eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

6.5: Conclusions
This chapter serves well as the last of three that have investigated aspects of landscape and the
way in which people are thoroughly enmeshed within their environments. The case studies in
particular have brought together many strands that have been introduced in previous chapters,
where everyday lives are as connected with religion and death as they are with mundane
activities. Secularisation of the past is very much a modern activity (King, 2003). The
evidence and explorations have shown that there were adaptations and changes throughout the
period. People moved, lived and settled in various ways at various times. Certain aspects of
the landscape figure more heavily in one period than they do in another, reflecting the
different concerns and thus experiences of communities at various times.
The everyday evidence of LH period in Arkadia originates from forty-six sites (table 6.1),
sixteen of which have been interpreted as ‘settlement’ at some time (e.g. Howell 1970; Hope
Simpson & Dickinson 1979). The typical type of Mycenaean settlement in Arkadia has been
considered as located on the top of steep sided hills (Salavoura 2005), and this certainly
appears to be the case in the eastern plains. Of the sixteen described as settlements, however,
only seven can be described to be on steep-sided hills. For example, those in the Asea Valley
are certainly not except for Kato Asea-Palaiokastro (45), and that at Orchomenos-
Palaiopyrgos (25) is located on the slopes and spreads down into the Upper Orchomenos
plain. Again, it is the general that needs to be balanced by the particular; otherwise, a wealth
of evidence becomes lost. In terms of settlement, it proves exceedingly problematic to
discuss the other periods and thus it has served well to break down the barriers between the
everyday, religion and death in order to investigate, for example, the Mantinean plain for the
G period through a consideration of the evidence from the hill of Gortsouli (Ptolis) and
Artemision-Ayios Ilias.
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