Regional Ways of Seeing: A Big-Data Approach for Measuring Ancient Visualscapes

Abstract

AbstractArchaeologists have long acknowledged the significance of mountains in siting Greek cult. Mountains were where the gods preferred to make contact and there people constructed sanctuaries to inspire intervention. Greece is a land full of mountains, but we lack insight on the ancient Greeks’ view—what visible and topographic characteristics made particular mountains ideal places for worship over others, and whether worshiper preferences ever changed. This article describes a data collection and analysis methodology for landscapes where visualscape was a significant factor in situating culturally significant activities. Using a big-data approach, four geospatial analyses are applied to every cultic place in the Peloponnesian regions of the Argolid and Messenia, spanning 2800–146 BC. The fully described methodology combines a number of experiences—looking out, looking toward, and climbing up—and measures how these change through time. The result is an active historic model of Greek religious landscape, describing how individuals moved, saw, and integrated the built and natural world in different ways. Applied elsewhere, and even on nonreligious locales, this is a replicable mode for treating the natural landscape as an artifact of human decision: as a space impacting the siting of meaningful locales through history.