current debates concerning material culture, knowledge production and creativity. Presenting detailed empirical case studies from across a range of disciplines, it addresses key questions surrounding the reasons for which models take particular forms, the effects of their material and visual qualities in relation to bodily action and the senses, and the ways in which they carry or disrupt cultural values and ideals. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in in the connections between knowledge, practice and perception.

Elizabeth Hallam is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, and Research Associate in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford, UK. She is the author of Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed, co-author of Death, Memory and Material Culture, and co-editor of Medical Museums: Past, Present, Future, Creativity and Cultural Improvisation and Making and Growing: Anthropological Studies of Organisms and Artefacts.