Monumentalizing Landscape: from present perceptions to the original meanings of Galician Megalithism (NW Iberian Peninsula)

Abstract

The study of Landscape as social construction implies considering its economic and territorial dimensions, as much as its symbolic ones. A major topic in such kind of studies is to reconstruct the ways as natural and social space was perceived by past societies. We ought approach the project of building an Archaeology of Perception. One of the aims of such research programme would be to evaluate the effect of natural and artificial landscape features on past human observers. This paper will argue that a possible strategy for studying these dimensions of past landscapes could be based on the systematic analysis of visual features of the prehistoric monuments and in the characterization of the escenic effects and vistas related to them. A detailed analysis of the pattern of location of megalithic monuments, of their visibility and visibilization conditions, allow us to recognize certain regularities what display an intentional will to remark on the existence of the monument and provoke dramatic artificial effects. In such way we could approach a phenomenology of prehistoric perception without falling in mere subjetive solutions. This study is based in a systematic review of the megalithic monuments from Sierra de Barbanza (NW Iberia). Its final scope is proposing theoretical and methodological standpoints to approach these phenomena, but as well producing a case-study to reconstruct monumental strategies to shape cultural landscapes in Neolithic Europe and observe the diacrony (ie, continuities and changes) of these traditions.