eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
People far removed from all things Greek might be forgiven for thinking that Arkadia is
perhaps not a real place at all. In many people’s minds, it looms large as an imaginary,
idealized landscape; an invention of poets and painters. This view is not entirely wrong.
Indeed, this is the Arkadia described by Virgil in the first Century BCE (Eclogues) and by
Early Modern poets such as Jacopo Sannazaro (1458 – 1530) and Sir Philip Sydney (1554 -
1586) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This is the Arkadia employed as the setting or
theme of paintings, such as Nicolas Poussin’s ‘The Arcadian shepherds` of the 17th Century
and is still the subject of modern novels about journeys to ‘paradise’ (Okri, 2002). However,
Arkadia is more than this. Unlike the comparable Elysian, Arkadian ‘fields’ are tangible, with
varying degrees of correlation to the creative or metaphorical portrayals alluded to above. It
is a real place, a region of both modern and ancient Greece that can be visited in person, not
just through the imagination of others.
This thesis is an investigation into the ‘real’ landscapes of this region as opposed to those
imaginary and idealized. Hence, the starting point of the study is the physical and material
landscapes of the region of Arkadia. These real landscapes are situated in the Peloponnese
abutting the territories of Korinthia, the Argolid, Lakonia, Messenia, Elis and Achaea, today
as they did in the past, despite fluctuations in the boundaries over time ((Nielsen 1999, p.60;
Morgan 2003, p.39; Voyatzis 2005). However, the landscapes under scrutiny are those
belonging to the LBA and EIA, a period of time ranging from c.1600 to c.700BCE. To claim
to be investigating the ‘real’ landscapes belonging to a region so distant in time may seem an
arrogant one, not least because it may be anachronistic to use the name Arkadia at all at this
time (Roy 1968, p.20; Nielsen 1999, p.47). In addition, it is a region intertwined with
beguiling myths pointing to a continuing population throughout the period, yet beset with a
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