Pathways to Europe's Landscape

Chapter 4 Imagination and Explanation: Landscapes of the Mind People and landscape and Good Government mural in Siena, Italy An eminent English archaeologist, Sir for example. The Netherlands was a country Mortimer Wheeler, once famously said that where the environment had been heavily ‘the archaeologist may find the tub, but altered by human intervention, notably altogether miss Diogenes’. In this reference through extensive land reclamation to the ascetic Greek philosopher who programmes. Landschap paintings therefore renounced riches and comforts and lived in a emphasised human activities and actions such tub, Wheeler meant that archaeologists as cattle droving, settlement and farming. sometimes forget the people of the past in However, landscape paintings in the common their obsession with ‘things’, and in particular sense came to depict the environment in forget about how people thought and felt. In picturesque terms that highlighted nature, not this chapter we will be moving back to culture. In the Welsh context, for example, ‘people’, real and imagined. We will ‘put literary descriptions of ‘landscape’ before the Diogenes back in his tub’. We will be moving 19th century are very few, and this is not away from material landscapes to landscapes unusual. of the mind and imagination, mental For archaeologists over the past fifty years landscapes. This has been a continuously or more, ‘landscape’ has served as a underlying theme of the whole book, of convenient (and sometimes not particularly course, but in this chapter we turn to older accurate) term to provide an escape from ways of explaining the landscape. single site studies. It implies not simply a Today’s cultural landscapes can too easily broad tract of land, but an area that requires be viewed principally as physical landscapes, a careful and informed attention: the attention material past made up of features which of the intellect rather than of the eye. It has have been shaped by historical processes – become an area of study in itself. subsistence, industrial exploitation, hunting, Now, and embedded within the European religion or warfare, for example. The cultural Landscape Convention, we can see emerging landscapes inhabited by people in the past a new understanding of what landscape is. seem to have been altogether more subtle, This is an all-embracing concept, and an very much ‘mental’ landscapes, recognising inclusive one socially, not restricted to 4 11- Chapter Part the ‘built’ elements of the landscape, but also ‘beautiful’ or special landscapes, for example. consisting of natural features such as woods, It draws on historical and literary associations mountains, ri vers and stones, and in worlds as well as the physical and material. It inhabited by gods, giants, trolls and legendary combines nature and culture. Most heroes. importantly it views landscape very clearl y as a matter of perception, an idea not a thing. It is an imagined construct looking to the Landscape – what does it mean? environment and to the real world for its It is important to bear in mind the origins raw material, and to the inner eye, to the of the term ‘landscape’ when we try to intellect and to the senses for its meaning project ourselves back in time to the minds and character. But if this is not a new idea of ancient people and how they understood (being partly a return to the 16th-century Landscape to Europe’s Pathways their surroundings. Landscape is a relatively artists’ definition of landscape as the recent invention, derived originally from the depiction of the world rather than the world term landschap that developed in the itself) this book does demonstrate an idea Netherlands in the late 16th century, for new to many. This is that although ‘landscape’ painted depictions of an area, although there can only exist in the ‘here and now’, its had been earlier largely symbolic depictions perception must take account of the such as the 14th century painting of the Bad environment, with its very long visible, 67 tangible and retrievable history (and societies at a certain stage in their prehistory). development. The word itself comes from Crucially, this view insists on a distinction the Greek ‘mythos’ which originally meant between environment and landscape. There speech or discourse but which (as they were has always been an environment, changing supplanted by apparently more reliable through time, with or without human written stories) later came to mean fable or influence, but the landscape only exists with legend. It now usually refers to stories of people and only in our own time. We can forgotten or vague origin that are mainly use archaeology (and documentary religious or supernatural in nature. Originally, research), as the last chapter shows, as one however, they sought to explain or rationalise way to reach an understanding of the the supernatural and society. All myths (like environment in order to create our modern scientific explanations) were landscapes. But we can only guess as to presumably at some stage actually believed to whether past peoples had ‘landscape’ in their be true at some level by the people who minds in anything like the same way that we used or originated them. A modern do. Traditional myths are one way of trying equivalent is perhaps the ‘urban myth’–stories to approach this subject, and of bringing that are superficially ridiculous but that some past perceptions of the world into our nevertheless contain a deeper widely own mental landscapes. recognised truth about the modern world. Broadly speaking, myths seek to rationalise and explain the universe and all that is in it, Explanations from the past including contemporary landscapes. They had So in what way did people in the more a similar function to science, theology, religion, distant past have any clear sense that they history and archaeology in modern societies. inhabited a ‘landscape’ as such, rather than Myths remain important and alive, and we simply living on the land, inhabiting a world in need make no apologies for including in our which the raw materials were present, book a chapter of stories which examine a recognised and respected. There are few of the many myths that exist in our numerous tales from all over the world, not twelve areas. Some may describe actual only from Europe, which are concerned with events but, as they all belong to pre-literate the essential matter of landscape, mountains, oral traditions, they have been embellished rivers, woods, swamps and stones, as well as and re–fashioned by various story-tellers events such as floods, the cycle of the over time. It is now almost impossible to tell seasons and the origins of societies. what originally happened to inspire them. Moreover, all of these are connected with We have already told a story about the people or beings, often named (names Kaali meteorite, to show the physical traces it meant power): none occur unattached and left in the landscape, and in the next chapter isolated. These are clear indications that we will show how modern archaeological people were fully appreciative of what we science explains it. Here we look at the Part 11- Chapter 4 11- Chapter Part would term their ‘local landscapes’ and their myths that its fiery trail and fall to earth has stories are a way of trying to explain the left behind. myriad of observed phenomena. Even today, The Kaali meteorite shower is the only ‘nations’ and ‘states’ are imagined rather than cosmic catastrophe in Europe of any natural communities. One of the principal magnitude that has hit a populated area. It ways of agreeing cultural identity, then as also happened at a time when everything now, was by a shared inheritance of myth, connected with heaven was very carefully folklore and tradition. followed, and clear traces of it have survived Explanations have become more in Estonian, Latvian and Germanic sophisticated with the passage of time, but mythologies. More distant allusions can also society has forgotten at least as much as it be found in Celtic, Greek and even Christian has learned, which after all is one of the mythologies. Pathways to Europe’s Landscape to Europe’s Pathways reasons for needing archaeologists. The For a very long time (over 2500 years) words and ideas embedded in stories, myths people had no idea that the Kaali features and traditions may suggest the thought were meteorite craters. Who could imagine processes which gave rise to our landscape. that rocks could fall down from the sky? Archaeologists need to study both in order Where from? Many legends were therefore to approach the past. created about the formation of Lake Kaali. Early explanations of the world are One of them tells us that once there had usually called myths and are present in all been a fortification in Kaali. Another version 68 is that this is an old volcano crater. A third Scotland, yet several scientists have deduced version is that an old cave collapsed, leaving from the descriptions that the spot where ‘the rocks and stones piled up. barbarian showed me the grave where the The Finnish national epic Kalevala, the Sun fell dead’ must instead be Saaremaa. oldest parts of which recall events that Pytheas’ descriptions of the way of life on happened thousands of years ago, describes Thule also seem to fit better the pre-Roman in its songs how the Sun had fallen down and Iron Age in Saaremaa than with the far-off caused a terrible accident on a distant island North Sea. The same place seems to be across the sea. Colourful motifs about the described in the epic ‘Argonautics’ of Rhodos burning of marshes and lakes in Saaremaa Appolonios (295-215 BC) where a sailor and weeping for the perished are frequent in found a ‘deep lake in the far north – the Estonian folklore, too – ‘the swamps were set burial of the Sun, from which still fog rose as on fire, the lakes stood in flames …’.

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