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Sense of Place
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thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat
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Re: Sense of Place
May 07, 2012, 13:49
Resonox wrote:
As the landscape in certain places has altered from what it was over a few millennia,eg..some barrows appear to be built on slopes or at very least off level(maybe in some cases it is deliberate to blend with the surroundings)...even Roman occupation and as recent as Norman...remains of some buildings are on land which rolls away alarmingly(Roman flooring remains at Bignor being an example here)...these at least being dwellings would have had to been level to be inhabitable...I am assuming that natural soil erosion and farming account for this. So would this or does this , do you think alter our perceptions of sense of place today?


It must, I think, certainly where the change is dramatic. Not just (un-)leveling of the ground either. Dartmoor must have looked unrecognisably different when the rows and circles were erected to what it does now. Generally hills and mountains are the same as during the Neolithic and Bronze Age, water sources rise in much the same places and follow largely the same courses. Rock outcrops and tors are where they were. But much else is entirely altered. Trees have been cleared and new forests have grown, with non-native species, boundary hedges and fences, roads and tracks, telephone wires, dams and canals, railway lines, etc. have all been superimposed on the landscape. The sky is full of vapour trails, even above the remote hills. On the east coast especially, the shore meets the sea in an entirely different place.

As an even more extreme example, I recently visited a cave on the Gower, now overlooking the Bristol Channel (as indeed does the famous Paviland cave). When the cave was in use in the paleolithic, the Bristol Channel was a plain, with bison and antelope running across it.
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