eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

Given the constraints of this study, only a number of the sites were investigated thoroughly in
terms of a phenomenological inspired approach and this was on sites that had been visited
more than once. Such an approach requires an amount of familiarity with the landscape and
given the detail and attention required for such an approach to be meaningful, it is impossible
for everything to be considered in a single visit. Additional aspects came to mind on
subsequent visits. In terms developed from the work of Gibson and Ingold, the landscape had
different ‘affordances’ each time a site was visited. In order to record these experiences, tapes
of conversations were made at a number of sites. In addition, panoramic photographs, and
video clips help to illustrate the location and features in the landscape in a way that a GIS
could not (see Appendix 1). The thought process started with a systematized description of
the surroundings, which ensured as far as possible that as many aspects of the landscape could
be brought to mind and not just those that were most striking at first, although of course these
experiences were not ignored. In a way, this was an attempt to control the affordances of the
environment by consciously trying to bring them forth. This consideration of the landscape
did not stop once the field visits were over. For example daily driving around the region of
Levidi, where I was based for most of the field visits, meant a particular familiarity with the
area around Mantinea and Orchomenos, which is why the sites in these plains figure
particularly prominently in the case studies in Part Two. It also served well to visit the area at
different times of the year, which occurred more by accident than by design. Three field
visits in total were undertaken, the first two of approximately six weeks duration (late April –
early June, 2001; October-November 2003) and the third, twelve days (May 2005) covering
the late spring, early summer, late summer and autumn. This enabled an appreciation of the
variability of the weather in Arkadia even in summer, when thunderstorms are frequent. In
addition, the weather and temperature can change quickly, especially at the end of summer
and during the autumn. This allowed the effect of weather on visibility to be experienced at
75