Homepage Ralph Häussler |
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Many studies on ancient cults focus on individual sites, deities or cult places, but they often ignore the wider environment. Why did people choose a particular geographical location? What makes a geographical feature ‘sacred’ and how was this sacred space demarcated from the profane? The sacred landscape is not simply what we see, but a way of seeing: we see it with our eyes but interpret it with our mind. Landscape is therefore a cultural construct which gives meaning to places and reflect human memory. Religious signs, rituals, etiological myths, theonyms and epithets, as well as human physical constructions (e.g. architecture) together create a web of ciphers and symbols that make up the sacred landscape of a region, creating a text or narrative of a sacred landscape invested with meaning.
Here we also need to consider how the landscape might have been manipulated: this is most notable when contrasting the sacred rivers, springs and hills in the Iron Age with the subsequent monumentalisation beyond recognition of the same sites in the Roman period; human manipulation is a process we can recognise in many periods. Topographically conspicuous sites were often considered ‘sacred’ over many centuries despite changing religious understandings, necessitating adaptations to the cult, and finally leading to the Christianisation of the sacred landscape. This is only one small aspect relating to the sacred landscape’s transformation which might have been triggered by changing societal, cultural and political structures. For example, the municipalisation and urbanisation of many Roman provinces led to a profound re-organisation of the sacred landscape, creating a network of cult places in any one community:.... It is therefore important to analyse the links between landscape and ‘religiosity’, developing a dialectic framework that explores sacred landscapes in a dynamic, holistic, contextual and historical perspective. A diachronic view allows us to study how landscapes were ‘re-written’, adapted and re-defined in the course of time to suit new cultural, political and religious understandings. |
Sacred Landscapes
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Sacred Landscapes in Antiquity
Organisation of conferences on sacred landscapes 2014 and 2016:
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Methodology
Methodological approaches...
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