Hills of the ancestors, townscapes of artisans

"For the last ten years, or thereabouts, I’ve been working on papers looking at how people and place interact and the meanings developed there. Much of this has been about the ways that pagans inscribe sacredness in landscape (or does landscape inscribe sacredness in them?). But this developed in association with another passion: the hills and towns of my recent ancestors and why they ‘matter’ to me. These thoughts provoke a series of seen and heard representations to me. Not only the memory of places matter, but how these memories are given. And so, immediately, there are two, which both relate to my childhood in Dundee, and both hold much wider appeal beyond my associations with place." ------- This piece will be shortly forthcoming in the volume ‘The Wanton Green’ dealing with spirituality and landscape. It does not have a formal abstract and the above are the introductory paragraphs of the piece. I will retain copyright and at a later date will upload the full essay to SHURA.