The ephemerality of prominence: a geospatial analysis of acoustic affordances in a hillfort landscape

Prominent places were powerful places. The persistence and stability of prominent places typically depends upon the prioritisation of their physical and visual attributes. Yet if we are interested in the expression of prominence and power, then we should take account of the potential ways that places reached acoustically into the landscape. Acoustics complement visibility since sound like sight helps shape human experiences, memories and emotions. In this paper, we employ a geospatial framework where patterns of sound propagation are modelled and brought into conversation with visibility and mobility-based analyses often applied in geospatial studies of prominence. We apply our approach to a study of the Bryn-y-Castell hillfort in North West Wales. Geospatial studies, employing viewshed and least-cost modelling, examine how topographic and visual exposure might have accentuated the presence of hillforts. We demonstrate the analytical value of combining acoustic, visibility and mobility approaches in mapping zones in which a trade-off in visual and acoustic messages may have been a feature of how landscape prominence was expressed. The contribution of this study lies in challenging us to think, conceptually and methodologically, of prominence as something that varied, was ephemeral, and that lost and gained potency with intensities of inhabitation and landscape dynamics.