Abstract

Is a landscape (whether “sacred” or not) gendered? Do artifacts — or for that matter built environments as such — mark, gender or even “queer” a landscape? Are there “male,” “female,” or gender-ambivalent forms or spaces? This article reflects on the evidence for the gradual transformation, over several centuries and culminating in the classical period of art and architecture, of the ancient sanctuary of Delphi from being a site devoted primarily to female powers and divinities to one in which the former were occluded, marginalized, or erased by the cult of the (apparently) male deity Apollo. This process was reflected in temple sanctuaries throughout the Hellenic world prior to the replacement of both by sites and buildings devoted to Christian worship. Ancient Hellenic sanctuary spaces and forms were semiotically hybrid and unstable, their significance parallactic and ambiguously gendered.