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Hokusai's influential Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji illustrates how this mountain resonates as a landmark, regardless of the viewer's identity, location, season, or time of day. Whether or not the human subjects acknowledge the mountain, it retains this role; it is always there (Hokusai 1830-1831, 1830-1832, 1831-1833, 1852).
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This paper explores the reciprocal relationship between landscape, human attention, and time. It presents two sacred landscapes: Epidaurus and Nemea, located in the northeastern Greek Peloponnese. In both landscapes, worshipers created sanctuaries on prominent mountains. Eventually, their attention shifted downhill where they built larger, monument...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... straddles right across the page, or recedes to the far distance; it is white against a dark sky, or black under sunset clouds; it is seen through the stems of bamboos, or through the strips of dyed cloth hanging on poles to dry; it is even seen as a reflection or shadow in lake or sea . . . ' (Hiller 2013, 12-13) (Figure 4). It is a place empowered by centuries of regard, past and present. ...
Context 2
... this type of prominence required two different datasets: a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and a vector point shapefile representing feasible locations of observers in the study area (Susmann 2020, Table 2; 182). 5 For each observer, I applied the following workflow: I used ArcGIS's Skyline tool to model that observer's horizon in 360 degrees (Figure 14). This produces a polygon shapefile that surrounds the observer, recording the horizontal extent of their visibility. ...
Context 3
... data about travel pathways between these two sanctuaries are scarce (Melfi 2010, 318) but there is evidence that the two became entwined Figure 14. Using a combination of ArcGIS's Skyline tool and custom Python codes, the horizon line for any observer can be simplified into a vector line. ...
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... Once meaningful viewing experiences, targets, and viewing points are defined, the archaeologist develops an analytical framework. Scholars working on visualscape often use geospatial tools (Bernardini et al., 2013;Landeschi, 2019;Llobera, 2001Llobera, , 2003Llobera, , 2004Llobera, , 2007aLlobera et al., 2010;Richards-Rissetto, 2017;Richards-Rissetto et al., 2023;Susmann, 2019Susmann, , 2020Susmann, , 2021. Next, they interpret the results. ...
Mount Akraia, located in the northeastern Greek Peloponnese, hosted an open-air worshiping site beginning in the tenth/ninth c BCE. The space gained popularity and was quickly transformed into a monumental sanctuary known as the Argive Heraion. The sanctuary is elevated and easy to spot from a distance; it provides unobstructed views of the surrounding region. The location is historically significant as well, overlying a Mycenaean cemetery and settlement. Ancient authors frame the Argive Heraion as a touchstone sacred landmark; contemporary scholars echo these descriptions. This article synthesizes the textual and material record, questioning which of the Argive Heraion’s visual characteristics captivated worshipers’ senses, and if worshipers’ perceptions shifted over time. My complete dataset spans the tenth–second c BCE and considers all other places where group worship happened in the Argive Plain. Using GIS and text analyses, I measure and compare an array of viewing experiences that were culturally meaningful for Greek worshipers. The resultant models compare the Argive Heraion’s visualscape over time, framed against the broader sacred landscape. I also look to the present day. Using contemporary tourist reviews, I unpack nuances that are missing in the archaeological and historical record. Personal histories shift what we see and how we see it.
Significant features of the ancient Greek landscape were its open-air cult sites, one of which was theἄλσος, translated in modern English to 'sacred grove'. Sacred groves were areas of natural forest, or trees that were planted as spaces of worship. In these spaces, religion was interwoven with thelandscape; wherein human-nature interactions formed a foundation for cultural practice. Yet,
despite the connection between landscape and religion in these spaces, research in the field of sacred groves has focused primarily upon their religious qualities: scholarship has rarely delved into sacred groves as natural ecosystems, and their roles as ecosystems in ancient Greek religion. This approach has overlooked the inherent entanglement between nature and culture in ancient Greece,
as well as the agency of sacred groves as natural ecosystems in the ancient Greek world. Accordingly, this thesis asks: what is the nature of entanglement between humans and ancient Greece's sacred groves?
This paper focuses on the little-known but important cave-sanctuary of Zar Trypa on Mount Ossa (modern Kissavos) in north-eastern Thessaly. In 1910, research conducted at the site uncovered remains of votives from the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods, including a group of eight inscriptions dedicated to the Nymphs. Despite this remarkable epigraphic assemblage, the site was not investigated beyond a single excavation season and today is largely unknown. Consequently, the Zar Trypa cave and its finds have never featured prominently in the discussion of Thessalian religion or of Greek ‘natural’ sanctuaries. Combining archival studies, on-site observations and GIS-based methods of landscape archaeology, this paper sets out to re-assess the surviving archaeological evidence from the Zar Trypa cave, to examine the spatial setting of ritual activity at the site, and to place the cave in the context of Mount Ossa's natural environment and ancient settlement pattern. Drawing on the methodological framework of ‘lived religion’, this assessment not only contributes towards our understanding of ancient religious experiences at the Zar Trypa cave, but also addresses broader questions such as the significance and meaning of ‘sacred travel’ in pre-Christian antiquity.
