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FourWinds F
FourWinds Apr 25, 2004 19:35:04
Replying to Steve Gray

I was heading towards suggesting this too.

A fantastic study was done in Sligo by Stefan Burgh and published as a paer called "Landscape of the Monuments".

In this he has taken the lanscape that can be seen from a monument and where it can be seen from. The diagrams are mind blowing. I've never seen a study like it by anyone else, of anywhere else.

This work had a large impact on me. He didn't really prove anything, but the scale of the work is enormous. As I was wondering along discovering cairns and stone rows today I kept thinking along these lines: Why here? Where can I be seen from? Where can I see?

I came across a previously unrecorded pile of stones today. By applying various checkpoints I know have I am fairly confident that it is a genuine cairn.

P Pete G
Pete G Apr 25, 2004 19:46:36
Replying to FourWinds

http://aveburytour.mysite.freeserve.com/Silbury/Photos/SilburyLangdean.jpg
here's a pic I took today of Silbury and west Kennet from langdean circle.
One of the projects I have been working on for sometime now is a slide show of views of silbury from the wider Avebury landscape. Silbury can even be seen from Winterbourne Bassett circles 2 miles north of Avebury and would have dominated the views for anyone approaching Avebury from the northern entrance.
PeteG

N nigelswift
nigelswift Apr 25, 2004 19:55:32
Replying to FourWinds

Paul Cripps of Soton Uni did a similar study of all the Avebury views. The PhD used to be on the net but seems to have disappeared. The paper is this...

Cripps, P.
Pathways through the Avebury Landscape - A study of dynamic spatial relationships in the Later Neolithic Avebury landscape
The landscape around Avebury bristles with prehistoric archaeology, and this paper presents an approach used in an attempt to enhance the understanding of the experiential nature of this landscape in terms of the changing patterns of visibility afforded a moving subject. This approach involved the fusion of the analytical viewshed capabilities of a Geographic Information System with more subjective visualisations facilitated by three-dimensional modelling in order to study not only static spatial relationships inherent in the landscape but dynamic spatial relationships between an active observer and their environment.

As I recall, that also was a bit inconclusive, and anyway concentrated more on the GIS and Computer methods involved. I suspect that some of you lot with more alignment-trained eyes would get more out of it than he did.