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Ritual Landscapes
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BuckyE
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Re: Ritual Landscapes
Oct 21, 2005, 16:33
I haven't forgotten this, but have been busy with life in general. I'll reply to the first post as I think that will place this at the bottom.

Perhaps the basic niggle I have with the whole concept of "ritual landscape" is that it's too vague. Using the word "landscape" at all connotes, at least to me, that the makers were somehow concerned with a "natural," pre-existing landscape. I ralise the word can also imply mucking about with the land, as in "landscaping." A dictionary definition of the noun gives:
1 a : a picture representing a view of natural inland scenery b : the art of depicting such scenery
2 a : the landforms of a region in the aggregate b : a portion of territory that can be viewed at one time from one place c : a particular area of activity : SCENE <political landscape>
3 obsolete : VISTA, PROSPECT
and of the verb:
transitive senses : to modify or ornament (a natural landscape) by altering the plant cover
intransitive senses : to engage in landscape gardening

See? The whole concept is, like so much else in the English language, contradictory. The noun refers to NATURAL scenery, the verb to UNNATURAL scenery. I don't bring this up to be contrary, I think its an important point because I see the Neolithic structures and their placement and my intuitive (very poor, I'm sure) understanding of them to be somewhere on our side of the middle of a vector of thought that ranges from the late Paleolithic to today.

That vector is from truly worshipping the natural "landscape," (perhaps certain features of it: caves, cliffs) as a manifestation of the supernatural, to today's view of land as just another humanly owned tool to be used any way we want. Of course this is a gross exaggeration and oversimplification, but I do think it has some merit as a talking point.

Somewhen and -where people set off on the modern "lords of creation" journey. That's what interests me, and Loie and I have been searching--albeit desultorily and haphazardly--for that beginning among the stones. It FEELS to me like the apotheosis places (Stonehenge, Avebury and their associated avenues and whatnots) were already on our side of the turn. Of course, we carry our baggage as we search, and try to be as sensitive as we can. Some sites do really feel like they were placed to emphasize the natural land, but many don't. And even in the case of the former, does a site oriented to (for example) a mountain tell us a lot about the builders' thoughts about the mountain?

I don't know. The whole exercise is kind of discouraging. I'll never figure it out.
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