ANTHROPOMORPHIC IMAGES AS INTERPLAY BETWEEN NATURE AND CULTURE
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-09-27

Human imagination is a powerful tool that may be easily triggered by unusual features and phenomena of natural landscape. Unfortunately, many of such triggers accessible to past communities (like various weather conditions, prevailing winds, thunder, lightning, attractive aspects of fauna or vegetation) disappeared entirely without leaving any trace for archaeological prospection. Therefore, I focus my interest on natural rock features that are immovable and (relatively) durable. Their immovability has made them to be present within a specific place for a very long time. Durability of their matrix has helped to preserve their specific shapes. I believe the first step to consider their potential to provoke anthropomorphic images resides in formalized survey of visual imagination engaging hundreds of participants. I shall present the results of two case studies dealing with attractive rock features directly associated with archaeological record (a hoard deposited at a menhir-shaped rock and a conspicuous rock within a hillfort) that demonstrate a high impact of cultural stories on human anthropomorphic imagination. Although it’s impossible to extrapolate contemporary images into the minds of the past people it is valuable to observe structural aspects of such images (their graphics and verbal description) and to consider processes that have brought them to the light of the archaeological research.


Author(s): Chroustovsky, Lubos (Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen)