The Construction of Sacred Landscapes and Maritime Identities in the Post-Medieval Cyclades Islands: The Case of Paros

Athanasios K. Vionis

doi:10.3390/rel13020164

Abstract

The Cyclades islands in the South Aegean initially attracted the attention of prehistorians approaching islands as ‘laboratories’ for the study of cultural development, examining the notions of ‘isolation’ and ‘connectivity’, or, more recently, by introducing new terminologies, such as ‘seascape’ and ‘islandscape’. The wealth of material remains of the post-medieval era in the Cyclades islands (e.g., ecclesiastical architecture, ceramics) and the textual record available (e.g., Ottoman tax registers, travellers’ accounts) provide fascinating evidence regarding the construction of sacred landscapes, self-expression, community, and maritime identities throughout the period of Ottoman domination. The main aim of this article is to examine the historical contingencies and the distribution of a vast number of rural churches, primarily as evidence for religious expression, in order to capture island dynamics and the formation of religious and community identities, as imprinted onto the sacred landscapes of the island of Paros. By shifting our focus from the imperial Ottoman to the local Cycladic, we come to appreciate islanders as decisive agents of their maritime identities, creating rituals and sacred spaces, sometimes beyond the strict borders of institutional religion.

Highlights

The concept and historical reality of isolation, connectivity, identities, and ‘island archaeologies’ in the Cyclades have been discussed in the framework of studies dealing with the prehistoric past, the Classical Greek and Byzantine eras, and the period of Ottoman domination
The permanent installation of churches dedicated to Mary, Christ and the saints sanctified the rural landscapes and provided a dynamic link between sacred and profane, religiosity and superstition, cyclical and linear time, pilgrims and residents, men and women
The islanders’ desire for veneration, prayer and religious travel to churches through kinetic processions from their houses to their destination sanctified and physically and mentally connected places of significance within the rural landscape. These issues are essential to examine in order to fully grasp how saints, churches, people and movement created sacred landscapes and produced common memories and identities

Summary

Introduction

The concept and historical reality of isolation, connectivity, identities, and ‘island archaeologies’ in the Cyclades have been discussed in the framework of studies dealing with the prehistoric past, the Classical Greek and Byzantine eras, and the period of Ottoman domination. Inspired by evolutionary biology and island biogeography, which emphasised that islands are isolated habitats with a high degree of floral and faunal endemism, archaeologists, exploring past island communities in the Mediterranean and the Aegean, viewed islands as ‘laboratories’ for the study of cultural evolution and colonisation by humans The appreciation of the sea as a means of connection and communication, and the understanding of insularity as a constantly changing element, came as a reaction to previous ‘insular’ approaches to islands, with specialists proposing the term ‘islandscape’ to grasp the diverse behaviour of island communities in the prehistoric Aegean It is important that we stress the diversity that characterises islands and the need for plurality in our interpretative approaches (Broodbank 2000, p. 7; Papantoniou 2012, p. 47)

Objectives

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion