ESTONIAN ACADEMY
PUBLISHERS
eesti teaduste
akadeemia kirjastus
PUBLISHED
SINCE 1997
 
Archaeology cover
Estonian Journal of Archaeology
ISSN 1736-7484 (Electronic)
ISSN 1406-2933 (Print)
Impact Factor (2022): 1.0
Experiencing the landscape; pp. 36–58
PDF | https://doi.org/10.3176/arch.2007.1.02

Author
Gurly Vedru
Abstract

The article is an attempt to analyse the sense of place and attitude towards the surrounding landscape of people as it can be traced on the basis of archaeological objects. A sense of place depends largely on the landscape experience and resulting from this, on the evaluation of places. Places on landscape have different value and are respectively used in different ways. At the same time, the use of landscape depends on the possibilities of local microenvironment. Nature can vary in a small area and people use these differences actively. Although landscapes change in the course of time, it can still be supposed what caused a certain use of landscape in some places. The article focuses on the visible archaeological objects on landscape. A case study has been carried out in Rebala, Jõelähtme and Võerdla villages in the historical Jõelähtme parish in Harjumaa. Undulating land and probably also bogs were of importance in Rebala and Võerdla villages during the Bronze and Pre-Roman Iron Ages. In Jõelähtme the most important features of landscape were river, karst and the rising and lowering of the earth. In later period, arable land shifted to the centre of attention and previous connections on the landscape and with it lost their meaning.

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