Landscape memory in Arcadia
<p>This thesis examines the topographical relationship between religious sites and sanctuaries in rural areas of Arcadia following the bronze-age collapse, and their associated mythology, to ascertain if there is any possible evidence of why population settlement in the later geometric, archai...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English Greek, Ancient (to 1453) |
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2021
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| Summary: | <p>This thesis examines the topographical relationship between religious sites and sanctuaries in rural areas of Arcadia following the bronze-age collapse, and their associated mythology, to ascertain if there is any possible evidence of why population settlement in the later geometric, archaic, and classical periods favoured more urban settlement away from the rural places mentioned in the mythology of Arcadia. It relies on the assumption commonly made that since ritual practice was of paramount importance for the Greeks, that sanctuaries in rural Arcadia must have a connection to the mythology of such characters as Herakles and Artemis, as these were among the characters of mythology written about in Classical period plays; and in descriptions of the landscape by ancient writers such as Pausanias.</p>
<p>But settlement in the countryside was after a time changed compared to the various poleis (Cities) that began construction from the geometric period onwards through the archaic and classical. Is there evidence to be found of a change in the landscape at some point in the past that meant certain groups of people had to move away from rural areas substituting the rural gods for the polis’s protector gods, and leaving behind the traditional sites of worship and ritual memory? A natural cause perhaps such as prolonged drought, or through invasion or collapse of a dominant power? Or is the particularly Greek system of synoecism the root cause?</p>
<p>Crucial to unravelling the nexus of mythology, and to come to any conclusions about its relation to the everyday lives of people and how people related to the landscapes they lived in, requires careful and considered evaluation of the writings of ancient writers such as Polybius and Pausanias.</p>
<p>This paper aims to consider why then, in a landscape so woven with mythology and sanctuaries, did the relationship between polis settlement and rural sanctuaries become different over time?
Why did the places of rural myth, and its associated religious and ritual practice, take on different meanings from where people chose to live in the geometric period onwards?</p> |
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