You had to ask didn't you....

Just a quickie - hasn't it also got something to do with the landscape being a 'backdrop' or 'stage' for some kind of (regular and perhaps important) activity? Trouble is, 'ritual' is a word that people could disagree on the meaning of too....

love

Moth

My first suggestion is that cursus building may have taken place at a time when there was a significant covering of trees. Although they are perhaps our largest monuments, they also have the least visual profile. There lack of visual impact suggests to me that they were built at a time when there was little point in making a visual statement - i.e. they were surrounded by trees.

So, if I continue with this train of thought, we have an image of a large clearance in the middle of a forest. The only cursus I know well is the one at Thornborough, which runs roughly north eastwards from the River Ure. It's orientation may have something to do with access - perhaps it was started close to the river and carried on for at least a mile or so. at a width of c100m.

Another wild leap of faith is my sudden realisation that the modern road that runs parallel to it may well have been created at that time also, and if so, may have continued to Pickhill, via Kirklington. This stretch is littered with possibilities. First of all there are some very interesting carvings at Kirklington Church, as well as an unknown earthwork and a burial mound. At Pickhill the church there has some possible archaic images, as well as a place called Roman Castle and the site of an Abbey. Continuing the line of the cursus goes through a henge, at least two burial mounds, two pit alignments, the site of a possible chapel as well as the other stuff - all in a six mile run. Furthermore, it would connect the Swale and the Ure.

So, my wild imagination now sees two river ports - one on the Ure, the other on Swale. Between them a causeway through an area of heavily forrested marshland, in the centre of this causeway the area opens up to a long cursus - a 100 metre wide area that has been raised by a meter or so. Presumably the tree coverage would been cleared back some way beyond the cursus area in order to get earth for the banking of the cursus.

So, I am now seeing it as a meeting point - the people of the Ure and the people of the Swale - east meets west in the largest gathering ever known. How many? Well it's a big area, for the sake of aguement lets say a thousand. Some pretty local, others perhaps making this a well timed stopover point in their semi nomadic lifestyle.

Why were they meeting? well, we have no evidence, no burials from that period that I know of, but we do have signs of very widespread use of the landscape - field walking has collected a large amount of flint for the period so we know these people were making extensive use of the landscape even then, either temporarily or on a more permenant basis.

I have had another thought that perhaps sheds some light on this place. Thornborough Moor is a flat plain, even today water is never far away and in the distant past it would have been quite a swamp for long periods of time. Perhaps what we are seeing here is two peoples sharing a place that they are only just beginning to exploit. Maybe this was the place where the two peoples first met, which presumably had a positive outcome and that afterwards they turned the meeting into a ritual event?

That does not explain the Cursus really. Cursus building is a widespread feature in the British landscape. Presumably the people who built the cursus in Dorset did so for the same reasons as the people who built this one. I have already eluded to a possible practical reason for its construction - raising the level of the ground to make it drier. However that does not explain the dorset cursus, which is on chalk and well drained. OK. Lets assume that all Cursus building was for the same reason, that would indicate that we have the deliberate and pre planned building of a monumental structure with no obvious practical purpose. Art or Ritual? Today we would call it art of course, but back then it would have been a political statement I think - "Look what I can do!" "My tribe is so rich and well organised that we can build this huge and completely useless structure"!

OK, so I'm still thinking ;o)

I think the error here is in the question. Ritual Landscapes Constructed?

I don't think you can do that ... except maybe with the exception of Silbury, but then that's not a landscape.

If such a thing existed then it was crafted with the highlighting of key points in the existing landscape. It wasn't a blank canvas. It's like staring at a hill and realising it looks like a sleeping giant, so you erect a temple to it. Add a cairn on those two hills and they becomes a pair of breasts.

I don't think one was ever created (not by man anyway :-). It's more a case of it being *realised*.

In a certain sense, ALL constructions that aren't strictly practical define ritual landscapes. The mere fact of marking the ground implies "this bit is significant," and then further implies all the bits outside it must be either less significant (the stuff you can't see for the trees, walls, stones, etc.), or have some significance defined by the marked bit (the Avenues, the views, the celestial events, etc.)

As a kind of an aside, I'm coming to think this "marking and dividing" is really the salient point for we moderns. But that would be another thread.

So, to determine whether the ancient constructions were trying to say something about a PARTICULAR bit of landscape (a hill, or river, etc.) I'd think you'd have to do some fairly boring statistical analysis along these lines...

1. Identify every landscape feature in the geographical area occupied by a given culture that stands out as visually significant. In other words, that fairly obviously "stands out" from the crowd of somewhat similar features. Certainly not every hilly horizon resembles a recumbent person. Which of them do? Which of them have some other resemblance? OK, make as many lists as needed.

2. Identify all the constructions of that culture.

3. Compare all known constructions to all identified landscape features. Is there some seemingly statistically significant correlation?

4. What are the chances (broadly speaking) that a randomly placed construction might have a seemig correlation? That is, are there particular places (only certain hills, through valley notches) from which the landscape feature is seen, or can you see it from everywhere around? Does the placement of constructions seem statistically to take advantage of placements?

When Mr. Cope and friends have done this work and demonstrated some correlations, I'll take notice. Until then, the cursuses, henges, rings, standing stones and barrows were placed where the hallucinating shamans dreamed they should be for reasons we'll probably never know and don't make any difference to our understanding of the things IN GENERAL.

OK?

I haven't forgotten this, but have been busy with life in general. I'll reply to the first post as I think that will place this at the bottom.

Perhaps the basic niggle I have with the whole concept of "ritual landscape" is that it's too vague. Using the word "landscape" at all connotes, at least to me, that the makers were somehow concerned with a "natural," pre-existing landscape. I ralise the word can also imply mucking about with the land, as in "landscaping." A dictionary definition of the noun gives:
1 a : a picture representing a view of natural inland scenery b : the art of depicting such scenery
2 a : the landforms of a region in the aggregate b : a portion of territory that can be viewed at one time from one place c : a particular area of activity : SCENE <political landscape>
3 obsolete : VISTA, PROSPECT
and of the verb:
transitive senses : to modify or ornament (a natural landscape) by altering the plant cover
intransitive senses : to engage in landscape gardening

See? The whole concept is, like so much else in the English language, contradictory. The noun refers to NATURAL scenery, the verb to UNNATURAL scenery. I don't bring this up to be contrary, I think its an important point because I see the Neolithic structures and their placement and my intuitive (very poor, I'm sure) understanding of them to be somewhere on our side of the middle of a vector of thought that ranges from the late Paleolithic to today.

That vector is from truly worshipping the natural "landscape," (perhaps certain features of it: caves, cliffs) as a manifestation of the supernatural, to today's view of land as just another humanly owned tool to be used any way we want. Of course this is a gross exaggeration and oversimplification, but I do think it has some merit as a talking point.

Somewhen and -where people set off on the modern "lords of creation" journey. That's what interests me, and Loie and I have been searching--albeit desultorily and haphazardly--for that beginning among the stones. It FEELS to me like the apotheosis places (Stonehenge, Avebury and their associated avenues and whatnots) were already on our side of the turn. Of course, we carry our baggage as we search, and try to be as sensitive as we can. Some sites do really feel like they were placed to emphasize the natural land, but many don't. And even in the case of the former, does a site oriented to (for example) a mountain tell us a lot about the builders' thoughts about the mountain?

I don't know. The whole exercise is kind of discouraging. I'll never figure it out.