A North American Indigenous Narrative-based Inquiry of Culture and Land

This research uses a narrative cultural inquiry study to address the need to save the land our Mother Earth (Aki) and the relationship with Indigenous Spirituality through the topics/themes of Spirit Houses, Sa'be (Sasquatch) and Sacred landscape features such as Spiritual Sites, Ceremony and Pictographs within the geography of Turtle Island, North America in Northern Ontario, Canada. The rationale of this study was to address the larger inaadiziwin (philosophy) of Indigenous character and way of life with nature or “All My Relations” for the author.

Cyprus and Sardinia at the Transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age: A Sacred Landscape Approach

In the framework of this contribution, and taking a macro-historic sacred landscapes approach, we established a comparative project analysing in parallel the development of sacred landscapes of two mega-islands, Cyprus and Sardinia, at the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age. In both Cyprus and Sardinia, the period between the 12th and 8th centuries BC seems to have been a time when re-negotiations of individual, societal, and political identities took place, and this is clearly reflected on the construction of the sacred landscapes of the two islands. We first present our ‘landscape/macro-historic approach’; we then define the chronological horizon and the socio-historical contexts under discussion for each island, exploring at the same time how the hierarchical arrangement of ritual sites appearing at this transitional phase seems to be related with articulated social order or linked with shifting relations of power and cultural influence. Finally, we proceed to a discussion addressing the following three questions: (1) what is the relation between individual insularities and the construction of sacred landscapes on these two mega-islands?; (2) how can a ‘landscape/macro-historic approach’ assist us in better formulating microscopic approaches on both islands at the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age?; and (3) is a comparative approach viable?

Landscape and Divinity Spoken in the Same Breath

From where can we draw inspiration to cultivate an intimate sensibility into the spiritual nature of landscape, the foundation for designing gardens for meditation and healing? Through various spiritual lenses, this inquiry penetrates fundamental grounds for our subtle relationship with landscape. Beginning with excerpts of a private audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Middlebury College, at which I present my proposed plans and designs for Milarepa Center in Barnet, Vermont, this inquiry looks into the profound links between spiritual inquiry and the practice of designing gardens, making design of landscape integral to a spiritual path, and the profound relationship between Landscape and Divinity. It is presented in three parts: (1) spiritual inspiration; (2) setting terms on the table; and (3) expressions of sacred landscape.

Shrine Politics and Non-Institutional Religiosity

The Mrtvalj spring is an integral part of a more complex sacred landscape, the center of which is the Shrine of St. John the Baptist located in Podmilačje near Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The shrine is a multi-confessional pilgrimage destination that is also very popular within the wider region. The Mrtvalj spring is one of the key stops in pilgrimage itineraries, but it is not only a sacred place within pilgrimage practices. In this paper the conceptualization of the Mrtvalj spring’s sacredness is examined as a reflection of the relationship between the religious and the political. The author analyzes the relationship between the shrine’s politics, which are based on the ideas of a “Bosnian Lourdes” and a shared shrine, and the spring as a focal point for the shared non-institutional practices of believers of various religious affiliations. She aims to show that a shared sacred site does not necessarily have to be controversial, and calls for a revalorization of non-institutional religiosity, which has proved to be a rich phenomenon for the study of interreligious relations

Mining in a Sacred Landscape: Adivasis, Deities and Alliances in a Former Princely State in Odisha/India

The papers explores ideas of a sacred landscape inhabited by indigenous people as well as other communities, deities as well as other beings manifested in localities and ‘objects’ forming various relationships, alliances and a thick web of relationality in a former kingdom in central-eastern India. It introduces these historically evolved ties through the foundational narratives as well as contemporary rituals, while the area is undergoing major transformations after Indian independence and even more so in a phase of accelerated industrialisation, especially tied to a mining boom and sponge iron factories. The latter not only threatens to uproot an existing, though changing sacrificial polity around local deities, but it also has massive ecological consequences and leads to partially successful protests.

Reproduction of the sacred landscape of Teriberka in the context of tourism development in the Murmansk region

The article reveals the concept of a pilgrim landscape. The “pilgrims”, who visit Teriberka, are considered in the context of tourism development in the Murmansk region. The study was carried out by questionnaires and oral conversations with residents of the villages Teriberka and Lodeinoe. The main types of tourists visiting Teriberka and the motives of their travel from the point of view of the local residents are analyzed. The study has shown concluded that a trip to Teriberka is a search for quasi-religious authenticity and self-realization through participation in the “ritual” of sightseeing “sights” and places.

Beyond East and West – Geocommunicating Historical Sacred Landscapes

The Project “Beyond East and West: Geocommunicating the Sacred Landscapes of “Duklja” and “Raška” through Space and Time (11th–14th Cent.)” attempts to recreate and communicate the sacred landscape during a time of transition and transformation. The project has an interdisciplinary approach and incorporates multiple media, like maps, images, and 3D models. The study area of the project is situated at the junction between the Dinaric mountain range and the coastal region of the Adriatic Sea. Historically, the region was shaped by the power struggle between Byzantium, the First Bulgarian Empire, and the Serbian Realm. Ecclesiastically, it was a zone of interaction as well as encounter between Rome and Constantinople. The aim of the project is to discover and visualise the spatial and temporal aspects of these encounters and transformation processes.To communicate the historical sacred landscape, a map-centred online application is used as a hub. To explore the relations between places, events, actors and artifacts, the users can follow the links between the entities. Content created during this project is more than points, lines or polygons which can be displayed on a map. Many objects are complemented with images, and for selected churches 3D models using aerial images captured by UAVs will be created. “Story Maps” are created for selected core research topics to provide an easily accessible starting point for users. The broader aim beyond the current research project is to provide a flexible framework, which can serve as a platform for similar research projects in historical geography and digital humanities.

The Siberian Village of Okunevo as a Place of Power and its Sacred Landscape

The paper deals with contemporary places of power and New Age sacred landscapes in Russia.* It focuses on the Siberian village of Okunevo, its sacred sites, and their worshippers. Formation of this place of power was a result of the activity of individuals (both academics and adherents of new religious movements), combined with the specific interpretation of archaeological sites and the natural landscape of the area. The landscape around the village of Okunevo affects the interaction of people with the sacred loci and the ways the signs, symbols and narratives about them are created.

Landscape and Space

This volume addresses a subject central to both world archaeology and trans-cultural art history. Landscape has been a key theme in the last half-century at least in both disciplines, particularly in the study of painting in art history and in all questions of human intervention and the placement of monuments in the natural world, within archaeology. However, the representation of landscape has been rather less addressed in the scholarship of the archaeologically accessed visual cultures of the ancient world. The kinds of reliefs, objects, and paintings discussed have a significant purchase on matters concerned with landscape and space in the visual sphere but were discovered within archaeological contexts and by means of excavation. Through case studies focused on the invention of wilderness imagery in ancient China, the relation of monuments to landscape in ancient Greece, the place of landscape painting in Mesoamerican Maya art and the construction of sacred landscape across Eurasia between Stonehenge and the Silk Road via Pompeii, this book emphasizes the importance of thinking about models of landscape in ancient art and also the value of comparative approaches in underlining core aspects of the topic. Notably it focuses on questions of space, both actual and conceptual, including how space is configured through form and representation.