A matter of scale. Assessing the visibility of circular tombs in the landscape of Bronze Age Crete

This paper is concerned with the application of viewshed analysis to the study of the circular tombs of Early Bronze Age Crete (Greece). It aims at testing the hypothesis that these monumental burial structures were positioned so as to maximize their visual impact. The question of whether circular tombs were visually prominent has serious implications for our understanding of the social strategies at play in mortuary practices before the emergence of the Minoan palatial civilization. In order to explore the visual structure of the landscape in accordance with the scale of the human body, the issue of prominence is addressed by 1) taking account of the limit of visibility of circular tombs depending on their height and 2) comparing the settings of the tombs with their nearby surroundings instead of the whole study region. The local total viewsheds computed for the cemeteries of interest allow concluding that visibility was indeed one of the factors that were considered in the course of the decision-making process that led to the location of circular tombs in the landscape of Early Bronze Age Crete.