Under ancestors: Santa María de Valverde 1:7
A section of seven Flickr posts looking at issues around having ritual spaces under the monolithic impressions of ancestors: examples from the Upper Ebro region of Spain.
The following introduction paragraph is from a recent paper (circa 2011) on the subject of artificial cave architecture in the upper Ebro. It lays out an example of the current calibration of thinking regarding the sites featured in this Flickr album:
"The existence of natural formations associated with traditions of Anchorites who lived in them, and cavities excavated in a rudimentary way from very ancient times is known, since this practice has been manifest since the Neolithic. However, it was in Late Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages when the construction of these dwellings became widespread acquiring greater complexity and a religious character closely related to the beginnings of Christianity in Cantabria". Diana Vega Almazán, Universidad de Cantabria.
Finding a ball of multi-coloured twines and wanting to undo the knots to 'unlock' the original red, grey, blue and yellow threads is an image that carries over to the cave architectures of the upper Ebro. One twine is the Neolithic thread, another the greater Celtiberic, another the Late antiquity, another the Anchoite hermit cultures, another the Moorish and post Moorish influences and a last, small string for the Visigoth influence.
From the quoted opening text, you may expect a sense of architectural progress, with the lines of construction actualising over time, from the older 'rudimentary' examples to more modern elegance and 'complexity'. Here I differ: in this section I do not present the upper Ebro as a quiet 'archaic' landscape, rather a fundamental crossroads on a long spiritual line that crossed the Mediterranean sea and continued via the fluvial east-west of the 900km River Ebro, directing people, ideas, objects, protocols, conceptions and stories from as far as the Fertile Crescent via final channels to the Atlantic and from there on to the greater west coast.
Naturally, examples of early permanent architecture on the Upper Ebro that modified over time and ages will today look archaic, understanding that by the Neolithic, stone carving skills were capable of producing coherent shapes and forms both larger and smaller than the average size of a anchoritic hermit's space - which was around "3.7 to 4.6 m square, with three windows". By the bronze age, stone skills were producing elegant and enigmatic sites, and I offer the Chalcolithic 'boat havens' of Fontvieille as examples of technicity (these megasites are featured in recent posts and are also linked to a major fluvial highway and junction). By the Iron Age, examples of carved interiors were proto classical and controlled ornamentation was appearing. For the 'hermits' and Anchorites of, let's say the 3rd to 10th centuries, their 'return' to core human values were in opposition to the hyperbole of 'symbolic exteriors' typical of certain Roman and Feudal excesses - and with these ways of being, and we must even expect some early medieval examples to be more rudimentary than examples that were conceived during - for example, the pre-Roman Celtiberic period. Likewise, Anchorites and hermits may have found these pre-existing cave architectures to be in-keeping with their lifestyle, offering a late chapter of occupation and even modification for a site. We must also understand that some anchorite 'anchorholds' (as their small abodes could be known) may have grown, and today these examples may stand aside examples with far deeper pasts. Such is a knotted ball of string, that we may even expect to see examples built by institutional Feudal sources keen to syphon residual behaviours and beliefs and centralise power.
The monolithic sarcophagi (seen on the above 'roof') is currently measured in texts as being from early medieval dates, and as these Flickr posts continue, I hope to ease their date range back into late prehistory. In this series, I will be looking for elements that might signal pre-Christian belief systems, with this section of numbered posts looking at examples where ancestors are over the heads of worshipers and religious leaders, rather than under as is the norm for the Christian faith.
With simplicity guaranteed, Christian history may be seen to have passed through the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Monastic and Neo-Missionary. I define the last category as being where individuals offer themselves as examples to their communities, often via highly measured lifestyles (Cathar, Hermit and Anchorites... ). For those interested in prehistory and the bridge between the late ages of prehistory and late Antiquity, both the early Monastic and the Neo-Missionary present categories that seem best able to hybridise with pre Christian belief systems.
A thought experiment: from an imaginary room signed 'Neo-Missionary' we may enter and open a hypothetical box titled 'Anchorite': inside we might expect to see another 'ball of multicoloured threads', with some lengths motivated exclusively by Christian texts, others motivated by the powers of ancient ritual sites and rites, and some by a mix of the two sources. Once again, another thread may work from within the category with the aim of shifting the belief system and its people towards centralised power models.
From this rich and varied vista we can now look at examples of old master paintings of hermits and their caves. All images from Wiki:
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Paul_the_Simp...
.jpg?1606385443291){kind=link}
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Hierony...
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Vel%C3%...
.jpg/800px-Vel%c3%a1zquez_-_San_Antonio_Abad_y_San_Pablo,_primer_ermita%c3%b1o_(Museo_del_Prado,_1635-38).jpg?1606385567973){kind=link}
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Joachim_Patin...
AJM 27.11.20
Under ancestors: Santa María de Valverde 1:7
A section of seven Flickr posts looking at issues around having ritual spaces under the monolithic impressions of ancestors: examples from the Upper Ebro region of Spain.
The following introduction paragraph is from a recent paper (circa 2011) on the subject of artificial cave architecture in the upper Ebro. It lays out an example of the current calibration of thinking regarding the sites featured in this Flickr album:
"The existence of natural formations associated with traditions of Anchorites who lived in them, and cavities excavated in a rudimentary way from very ancient times is known, since this practice has been manifest since the Neolithic. However, it was in Late Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages when the construction of these dwellings became widespread acquiring greater complexity and a religious character closely related to the beginnings of Christianity in Cantabria". Diana Vega Almazán, Universidad de Cantabria.
Finding a ball of multi-coloured twines and wanting to undo the knots to 'unlock' the original red, grey, blue and yellow threads is an image that carries over to the cave architectures of the upper Ebro. One twine is the Neolithic thread, another the greater Celtiberic, another the Late antiquity, another the Anchoite hermit cultures, another the Moorish and post Moorish influences and a last, small string for the Visigoth influence.
From the quoted opening text, you may expect a sense of architectural progress, with the lines of construction actualising over time, from the older 'rudimentary' examples to more modern elegance and 'complexity'. Here I differ: in this section I do not present the upper Ebro as a quiet 'archaic' landscape, rather a fundamental crossroads on a long spiritual line that crossed the Mediterranean sea and continued via the fluvial east-west of the 900km River Ebro, directing people, ideas, objects, protocols, conceptions and stories from as far as the Fertile Crescent via final channels to the Atlantic and from there on to the greater west coast.
Naturally, examples of early permanent architecture on the Upper Ebro that modified over time and ages will today look archaic, understanding that by the Neolithic, stone carving skills were capable of producing coherent shapes and forms both larger and smaller than the average size of a anchoritic hermit's space - which was around "3.7 to 4.6 m square, with three windows". By the bronze age, stone skills were producing elegant and enigmatic sites, and I offer the Chalcolithic 'boat havens' of Fontvieille as examples of technicity (these megasites are featured in recent posts and are also linked to a major fluvial highway and junction). By the Iron Age, examples of carved interiors were proto classical and controlled ornamentation was appearing. For the 'hermits' and Anchorites of, let's say the 3rd to 10th centuries, their 'return' to core human values were in opposition to the hyperbole of 'symbolic exteriors' typical of certain Roman and Feudal excesses - and with these ways of being, and we must even expect some early medieval examples to be more rudimentary than examples that were conceived during - for example, the pre-Roman Celtiberic period. Likewise, Anchorites and hermits may have found these pre-existing cave architectures to be in-keeping with their lifestyle, offering a late chapter of occupation and even modification for a site. We must also understand that some anchorite 'anchorholds' (as their small abodes could be known) may have grown, and today these examples may stand aside examples with far deeper pasts. Such is a knotted ball of string, that we may even expect to see examples built by institutional Feudal sources keen to syphon residual behaviours and beliefs and centralise power.
The monolithic sarcophagi (seen on the above 'roof') is currently measured in texts as being from early medieval dates, and as these Flickr posts continue, I hope to ease their date range back into late prehistory. In this series, I will be looking for elements that might signal pre-Christian belief systems, with this section of numbered posts looking at examples where ancestors are over the heads of worshipers and religious leaders, rather than under as is the norm for the Christian faith.
With simplicity guaranteed, Christian history may be seen to have passed through the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Monastic and Neo-Missionary. I define the last category as being where individuals offer themselves as examples to their communities, often via highly measured lifestyles (Cathar, Hermit and Anchorites... ). For those interested in prehistory and the bridge between the late ages of prehistory and late Antiquity, both the early Monastic and the Neo-Missionary present categories that seem best able to hybridise with pre Christian belief systems.
A thought experiment: from an imaginary room signed 'Neo-Missionary' we may enter and open a hypothetical box titled 'Anchorite': inside we might expect to see another 'ball of multicoloured threads', with some lengths motivated exclusively by Christian texts, others motivated by the powers of ancient ritual sites and rites, and some by a mix of the two sources. Once again, another thread may work from within the category with the aim of shifting the belief system and its people towards centralised power models.
From this rich and varied vista we can now look at examples of old master paintings of hermits and their caves. All images from Wiki:
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Paul_the_Simp...
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Hierony...
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Vel%C3%...
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Joachim_Patin...
AJM 27.11.20