INSOLL. Landscape

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion
Timothy Insoll
Print publication date: Sep 2012

Print ISBN-13: 9780199232444
Published to Oxford Handbooks Online: Sep-12
Subject: Archaeology, Historical Archaeology
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199232444.001.0001
Landscape
Gunnar Haaland, Randi Haaland
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199232444.013.0003
Abstract and Keywords
This article attempts to view environment from a ritual perspective. A ritual

perspective on landscape is understood as one that focuses on the way
people views their environment as symbolic expressions of basic values and
cosmological ideas. It is assumed that ‘belief’ in such values and ideas is
fostered primarily in non-verbal communication and in metaphorical and
mythological forms of verbal communication. Two theoretical perspectives
are outlined that are considered fruitful for interpretation of the ritual
perspectives entertained in different societies. One sees understanding
as based on ‘imaginative structures that emerge from our experience as
bodily organisms functioning in interactions with an environment’. The other
deals with special types of social process loaded with meaning — the so-
called life-cycle rituals — where individuals' positions in society during a
short period of time are dramatically changed both in the sense of changing
rights and duties in relation to interaction partners, but also in the sense of
being indoctrinated into new understandings of the nature of human and
cosmological relations.
environment, ritual perspective, basic values, cosmological ideas, verbal communication,

non-verbal communication, life-cycle rituals
• View with a grain of sand

• We call it a grain of sand,
• but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
• It does just fine without a name,
Page 1 of 21 Landscape
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• whether general, particular,
• permanent, passing,
• incorrect, or apt.
• Our glance, our touch means nothing to it.
• It doesn't feel itself seen nor touched.
• And that it fell on the windowsill
• is only our experience, not its.
• For it, it is not different from falling on anything else
• with no assurance that it has finished falling
• or that it is falling still.
Wislawa Szymborska: View with a grainof Sand (p. 135)
1 Introduction
In Chinese Mandarin there is a phrase jing guan (jing referring to something,

e.g. a ‘grain of sand’ that is seen, and that exists whether the viewer
exists or not; guan—the view that a viewer sees when looking at jing) that
capture one of the many meanings of the English word landscape. We find
this meaning fruitful for our discussion because it directs our attention
to the relationship between particular viewers and the things they view.
The concept covers things that exist in the viewers' natural environment
as well as in man‐made modifications of that environment. However,
what the viewer views is not a mirror reflection of what ‘exists’ in a ‘mind‐
independent’ environment; what is viewed depends on the perspective of the
viewer, e.g. a botanical, geological, aesthetic, emotional, etc. perspective.
Han Lorzing's statement that ‘I believe that “landscape” is not just an
isolated, objective thing in itself. To a large extent “landscapes” are created
by our perceptions…landscape is a product of the human mind’ is close to
our position (Lorzing 2001: 6).
The environment looked at from different perspectives can be represented

in different ways. This takes us to the level of the original conceptual
content of landscape in Anglo‐Germanic languages, namely landscape as a
painted representation of an expanse of nature as viewed by the painter and
executed and judged according to aesthetic ideas current in the community
of art viewers in North‐western Europe at a particular time.
2 Theoretical Reflections
What we are dealing with here are the ritual perspectives of the viewer
and the components in the environment that are perceived as loaded with
ritual significance. We shall first try to explore some theoretical perspectives
we find fruitful for interpretation of how landscapes are constituted for
people dwelling in varying kinds of natural environments, as well as for
different ways in which they interact with these environments. Ingold,
drawing on Gibson, has argued that knowledge ‘obtained through direct
perception is thus practical, it is knowledge about what an environment
offers for the pursuance of the action in which the perceiver is currently
engaged. In other words, to perceive an object or event is to perceive
what it affords…the information picked up by an agent in the context of
practical activity specifies what are called the “affordances” of objects
and events in the environment’ (Ingold 2007: 166). Learning to attend to
components in the environment is obviously of fundamental importance in
peoples' acquisition of knowledge about the environment. However, they
may view the environment from a different perspective from the practical
one of material satisfactions. We shall here focus on viewing environment
from a ritual perspective. Drawing on Barth (1975) we understand a ritual
perspective on landscape as one that focuses on the way people view their
environment as symbolic expressions of basic values and cosmological ideas.
Following Bateson (1973) we assume that ‘belief’ in such values and ideas
is fostered primarily in non‐verbal communication and in metaphorical and
mythological forms of verbal communication.
We thus see elaborations of verbal and non‐verbal forms of symbolic

expressions as having different qualities with regard to making the message
convincing. Features of the natural environment may thus be taken as
expression of ideas and values in peoples' minds; they exist as something
independent of man, but given meaning as representing immaterial but
meaningful dimensions of the human condition as expressed by Rappaport:
‘meanings are often causal and causes are often meaningful, but because
more fundamentally, the relationship between the two, in all its difficulty,
tension, and ambiguity, expresses the condition of a species that lives, and
can only live, in terms of meanings it itself must construct in a world devoid
of intrinsic meaning but subject to natural law’ (Rappaport 1979: 54). The
environment people dwell in does not only offer ‘affordances’ for practical
use; it may also offer ‘food for thought’, e.g. as ‘affordances’ for construction
of meanings. Furthermore people may seek to enhance the importance of
such symbolic meanings by expressing them in humanly built constructions,
e.g. megaliths, temples, graves, sculptures, etc. that make them more
compelling. An important difference between such representations and
the original idea of landscape painting is that these representations are
not intended to represent the viewed material environment at all, but
rather immaterial ideas the builders are struggling to express. Paintings
did not change the environment viewed, whereas modifying the material
environment to represent basic ideas in material forms changes what
viewers see in that environment.
We shall try to outline two theoretical perspectives we consider fruitful for

interpretation of the ritual perspectives entertained in different societies.
One is expressed in various publications by Lakoff and Johnson (see Lakoff
and Johnson 1999 for relevant references). A central point in their cognitive
theory is that understanding is based on ‘imaginative structures that emerge
from our experience as bodily organisms functioning in interactions with an
environment’ (Johnson 1987: xv and xvi).
For our purpose we find orientational metaphors interesting. Most of them

have to do with spatial orientations. These spatial orientations arise from
the fact that we have bodies of the sort we have and that they function
as they do in our physical environment. Orientational metaphors are not
arbitrary. They have a basis in our physical and cultural experience. While
the polar oppositions like up–down, in–out, back–front etc. are physical in
nature, the metaphors based on them vary from culture to culture. Our task
is to explore how in different cultures they are taken as ‘affordances’ for
spinning metaphoric associations into objectified forms. The up–down vertical
orientation lends itself to certain types of metaphorizations, e.g. mountains
are close to the sky, and the sky is often associated with ‘heavenly’ qualities;
underground is down and below the level where humans live, and often
associated with evil qualities, or bad qualities opposite to heavenly qualities.
Such features of the landscape may also be taken as models for man‐made
constructions in the environment.
Another theoretical perspective we take from van Gennep (1960) and Turner
(1969). Special types of social process that are loaded with meaning are the
so‐called life‐cycle rituals where individuals' positions in society during a
short period of time are dramatically changed both in the sense of changing
rights and duties in relation to interaction partners, but also in the sense
of being indoctrinated into new understandings of the nature of human
and cosmological relations. According to van Gennep (1960), life‐cycle
rituals have a characteristic threefold structure consisting of a phase of
separation; a liminal phase of transition; and a phase of reincorporation.
Turner (1969) argues that the liminal phase is critical in the sense that the
‘initiands’ are in an ambiguous position of ‘betwixt and between’ where
they are exposed to a range of experiences like humiliation, seclusion, and
tests. The symbolism in initiation rituals is often modelled after the event of
birth, the event that brings people into the world, with a person's transition
to adult position in society frequently considered a second birth. In such
rites of transition from birth to death, objects closely associated with the
birth‐giver—the woman—are frequently given ritual prominence. Likewise
burials are often symbolized as transitions into another womb—the womb of
mother earth (Haaland and Haaland 1995). A critical point in these rites is
to communicate messages about basic values in ways that are experienced
as compelling for ‘initiands’ as well as for other members in society. Settings
for such rites very often draw on natural features that can be perceived
as being ‘betwixt and between’ contrasting cultural categorizations of the
environment, a contrast that can be perceived as analogous to the social
‘betwixt and between’ of transition rites. Liminal dimensions of social life
may thus lead to conceptualization of specific kinds of environmental places
as liminal. The ambiguity inherent in such spaces may furthermore be seen
as an ‘affordance’ providing locations for a wider range of ritual activities of
ambiguous nature like sacrifices and shamanistic performances.
3 Comparative Ethnographic and Archaeological Material
Bogs may be perceived as liminal because they are neither solid land nor
lakes, and thereby be chosen as sites for performance of a range of ritual
activities involving social liminality. During the Celtic and Roman Iron age
in North‐western Europe, bogs were used as deposition areas for human
corpses that appeared to have been sacrificed. The recovered bodies were
males, females, old, and young; some were strangled; some had their
throats cut. Investigation of their stomach content indicates that in several
cases they had been served a special gruel that may have been part of
a ritual meal (Green 2002a). Human sacrifices imply that the victims are
individuals set apart from the rest of the community. The ritual feeding
can be interpreted as a liminal phase before the sacrificial act incorporate
them in another form of imagined existence. Bogs in this region are also
deposit areas for iron objects, especially weapons. Green (2002b) argues that
deposited iron weapons were deliberately destroyed or ‘killed’ before being
sacrificed. This custom of sacrifice was widely practised during the Early Iron
Age from France to Denmark and especially in wetland areas that we have
suggested may have been perceived as liminal landscapes.
Caves are another kind of natural formation with features that can be
perceived as ‘betwixt and between’ in the sense that they are neither inside,
nor outside the mountain; neither above, nor below the ground. Furthermore,
caves lend themselves to metaphoric associations with the female body.
They are, in a way, ‘natural’ settings for ritual activities like initiations and
shamanistic performances. The rock art in European Upper Palaeolithic
caves may have been connected with puberty rites. Foot and handprints
of adolescents seem to have been deliberately made as part of rituals on
the cave wall (Owens and Hayden 1997; see Bahn, Ch. 22, this volume).
The neophytes would have been part of hunter‐gatherer communities, and
the painting of different animals may have been related to a totemistic
world view and social organization where different social categories were
associated with specific animal species. Since shamans perform in a liminal
space between the world of daily practical life and the world of spirits, Lewis‐
Williams' argument that caves in the European Upper Palaeolithic and in
Southern Africa up until recently were used for shamanistic rituals seems
reasonable (see Lewis‐Williams 2001 for extensive references).
The most penetrating analyses of the way cosmological ideas affect

people's experience of natural environment is found in the ethnography of
Australian Aborigines. According to Morphy, ‘Time was created through the
transformation of ancestral beings into place, the place being forever the
mnemonic of the event’ (Morphy 1995: 188). Features of the environment
people dwell in are woven into a complex ideational world connecting
events at present to the creation of the world by the ancestral beings
in Dreamtime. As people move through a natural environment, a ritual
perspective dominates the meanings they read from it, meanings where
belief in ‘the ancestral past becomes part of the subjective experience of the
individual’ (Morphy 1995: 189). It is a primary concern for them to acquire
knowledge about components of the natural environment and the message
about social order and cosmological meaning that is an integral part of these
components. Moving through the landscape is a movement in relation to
‘affordances’ in the form of food as well as constantly reminding people of
ideas also expressed in myths, rituals, songs, and dances. It is movement
down a ‘memory lane’ where the present is blended with the past, as well as
giving directions to the future.
A modern example of important messages being encoded in the environment

is the fortress of Masada located on top of a 400-metre‐high mountain near
the Dead Sea. Masada is the location where, 1,900 years ago, after three
years’ resistance 960 Jews were defeated by 5,000 Roman soldiers and
committed collective suicide instead of being captured by the Romans.
Whatever the motives behind the suicides were, the act is so dramatic that
it invites the construction of messages about its wider significance. The
Jewish rabbinical tradition suppressed the memory of Masada for nearly
2,000 years because suicide was considered contrary to the beliefs of
Judaism (Bruner and Gofain 1988: 63). However with the establishment of
an independent Israeli state, surrounded by hostile Arab neighbours, the
historic Masada events provided a source for construction of a compelling
story of national solidarity and willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice of
life for protection of the state of Israel. This is manifested in many ways, e.g.
new recruits to the Armoured Corps of the Israel Defense Forces take their
oath of allegiance at the Masada fortress and repeat the words ‘Masada shall
not fall again’ (Bruner and Gofain 1988: 61); Israeli school children, as part
of their school curriculum, visit Masada; families may hold bar mitzvahs in
a synagogue at the fortress. The memory of Masada is part of an ideology
emphasizing resistance and legitimating claims to land. It plays on an
association with the story of David and Goliath.
Since features and activities loaded with symbolic meaning may not have
left any material remains, the interpretative task is formidable. As an
ethnographic example of such a situation we shall draw on Barth's (1961)
argument in his Basseri monograph. The Basseri are sheep herders migrating
about 500 km between the Lar lowlands in southern Iran and the Kuh‐
i‐Bul mountains in northern Iraq. These migrations are overwhelmingly
determined by natural, economic, and political considerations. However,
these migratory activities that reflect technical imperatives are, according to
Barth, also vested with central and crucial meanings in contexts vested with
particular value, e.g. a whole range of activities such as camping, migration,
and herding. The environment they move through during the great migration
is experienced as a ritual landscape in which basic values are expressed.
Drawing on a study by S. Szynkiewics of a different nomadic group, the

Mongols, Caroline Humphrey also expresses the idea that changing camps
‘is felt to be an event outside the ordinary run of life; they put on special
clothes and use festive harness for their horse…The ritualized journey is thus
a spatial liminality, into and out of the otherness of “travelling that is not
travelling” paradoxically an otherness which serves to reassert the nomadic
way of life—thereby negating movement in the everyday world’ (Humphrey
1995: 142–3). That migratory movements can be experienced as ritual is
manifest in a rich inventory of verticality and body metaphors associating
environmental and man‐made structures (e.g. tents and sacrificial altars
constructed as a heap of stones) with ideas of the energies of the world
conceived as spirits. An important point made by Humphrey is that there
are different rival views of landscape among the Mongols; one transmitted
mainly in chiefly and lamaist rituals, and another transmitted mainly in
shamanistic rituals. Shamanistic rituals are frequently performed in caves
conceptualized as the mother's womb and focused on fertility cults, a
metaphoric association that can be seen as a liminal phase.
In neighbouring Buddhist Tibet on the high plateau in an austere

environment live the Brokpa herders. The environment exists as naturally
constituted by mountains, plains, valleys, rivers, and lakes providing
vegetation for an adaptation based on yak and sheep, but also exists in the
herders' minds as cosmologically constituted—as a sacred realm where gods
and goddesses manifest themselves in steep mountain peaks and deep
lakes.
Ritual meanings (particularly for the karmic consequences of activities) are

an important aspect of yak‐herders' daily activities. These activities are
played out in a sacred environment that ‘usually comprises two matched
parts, a god (mountain, rock or tree) and a goddess (lake, spring or river).
The two marry. They are sometimes confused with the supernatural father
and mother of the hero or king, the mountains representing both the sky and
its gods (lha) and the lake, the underground region and its deities (lhu). Each
community inhabiting a given site thus finds its identity in its own ancestor
and holy place’ (Stein 1972: 210). The verticality of the natural environment
thus dominates the metaphoric constructions of the ritual landscape. It was
down the mountain that the first ancestor descended from the sky to earth.
Royal tombs and palaces (e.g. Potala) were analogous to mountains (Figure
2.1). Rich symbolic representations construct analogies between the human
body, the tent, and the sacred mountain as pillar of the world.
Figure 2.1 The mountain‐associated Potala palace in Lhasa.
Figure 2.2 To the right in the picture just beyond the rice terraces there are
three almost indistinguishable sacred hilltops on a range as seen from Argal
village, western Nepal.
A similar analogy between the body and the relation of environmental

features is found in Hindu Nepal. The Magar of Nepal make an analogy
between the human body and the landscape. As the human head is more
pure and auspicious than other parts of the body, it has more lustre and
power. Like the head of the human body, the higher hilltops are pure and
more powerful than the lowland. All inferior beings and substances remain
in the lower places (Khattri 1999: 36). Orthodox Hindus apply the verticality
metaphor to legitimize the ranking of castes according to the criterion of
purity (higher caste) and pollution (lower castes).
An interesting point here is that features in the natural environment may

be considered sacred because their forms lend themselves to associations
with the forms of ritual objects in Hinduism, e.g. the point where three rivers
merge is called Trisuli and is considered the most holy place for rituals, such
as funerals, because it is associated with the holy symbol, trisul (trident)—
one of the strong arms of lord Shiva. Likewise, three mountains, that from a
specific settlement can be seen as following one behind the other, may in
this settlement be associated with the trisul (Figure 2.2).
Figure 2.3 The iron‐smelter with his furnace located on a low slope outside
the village of Oska Dencha, south‐west Ethiopia. The village is located on the
hilltop behind the tree.
Verticality is also a striking dimension of the natural environment of the

mountainous regions in south‐western Ethiopia inhabited by Omotic‐speaking
people. These societies practise a caste- and gender‐based division of
labour with the farming caste on top and the iron‐smelter and his wife at
the bottom. The ranking is based on purity–pollution criteria (apparently
culture historically unconnected to Hindu traditions), most clearly expressed
in restrictions on commensality and sexuality, but also in a variety of
other metaphors constructed as vertical, e.g. different occupational castes
occupy different positions in the marketplace where the elevation of their
seating correlates with their position in the caste ranking; the elevation
of homestead locations also tends to correlate with caste ranking; when
meeting on a hilly path the highest‐ranked person will move towards the
hillside and the lower caste towards the valley side (Figure 2.3). People thus
move in a natural environment that is loaded with ritual meaning expressing
where people belong in the social hierarchy. The idea of the smith being
polluted prevented him in the past from owning land and till the soil since
his pollution would also pollute the agricultural land. The location of the site
for sacrifice to ancestors is clearly based on up–down orientation with higher
castes sacrificing on higher elevations and low castes in lower parts. This
is related to concern about the fertility of the earth and the importance of
avoiding its pollution. Iron‐smelting is an activity that is believed to pollute
because it involves transforming elements of the sacred earth by fire, an idea
related to Omotic origin myths (Haaland, G., Haaland, R. and Data 2004).
In contrast to Tibet, a variety of myths explain how the ancestors emerged

from a hole in the earth. The idea of the earth as sacred is clearly not
drawing on the vertical metaphor where down is bad, but rather on the
analogue between the fertility of women and the fertility of the earth. This
association is manifested in traditional purification rituals. In case a high‐
caste man transgresses the rules of restrictions on sexual intercourse with
low‐caste women, he has to undergo a purification ritual whereby he creeps
naked through a tunnel dug in the earth after a ram or chicken has been
sacrificed at the opening and the blood sprinkled in the tunnel.
4 Earth, Land, Monuments
The idea of the earth as sacred we expect to be a dominant motive in

agricultural societies where it also may be connected to ideas of descent.
Among the matrilineal Khasi of Shillong and the related patrilineal Munda of
Bihar megaliths (menhirs and dolmens) are material expressions of such an
association.
In the archaeological record we find that the initial farming population

constructed Megalithic grave monuments. These monuments were used as
ossuaries, indicating ancestral cults connected with possession of agricultural
land, possibly linked to the idea that people imagined themselves as
descendants of land as much as the descendants of their ancestors
(Joussaume 1985; Milisauskas 1978). The prominence of the megaliths in the
natural environment where they stand out as landmarks indicate that they
may also have served as material reminders of memories legitimating claims
to land and positions. For viewers of megaliths today, Tilley has argued that
they are ‘the primary signifiers of the Neolithic past, of the first farming
populations who transformed the natural environment on a large scale rather
than simply living in it’ (Tilley 1995: 50).
A very different linkage between agriculture and grave monuments are
found in the Middle East. The transition to a sedentary way of life originally
seems to have been brought about in locations favouring broad‐spectrum
resource utilization. The sedentarization process was further stimulated
when people started cultivation of non‐domesticated grains. Drawing
on Hodder's argument that in this transition people came together at
ritual centres for initiation, feasting, burials, exchange, marriage etc., we
assume that this served to integrate different groups in larger systems of
interaction, a process leading to increased sharing of landscape perspectives
(Hodder 2007). The growth of sedentism at the time when domesticated
plants appear in quantity (during the ninth millennium bp—the so‐called
PPNB period) is manifest in various features associated with permanent
house constructions, e.g. increased ‘use of skulls to build histories in
houses’ (Hodder 2007: 112); inventions of ovens for bread‐making; change
in house constructions from round to square houses with several rooms
for storage (Kujit and Goring‐Morris 2002); and an extensive use of lime‐
plastered floors, often elaborately painted. Special care seems to have been
taken in making the hearths. The floors have been replastered repeatedly,
indicating a remarkable continuity in house occupation. Some houses at
Catal Huyuk were replastered up to 450 times in a time span of 70–100
years. Houses were rebuilt in the same place, and so were the hearths. A
most important point that indicates that the house enclosed a fundamental
social unit is that it is made the site for burial either below the floors, along
the walls, or in its foundation. This suggests the importance of rituals taking
place inside the house most probably directed towards worship of dead
ancestors, typically expressing continuity with the past as well as fostering
continuing solidarities for future social organization (see Akkermans and
Schwartz 2003; Kuijt and Goring‐Morris 2002). Hodder argues that this is
related to focus on memory constructions and its social relevance (Hodder
2007).
We will suggest that the oven and its bread‐based cuisine may have played
a similar role in creating and maintaining memories. It was from the hearth‐
oven that people were fed. The food that we eat and incorporate into our
body is surrounded by symbolic beliefs. Symbolic uses of food and food‐
related items such as ovens and hearths are embedded in material forms.
In West Asia the house was the context in which food symbolism and social
relations and identities were created, expressed, and maintained over
time (Haaland 2007). Hence, while on the Atlantic coast the metaphoric
associations between land and ancestors are manifested in physical
constructions in the natural environment fostering a ritual perspective on the
natural environment, the Middle Eastern material on the other hand indicates
that the metaphoric associations are manifested in material constructions
and activities inside the house.
In a methodologically challenging study, Julian Thomas has made a thought‐

provoking interpretation of the ritual landscape of Avebury as viewed by
Neolithic occupants of the area. The environment is dominated by the
long barrow of West Kennet, the enormous mound of Silbury Hill, three
causewayed enclosures (the most famous being Windmill Hill), and Avebury
Henge. Important deposits in the barrows consist of human bones indicating
connections between ancestors and group land as well as being part of
secret rituals communicating the importance of this connection.
Drawing on Barth's analysis of Baktaman material (Barth 1987), Thomas

argues that ‘the power attached to ritual knowledge derives in part from
the awareness of the community at large of the existence of “secrets”
which they are denied’ (Thomas 1995: 36). The structure and location of
the monuments are such that it is reasonable to make the assumption that
people differentially positioned in society had access to view different kinds
of activities surrounded by secrecy. By positioning himself in the Avebury
environment and viewing what can be seen from different positions on the
outside of the monuments as well as from the inside of the monuments
he concludes that ‘power was at least vested in access to certain forms of
knowledge…Thus while particular individuals might gain entry into the more
secluded parts of these monuments, and be initiated into cardinal secrets of
the community, those denied these privileges would have understandings of
their own.’ The ritual landscape perceived would thus differ among people
who had gone through different stages in initiation to secret knowledge.
The acts and items connected with funerals are woven into complex contexts
of meaning that it is not easy to interpret. As an example we can take the
selection of sites for tombs in China. This is based on feng shui, a kind of
divination that seeks to bring the graves (and other buildings as well) into
the most harmonious position in relation to features (e.g. mountains, wind,
and water) of the natural environment. Feng shui is part of a belief system
that sees the world as made up of positive and negative forces. The idea of
feng shui is to stimulate the flow of positive energies qi and redirect the flow
of negative energies sha.
5 Conclusions
Looking at the natural environment from a practical perspective, a Chinese

may see possibilities for resource utilization, while looking at it from a ritual
perspective her concern may be how to move in relation to positive and
negative energies. Since Chinese culture has a cultural continuity of at
least 4,000 years, it may be possible for archaeologists to trace this belief
system backwards in time from grave material. Where we cannot assume
such cultural continuity the archaeologist faces a much more difficult task in
connecting material objects to the belief systems that they were part of.
The natural environment people dwell in may, as the Chinese example

indicates, be experienced as different landscapes depending on the
perspectives from which the viewer looks at it. In contrast to the Chinese
example where people's ritual perspective is anchored in ideas expressed
in widely distributed cosmological beliefs, people may seek to anchor such
a perspective in ideas expressing an analogy between the order in the
movement of celestial bodies and the social order. Social order is precarious
under any circumstance, and a fundamental problem in any society is to
make belief in the principles underpinning social life convincing. Construction
of monuments and performance of rituals that celebrate phases in the
movement of celestial bodies may be a convenient way of fostering an
idea that the social order is legitimate because it is related to undisputable
observations of regularities in the movement of heavenly bodies. That
Stonehenge and other prehistoric monuments are oriented in relation to sun,
moon, and stars may not be so much a matter of astronomic interests, but
rather a concern for order in the movement of social life. If this argument
holds then the experienced ritual landscape people dwell in extends from
the sky they observe to the local setting of ceremonial monuments and ritual
activities.
In our view interpretation of prehistoric peoples ritual perspectives can

benefit from theoretical approaches developed in cognitive sciences and
in anthropology, and via comparative ethnography. The importance of
comparative ethnography is that it draws attention to possible restrictions
on the range of variations in ritual landscape constructions found under
different circumstances, e.g. natural environments, mode of exploitation
of such environments, and complexity of social organization. The possible
connection between practical and symbolic ‘affordances’ may from this
perspective be rewarding through, for example, following on from Barth's
and Humphrey's work with comparative studies of ritual landscape among
pastoralists in other ethnographic regions. Similarly it might be rewarding to
explore ritual landscapes among communities in different adaptations under
environmental circumstances that we have not touched upon here, e.g. rain
forests and the arctic. Humphrey's and Morphy's documentation and analysis
of landscape conceptualizations are exemplary cases that might provide
models for such studies. A good starting point may be to follow Lorzing's
advice and find out ‘how people all over the world express themselves when
they express the equivalent “for landscape” in their own language’ (Lorzing
2001: 26).
Thomas's stepwise procedure is a promising approach in the use of

anthropological insight in ‘landscape’ archaeology. By placing himself
in different positions in relation to the archaeological monuments and
viewing them from perspectives derived from anthropological contributions
Thomas tries to imagine what the ritual landscape might have looked like for
prehistoric people. This approach may be fruitful for interpretation of other
enigmatic prehistoric ritual landscapes like the Nazca lines in Peru.
Suggested Reading
Aberg, A. and Lewis, C. 2000. The Rising Tide: Archaeology and coastal
landscapes (Oxford: Oxbow).Find it in your LibraryAldhouse-Green, M. and
Aldhouse-Green, S. 2005. The Quest for the Shaman (London: Thames
and Hudson).Find it in your LibraryAveni, A. F. 2000. Between the Lines:
The mystery of the giant ground drawings of ancient Nasca, Peru (Austin:
Texas University Press).Find it in your LibraryBender, B. 1993. Landscape,
Politics and Perspectives (Oxford: Berg).Find it in your LibraryBradley, R.
1998. The Significance of Monuments: On the shaping of human experience
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The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion

Print publication date: Sep 2012

Gunnar Haaland, Randi Haaland

Abstract and Keywords

This article attempts to view environment from a ritual perspective. A ritual

environment, ritual perspective, basic values, cosmological ideas, verbal communication,

• View with a grain of sand

Wislawa Szymborska: View with a grainof Sand (p. 135)

In Chinese Mandarin there is a phrase jing guan (jing referring to something,

The environment looked at from different perspectives can be represented

We thus see elaborations of verbal and non‐verbal forms of symbolic

We shall try to outline two theoretical perspectives we consider fruitful for

For our purpose we find orientational metaphors interesting. Most of them

3 Comparative Ethnographic and Archaeological Material

The most penetrating analyses of the way cosmological ideas affect

A modern example of important messages being encoded in the environment

Drawing on a study by S. Szynkiewics of a different nomadic group, the

In neighbouring Buddhist Tibet on the high plateau in an austere

Ritual meanings (particularly for the karmic consequences of activities) are

Figure 2.1 The mountain‐associated Potala palace in Lhasa.

A similar analogy between the body and the relation of environmental

An interesting point here is that features in the natural environment may

Verticality is also a striking dimension of the natural environment of the

In contrast to Tibet, a variety of myths explain how the ancestors emerged

4 Earth, Land, Monuments

The idea of the earth as sacred we expect to be a dominant motive in

In the archaeological record we find that the initial farming population

In a methodologically challenging study, Julian Thomas has made a thought‐

Drawing on Barth's analysis of Baktaman material (Barth 1987), Thomas

Looking at the natural environment from a practical perspective, a Chinese

The natural environment people dwell in may, as the Chinese example

In our view interpretation of prehistoric peoples ritual perspectives can

Thomas's stepwise procedure is a promising approach in the use of

Akkermans, P. M. G. and Schwartz, G. M. 2003. The Archaeology of Syria:

—— 1987. Cosmologies in the Making (Cambridge: Cambridge Studies in

Bateson, G. 1973. ‘Redundancy and coding’ in G. Bateson (ed.), Steps to an

Bruner, E. M. and Gofain, P. 1988. ‘Dialogic narration and the paradoxes of

Gennep, A. van 1960 [1909]. The Rites of Passage (Chicago: Chicago

Haaland, G. and Haaland, R. 1995. ‘Who speaks the language of the

Hodder, I. 2007. ‘Çatalhóyük in the context of the Middle Eastern Neolithic’,

Humphrey, C. 1995. ‘Chiefly and shamanist landscapes in Mongolia’ in H.

Ingold, T. 2007. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in livelihood,

Joussaume, R. 1985. Dolmens for the Dead (London: Batsford).

Khattri, M. 1999. Sacrificial Places: An ethnoarchaeological study of the

Kuijt, I. N. and Goring‐Morris, N. 2002. ‘Foraging, farming, and social

Lorzing, H. 2001. The Nature of Landscape: A personal quest (Holland:

Milisauskas, S. 1978. European Prehistory (New York: Academic Press).

Morphy, H. 1995. ‘Landscape and the reproduction of the ancestral past’ in

—— 1998. Aboriginal Art (London: Phaidon).

Owens, D. and Hayden, B. 1997. ‘A comparative study of transegalitarian

Rappaport, R. A. 1979. Ecology, Meaning, and Religion (Richmond, CA: North

Thomas, J. 1995. ‘Politics of vision and the archaeologies of landscape’ in B.

Tilley, C. 1995. ‘Art, architecture, landscape (Neolithic Sweden)’ in B. Bender

Turner, V. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and anti‐structure (Chicago:

Stein, R. A. 1972. Tibetan Civilization (London: Faber and Faber).

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