ARCH 249: History of Architecture Exam 2 Study Cards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering ancient Indian, Southeast Asian, East Asian, Etruscan, Roman, Early Christian, and Byzantine architecture for ARCH 249 Exam 2.

Mohenjo-daro

A major urban center of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization in present-day Pakistan, planned on an orthogonal grid system and built primarily of standardized kiln-baked bricks with sophisticated underground drainage networks.

Great Bath (Mohenjo-daro)

A monumental sunken pool at Mohenjo-daro constructed of finely fitted baked brick masonry lined with natural bitumen (asphalt) for waterproofing, interpreted as an early public facility for communal ritual purification.

Great Stupa at Sanchi

A foundational Buddhist solid hemispherical earth-and-stone reliquary mound in Madhya Pradesh, India, originally established by Emperor Ashoka, encased in stone and surrounded by an ambulatory pathway and four stone gateways.

Torana

A freestanding ceremonial gateway marking an entrance to a Buddhist stupa enclosure, constructed with two upright stone posts supporting three curved horizontal architraves richly carved with narrative reliefs.

Yakshi

An ancient Indian female nature and fertility spirit associated with trees and water, famously sculpted as dynamic architectural bracket figures supporting the projecting lintels of the Sanchi toranas.

Harmika and Chatra

The square railed stone balcony atop a Buddhist stupa's dome symbolizing the sacred dwelling of the gods, surmounted by a multi-tiered umbrella axis-spindle representing the world axis (axis mundi) and spiritual royalty.

Pradakshina

The core Buddhist and Hindu devotional ritual of circumambulation around a sacred monument, shrine, or relic in a clockwise direction, keeping the sanctified object on the devotee's right.

Chaitya Hall at Karli

A rock-cut Buddhist sanctuary hall in western India featuring a columned nave, side aisles, an apsidal end housing a solid stone stupa, and a vaulted ceiling supported by original teak ribs illuminated by a massive arched sun window.

Borobudur

A colossal 8th-9th century Mahayana Buddhist stepped monument in central Java, Indonesia, designed in the form of a three-dimensional stone mandala with square stepped galleries rising to three circular open terraces crowned by perforated stupas.

Garbhagriha

The dark, windowless inner sanctum or 'womb chamber' at the heart of a Hindu temple, containing the principal cult image or Shiva lingam, where only initiated priests may enter to conduct intimate rituals.

Shikhara

The soaring parabolic or curvilinear mountain-peak tower erected over the garbhagriha in northern (Nagara style) Hindu temples, symbolizing the sacred cosmic mountain Meru.

Kandariya Mahadeva Temple

The largest and most ornate northern (Nagara) style Hindu temple at Khajuraho, India, dedicated to Shiva and noted for its rhythmic clustered miniature spires and richly sculpted erotic relief friezes.

Brihadisvara Temple (Thanjavur)

A monumental southern (Dravidian style) Hindu temple built by Chola king Rajaraja I, characterized by its sheer 13-story pyramidal granite vimana topped by an enormous monolithic octagonal dome capstone.

Shiva Nataraja

A sacred Chola dynasty bronze sculpture depicting Shiva as the Cosmic Dancer surrounded by an aureole of flames, trampling the demon of ignorance (Apasmara) and balancing creation and destruction.

Angkor Wat

A massive 12th-century Khmer temple-mountain built by Suryavarman II in Cambodia, surrounded by an immense moat and concentric galleries rising to five central lotus-bud towers symbolizing Mount Meru.

Fogong Si Pagoda (Yingxian Wooden Pagoda)

An octagonal multi-tiered Buddhist timber pagoda built in 1056 in Shanxi, China, during the Liao dynasty, standing as the oldest fully wooden multi-story pagoda in the world.

Dougong

An intricate interlocking wooden bracket system unique to traditional Chinese and East Asian architecture that cantilevers outward from columns to support heavy projecting roof eaves while absorbing seismic energy.

Horyu-ji Pagoda

A Japanese five-story Buddhist timber pagoda in Nara, constructed around a suspended single central cedar pillar (shinbashira) that independent interior floor systems sway around during earthquakes to prevent collapse.

Ise Jingu (Grand Shrine of Ise)

The principal Shinto shrine in Japan dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu, rebuilt every 20 years (Shikinen Sengu) out of unpainted cypress wood using ancient post-and-lintel techniques that emulate prehistoric granaries.

Chigi and Katsuogi

Distinctive wooden roof decorations of Shinto architecture: chigi are forked finials projecting from the gable ridge, and katsuogi are short cylindrical wooden billets placed horizontally along the thatched ridge beam.

Porta Augusta (Perugia)

An ancient Etruscan fortified city gateway dating to the 3rd-2nd century BCE, featuring a massive voussoir-arched opening framed by fluted pilasters and a decorative frieze of round shields (clipei).

Etruscan Temple

A distinctive Italian temple form described by Vitruvius, characterized by a frontal approach on a high podium, a deep columned porch with Tuscan order columns, mudbrick walls, a three-room cella (triple cella), and terracotta rooftop statues.

Temple of Portunus (Rome)

A Late Republican Roman temple overlooking the Tiber River that merges Etruscan features (high podium, frontal steps, deep porch) with a Greek Ionic order in a pseudoperipteral arrangement.

Pseudoperipteral

An architectural plan in Roman temples where freestanding columns exist only across the entrance porch, while the flanks and rear of the cella feature half-columns engaged directly into the exterior walls.

Theatre of Marcellus

A monumental semi-circular open-air Roman theater completed under Emperor Augustus, notable for its exterior arched travertine facade demonstrating the canonical superposition of orders (Tuscan ground level, Ionic second level).

Amphitheater of Pompeii

The earliest known permanent Roman stone amphitheater (c. 70 BCE), built with an earth-filled cavea enclosed by continuous peripheral masonry blind arcades and double exterior staircases.

Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheater)

Rome's iconic freestanding four-story concrete and travertine arena inaugurated under Titus in 80 CE, featuring superposed exterior orders (Tuscan, Ionic, Corinthian, attic pilasters), annular barrel vaults, and a complex subterranean hypogeum.

Velarium

The vast retractable canvas awning deployed across the upper rim of the Colosseum and other Roman amphitheaters by imperial sailors to shelter spectators from intense sunlight and heat.

Hypogeum

The multi-level subterranean masonry substructure beneath the arena floor of the Colosseum containing animal pens, holding cells, and winch-operated mechanical lifts used during gladiatorial combats and wild beast hunts.

Forum of Trajan

The final and most magnificent of the Imperial Fora in Rome, planned by architect Apollodorus of Damascus and financed by the spoils of the Dacian Wars, featuring a vast colonnaded court, Basilica Ulpia, libraries, and Trajan's Column.

Basilica Ulpia

The immense civic legal and administrative basilica spanning the northern end of Trajan's Forum, laid out with double apses and a five-aisled nave flanked by rows of monolithic marble columns supporting a timber truss roof.

Column of Trajan

A 100-Roman-foot-tall marble victory column set between the Greek and Latin libraries of Trajan's Forum, wrapped in a continuous 625-foot spiral relief band illustrating the Roman campaigns in Dacia.

Trajan's Market

A multi-tiered commercial complex of brick-faced concrete constructed into the excavated slope of the Quirinal Hill, housing retail tabernae, administrative offices, and a Great Hall covered by groin vaults.

Pantheon (Rome)

A Hadrianic rebuild of Agrippa's temple dedicated to all gods, consisting of a deep octastyle monolithic granite portico connected to a cylindrical concrete rotunda supporting a 142-foot coffered dome.

Oculus

The central 27-foot-wide circular unglazed opening at the apex of the Pantheon's dome that admits changing sunlight and weather into the rotunda while lightening structural load.

Coffering (Lacunaria)

A series of sunken square or polygonal recessed ceiling panels used in Roman vaults and domes to lessen structural dead weight and create rhythmic geometric patterns.

Baths of Caracalla

A vast symmetrically planned public imperial bathing and recreational thermae complex in Rome containing a natatio, frigidarium, tepidarium, caldarium rotunda, exercise palaestrae, and public gardens.

Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri

A Roman church interior adapted by Michelangelo in the 16th century within the colossal groin-vaulted frigidarium hall of the ancient Baths of Diocletian.

Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine

The largest legal hall in the Roman Forum, departing from traditional columnar basilicas by utilizing three massive central groin-vaulted bays buttressed by coffered barrel-vaulted lateral aisles.

Old St. Peter's Basilica

The foundational 4th-century Constantinian Christian basilica in Rome erected above the burial site of Saint Peter, establishing the Latin cross plan with an atrium, narthex, five-aisled nave, transept, and semicircular apse.

Transept

The transverse arm of a cruciform church intersecting the main nave at right angles in front of the apse, originally introduced in Early Christian basilicas to accommodate pilgrimage traffic.

Santa Sabina

An early 5th-century Christian basilica on the Aventine Hill in Rome preserving its timber truss roof, marble revetment, clerestory light, and nave arcades supported by fluted spolia Corinthian columns.

Spolia

Repurposed architectural elements, such as antique columns, capitals, or reliefs, salvaged from older pagan buildings and reused in Christian architecture for symbolic authority and economy.

Santa Costanza

A 4th-century imperial Christian mausoleum in Rome built for Constantina, designed as a central-plan rotunda with a high domed central space encircled by a barrel-vaulted ambulatory carried on paired composite columns.

Vintage Mosaic (Santa Costanza)

An Early Christian vault mosaic decorating the ambulatory of Santa Costanza, depicting cherubic putti harvesting, hauling, and treading grapes into wine, merging Roman Bacchic agrarian imagery with Christian Eucharistic meaning.

Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

A 5th-century cruciform brick funerary chapel in Ravenna with blind exterior arches and an interior covered in vibrant glass mosaics, including a starry deep-blue central dome and lunettes.

Good Shepherd Mosaic (Galla Placidia)

An entrance lunette mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia depicting Christ in golden robes and a royal purple mantle, holding a tall gold cross and tending to sheep within an idyllic landscape.

Baptistery of Neon (Orthodox Baptistery)

An octagonal 5th-century brick baptistery in Ravenna with an interior marble baptismal pool and a dome mosaic depicting the Baptism of Christ by Saint John with a classical personification of the River Jordan.

Sant'Apollinare Nuovo

A 6th-century three-aisled palace basilica in Ravenna built by the Ostrogothic King Theodoric, famous for its clerestory mosaic friezes showing long processions of male and female martyrs advancing toward Christ and the Virgin.

Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes (Sant'Apollinare Nuovo)

A narrative mosaic panel from the upper wall of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo showing a beardless imperial Christ in purple gesturing towards apostles presenting bread and fish against a flat, symbolic gold backdrop.

San Vitale (Ravenna)

A Justinianic 6th-century octagonal central-plan martyrium church in Ravenna featuring an off-axis narthex, two-story semicircular columned exedrae, a vaulted ambulatory, and radiant imperial mosaic panels.

Justinian and Attendants Mosaic

The celebrated presbytery mosaic panel in San Vitale showing Emperor Justinian I haloed in imperial purple carrying a gold paten, flanked by Bishop Maximian, imperial officials, and soldiers bearing the Chi-Rho shield.

Hagia Sophia

The cathedral of Holy Wisdom in Constantinople built under Justinian by mathematicians Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus, uniting a basilican plan with a 108-foot central dome resting on pendentives and buttressed by half-domes.

Pendentive

A triangular spherical section of vaulting that effects the transition between the circular rim of a dome and the supporting square corner piers below.

Theotokos Apse Mosaic (Hagia Sophia)

A monumental 9th-century post-iconoclastic mosaic in the apse semidome of Hagia Sophia representing the enthroned Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child on her lap against an uninterrupted gold mosaic field.

Squinch

A masonry arch, corbel, or lintel constructed diagonally across the upper corners of a square bay to transform it into an octagonal base capable of supporting a dome.

Cloisonné Masonry

A decorative Middle Byzantine exterior construction technique where rectangular stone blocks are framed on all four sides by thin red terracotta bricks and thick mortar joints.

Katholikon of Hosios Loukas

The main 11th-century Middle Byzantine monastic church in Phokis, Greece, designed on a domed-octagon-cross plan using squinches, polychrome cloisonné brickwork, and rich interior mosaics.