An Ancient Journey

Across mountains, following rivers, through forests, and navigating settlements; from the lands near the alps a journey happened some 4,300 years ago, a man who would later be dubbed ‘The Amesbury Archer’ four millennia after his death, from the modern disruption of his grave for a new housing development in the town of Amesbury a few miles east of Stonehenge and the venerated landscape of the dead. Archaeologists discovered the grave of a man who appeared to be well respected in a culture so distant from our own, his grave was a significant discovery. The skeletal remains of this man were the catalyst behind this project, I wanted to explore the hidden human link within the landscape, one which is felt but not necessarily seen. This project is about journeying and the ephemerality of life as we experience it, by taking a step of the linear path — in one’s mind you can observe a certain piece of the landscape and revive the dead for a short amount of time, grasping at the fragmentary shards of time within your hands. The lens and being in the landscape are facilitators for this kind of thinking as it allows you to capture a fleeting moment of time and contemplate a landscape and it’s tangible or hidden palimpsests of human and animal interactions over time. – Final Major Project (BA)