Adapted slopes

Abstract

This article focuses on three research questions: 1) Were terraced landscapes built in the analytical or creative phase of the first human intervention in a place? 2) Does the geometry of the slopes adapted as a terraced landscape apply in a conscious planning process? 3) What are the patterns and relationships between buildings, settlements, and terraced landscapes? The first issue was examined at the archaeological site Lepenski Vir, where a settlement and trapezoidal huts were built on terraces. The terraces were designed more in the creative phase than in the analytical phase because some of the terraces already had a shape that corresponded to and followed the shape of the huts. The answer to the second question is based on an understanding of the importance of horizontal and vertical measurements, their symbolism, and the origins of agriculture. The applied geometry of the slope is one of the indicators that the terraces were built on the basis of conscious planning and rational order, which is an instrument of basic economics and land delimitation issues. The types of relationships between buildings, settlements, and terraces are numerous, and sometimes they can represent a pattern that occurs in a particular region. Because the aim of civil and other initiatives is to protect terraced landscapes from the prejudice of marginality and ignorance, extended studies may be expected in this vast field of case studies.