Thursday, April 24th, 2014 Perception, Experience, and Imagining of Sacred Landscapes: A Spatial Analysis of the Pilgrimage Routes of Medieval Vijayanagara

Description

The inherent difficulties faced by archaeologists and contemporary geographers in mapping symbolically defined sacred space have led to the design of my package of thirdspace-inspired (Soja 1996) theoretical and methodological approaches for the analysis of the Vijayanagara pilgrimage landscape (AD 1336 to 1565) that I am using in my PhD dissertation. In my paper I will be discussing my approach to the sacred landscape and the obstacles encountered with data. In the methodology employed, the sacred landscape is treated as a tool for personal, social, and political transformation. An environment charged with political machinations, ritual actions, mnemonic devices, and mythological moments, infused into architectural and natural features along and visible from pilgrimage trails, made the environs of the capital city of the largest Hindu empire an excellent candidate for exploring how movement, imagination, and experience inform each other within the institution of Hindu pilgrimage. Configurational spatial analysis adopted from Hillier and Hanson’s work (1996) such as integration and connectivity, as well as isovist, network and cost path analyses, will be implemented using ArcScene (ESRI) 3D analyst and space syntax software. The spatial data generated in these programs will be queried based on parameters that can be selected from a wide range of data stored in the project’s geodatabase. The geodatabase will have two distinct models, or feature datasets, to address the biases inherent in interpreting either the archaeological data or the written data: a ‘general’ textual-image dataset informed by literature (religious and secular), iconography, and epigraphical evidence; and a ‘specific’ physical or material dataset informed by archaeological, architectural, and natural landscape features. Both datasets are grounded in the historical context so that a historical phenomenology can be developed from analyses set upon the data. To overcome the theoretical shortcomings of phenomenology (Brück 1998, 2001; Swenson 2011:3) and to transcend the binary opposition that will exist in the geodatabase organized by ‘general’/textual-image and ‘specific’/material datasets, at the time of interpretation Soja’s thirdspace model will inform the approach taken.

In part, my research program will address the journey/pilgrimage half of the tirtha-yatra by devising a meaningful historical phenomenological methodology that blends the cognitive geographic archaeological work of Darling (2009) in an examination of landscape, movement and space; exploring the application of various types of spatial syntax studies and line-of-sight studies that can be found in Fogelin’s work (2006); and the isovist landscape research done by Shaw (2009).

CANDIS HAAK is a PhD candidate in Anthropology and her research interests focus on issues of space and ritual practice which has led her to explore interpretive uses of GIS for landscape analysis, cognitive geography, and space syntax built on material culture, historical, religious, mytho-religious and philosophical data. Principally, her research addresses how perceptions and experiences shape and become reflected in sacred geography engendered through the institution of pilgrimage of the medieval Hindu empire of Vijayanagara.