Abstract
Abstract. Nowadays we can travel by GoogleEarth 3D to Syria (http://www.worldcountries.info/GoogleEarth/GoogleEarth-Syria.php) and zoom in on the desert landscape of the mountainous region of Jebel Bishri between the Euphrates river and the Syrian Desert. This is the area, where the Finnish archaeological survey and mapping project SYGIS worked in 2000-2010 studying the relationship of humans with their environment from ancient times to the present. What kind of landscape views and visions did the ancients have and how did they utilize them? The present paper focuses on seeking answers for these questions by combining satellite data sources, such as imagery and radar data, with location information of archaeological remains collected on the ground. Landsat as well as QuickBird imagery have been fused with SRTM mission and ASTER DEM data in creating 3D landscape models and fly-over simulations. The oasis of El Kowm on the western piedmont of the mountain seems to have served as a base camp for early huntergatherers and pastoral nomads dwelling seasonally in the region of Jebel Bishri. According to the archaeological finds, the interaction between the lowland and the mountain people already started during the Palaeolithic era but was continued by pastoral nomads of the region from the Neolithic period onwards. The Upper Palaeolithic period meant a clear change in cognitive thinking and obviously in understanding the properties of landscape, visibility and perceiving sceneries in 3D. Mobility of hunter-gatherers and pastoral nomads is based on subsistence economy, but mobility also enhances visions and prospects of phenomena appearing in the horizon.
Highlights
1.1 Approaching Jebel Bishri in Syria from a 3D PerspectiveAccording to the structuralist F. Braudel (1972), in the Mediterranean landscape mountains come first
Jebel Bishri is the area where the Finnish archaeological survey and mapping project SYGIS worked in 2000-2010 studying the relationship of humans with their environment from the past to the present by using satellite data sources, Geographic Information Systems (GIS, see Lönnqvist and Stefanakis, 2009) and archaeological field work
Our identification of the early highland–lowland interaction between the mountain and the surrounding plains is emerging from archaeological data indicating seasonal cycles
Summary
According to the structuralist F. Braudel (1972), in the Mediterranean landscape mountains come first. Mountains are areas which humans have early on used for prospecting and studying visibility over far away areas Their forms evoke memory and myths in human minds (cf Clack, 2007), but they provide prospects and expectations for what appears from the horizon. In this paper our aim is to reconstruct, present and study present landscapes in 3D from the Jebel Bishri region in order to understand what kind of landscape views and visions the ancients had and how they perceived and utilized them. People in the Mediterranean and the Near East must have had “mental maps” of their landscape surroundings, which affected the treatment of the environment We need both geosciences as well as archaeology for approaching and understanding landscape development. Available topographical maps have been utilized. (Lönnqvist et al 2011)
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