Perception of Plants in Ancient Times and Their Use as Motifs Revealing Aspects of the Cultural Landscape in Side, Turkey

Abstract Landscape can be defined as a complex of human and natural interactions through time. Therefore, landscape identification requires a complete understanding of social, natural, economic, aesthetic and cultural values. Contributing to the aesthetic-visual integrity of the landscape, plants are a valuable indicator, recording the type and degree of the human – nature relationship over time. Our feelings, imagination and perception often contribute to the cultural dimension of the landscape and the role of plants in mythology can be used as a kind of linguistic code for helping to understand some aspects of cultural landscapes. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how a number of key plants were perceived in ancient cultures using some examples from the Mediterranean landscape and to use them to help to evaluate different dimensions of archaeological landscapes using the case of the ancient city of Side in Turkey. Multi-dimensional approaches in landscape evaluation which use symbolic meaning can ...