"It is often forgotten that dictionaries are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. Languages are irrational and of a magical nature."( jorge luis borges, prologue to 'el otro,el mismo') I know starting a post with a qoute is a tad pretentious but i will try and be transparent in my reasoning. I have noted in the past threads (especially on contentious subjects) that some posts become stuck on language rather than the broader meaning ( lets say spirit of the post) I think another qoute will establish my position on posts, if we replace the word book where it appears in the qoute with post. "A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upoun his voice and the changing, durable images it leaves in his memory; A book is not an isolated being; it is a relationship an axis of innumerable relationships" (jorge luis borges, again) Right sorry about being so verbose! I have noted that terms such as ritual, sacred and numinous have caused some considerable debate (some very interesting) I would propose that most of us even in the mundane define our lives by and through ritual, that most of us have or have had a numinous experience at least once in our lives, that then helps define our relationship with the sacred (and what and how we define as sacred) As inheritors of a lanscape (internal and external) we are subject to innumerable inferences and influences that (if not define) effect our perception of reality. Within this reality we percieve certain sites and structures as 'special' 'evocative' 'sacred' 'breathtaking' beautiful' 'numinous' etc. I would posit that to fully explore these sites (and there nature) we therefore must explore ourselves, our very nature. we must contextualise our external lanscape by that with which we relate to it our very counciousness. cheers MM
Aha well that's what Fieldnotes are born to do - no one can argue with you there about your subjective experience (unlike on the forum)!
I'm sure most of us like a bit of the numinous subconscious connotationy thing when visiting / thinking about sites. But - the fact we're hanging round this website at all marks us as at least a teeny bit anoraky. And there's nothing an anorak likes more than lists and facts and certainty.
So you'll have to put up with both really.
>>I would posit that to fully explore these sites (and there nature) we therefore must explore ourselves, our very nature. we must contextualise our external lanscape by that with which we relate to it our very counciousness <<
Hi MM,
Why I am drawn to all history and pre history in particular is for this very reason that it helps to >>explore ourselves, our very nature << However, I don't get the idea that these sites are in any way more important, in a metaphysical sense, than any other human construction. What they do is remind me that everything changes. They help me to see today with more clarity. An example of this would be on Lewis where I can find the great, grey, concrete block bus shelters that were erected as a protection from the prevailing west gales, just as fascinating as the more mainstream 'historical' buildings.
I search for a narrative to these ancient structures, the whats, whys and wherefores; and I praise the forever forgotten names of those men and women who built them. The greatness that I can see in these forgotten ancestors I try to see in those around me in our present age, and also in myself.
Because, more often than not, we forget just who and what we really are. These structures help me to remember.
;-)
Couldn't agree more with the main thrust that spending time to ingest the site, the surroundings and identify what parts of your own personal mental soup lights up is something personally worthwhile and does of course allow you to reach a deeper 'appreciation' of a site but I'm not sure about 'understanding'.
There is also the very likely possibility that you end up projecting the feelings and emotions evoked by what your senses are picking up back out onto the landscape in front of you, rather than an accurate reflection of what the site is 'about', 'for' or 'signifies'. An accurate reflection is most unlikely in our world apart from ancient times and in any case cannot be verfied in any meaningful way.
Thats not to say its in any way worthless, it is getting in touch with a possible primary motive of stone draggers but I think we may be too confident in our ability to 'download' information from the landscape rather than upload the emotions produced in our minds.
The mental projection of the mind triggered by the stimulus on the landscape is what I would consider to be the root of the 'sacred' place, the sacred is inside the human mind in my opinion and is invoked by triggers in the world around us, probably linked to the territorial nature of us wild humans. Our territorial nature most likely causes us to place significance on features in the landscape to define 'our space', the uniqueness of certain landscapes could trigger a universal response in the human psyche and it becomes a universally sacred landscape. I'm not sure that there's anything more inherently sacred in the rock, mud and life on Croagh Patrick than in the rock, mud and life covering a landfill. There are no sacred landfills but its not beyond the bounds of the human psyche.
Basically what I feel is that its good to connect with parts of our nature and label things that touch certain psychological nerves as 'sacred', 'beautiful', 'sexy', 'scary' but I think it gives us more information about the human mind rather than the stimuli the senses are picking up. Maybe its cold and cynical to take this view but I'm not in any way trying to lessen the feelings and emotions picked up and experienced, in fact its part of our nature we should all explore more but I dont think we can then say with our heads and our hearts with certainty that its inherent in and part of the landscape, no matter how much we wish it to be.
I've felt for a long time that we have no good idea of the purpose of the stones to their erectors. My feelings come from the wild diversity of types of sites: tiny little statue menhirs, huge stones; rings, squares, lines; henges, cursuses, avenues; aggregations and isolated sites; huge barrows and tiny cists; rock art and plain stones; in one place thousands of years of use and reuse but over there a one-time erection. There's just so much stuff and such a long time span it's difficult for me to believe I'm looking at some "monolithic" culture phenonenon that had an agreed on meaning and use over all that time and space.
Our modern culture has definitely projected our own concerns and the concerns of anthropologically studied cultures back onto the past. In some very limited instances the latter may have some relevance; the former is problematical indeed!
Visiting the sites has been informative in that it's shown Loie and me what a melange of phenonena is still available for seeing. Visitng museums associated with the sites, and with their cultures in general has probably been more informative. I think we can see "culture" more readily in small objects than in large. So many questions come to my mind when visiting the sites. Does this place look the same as it did when it was built and used? Was it surrounded by an impenetrable forest that blocked all views? Or vice versa, for that matter. Is it now so wrecked we can't really imagine what it looked like then? Because Loie and I are poorly informed visitors, or because archaeology has missed something, are we missing seeing the one element that was most important to the builders? I think we've come away from our travels with many more questions than answers!