Sacred landscapes in antiquity : creation, manipulation, transformation / edited by Ralph Haussler and Gian Franco Chiai.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Häussler, Ralph, 1968- editor.

Chiai, Gian Franco, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sacred space--Mediterranean Region--History.

Sacred space.

Religion and geography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (448 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, England : Oxbow Books, [2020]

Summary:

From generation to generation, people experience their landscapes differently. Humans depend on their natural environment: it shapes their behavior while it is often felt that deities responsible for both natural benefits and natural calamities (such as droughts, famines, floods and landslides) need to be appeased. We presume that, in many societies, lakes, rivers, rocks, mountains, caves and groves were considered sacred. Individual sites and entire landscapes are often associated with divine actions, mythical heroes and etiological myths. Throughout human history, people have also felt the need to monumentalize their sacred landscape. But this is where the similarities end as different societies had very different understandings, believes and practices. The aim of this new thematic appraisal is to scrutinize carefully our evidence and rethink our methodologies in a multi-disciplinary approach. More than 30 papers investigate diverse sacred landscapes from the Iberian peninsula and Britain in the west to China in the east. They discuss how to interpret the intricate web of ciphers and symbols in the landscape and how people might have experienced it. We see the role of performance, ritual, orality, textuality and memory in people's sacred landscapes. A diachronic view allows us to study how landscapes were 'rewritten', adapted and redefined in the course of time to suit new cultural, political and religious understandings, not to mention the impact of urbanism on people's understandings. A key question is how was the landscape manipulated, transformed and monumentalized - especially the colossal investments in monumental architecture we see in certain socio-historic contexts or the creation of an alternative humanmade, seemingly 'non-natural' landscape, with perfectly astronomically aligned buildings that define a cosmological order? Sacred Landscapes therefore aims to analyze the complex links between landscape, 'religiosity' and society, developing a dialectic framework that explores sacred landscapes across the ancient world in a dynamic, holistic, contextual and historical perspective.

Contents:

Cover

Book title

Copyright

Table of contents

List of contributors

Preface

1 Interpreting sacred landscapes: a cross-cultural approach

Section 1 Manipulation of sacred sites: monumentalising natural features

2 Inside the volcano and into the trees. The sacred grove ofDiana Nemorensis in archaic Latium between the literaryand archaeological sources

3 Sacred landscape and rock-cut sanctuaries of theIberian Peninsula: the principle of duality or harmony ofcomplementary oppositions

4 The transformation of cult places during the Roman expansion inthe Iberian south-east (third–first century BC)

5 Natural sacred spaces in Celtiberia: myth and reality

6 Nature as sacred landscape in Roman Dacia

7 Environments and gods: creating the sacredlandscape of Mount Kasios

Section 2 Transformation of sacred landscapes

8 Over the rainbow: places with and without memory in the funerarylandscape of Knossos during the second millennium BC

9 Material forms and ritual performance onMinoan peak sanctuaries

10 Transforming landscapes: exploring the creation of asacred landscape in north-east Cyprus at the beginning ofthe Late Bronze Age

11 Monumentalisation of watery cults inTarraconensis and Lusitania

12 Romano-Celtic temples in the landscape:Meonstoke, Hampshire, UK, a hexagonal shrine to Eponaand a river deity on a villa estate

13 Past and present: the Ilissos area of Athens inthe second century AD

14 The impact of economics on sacred landscapes: hoardingprocesses taking place in Attic sanctuaries 625–475 BC

15 Landscape, Christianisation and social power in Late Antique andearly medieval Galicia

Section 3 Myth and memory: landscapes invested with meaning

16 Pan’s sacred landscapes in classical Arkadia

17 Creating sacred landscapes in Roman Phrygia: the cases ofLaodicea on the Lycus and Aizanoi

18 On urban rock sanctuaries of eastern Greece

19 Landscapes of Poseidon Hippios in Arcadia

20 Performing sacred landscapes: worship and praise ofland in Greek drama

21 Integration and interaction in Egyptian non-royal sacredlandscapes: a study of the tomb-chapel of Neferhotep (TT50) Generated by AI.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (EBook Central, viewed June 12, 2025).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781789253344

1789253349

9781789253283

1789253284

OCLC:

1430662101