The European Landscape Convention states that landscape is fundamental to individual and social
wellbeing. It enjoins stakeholders to establish how landscape is perceived and valued in order to
identify and preserve those aspects of place that promote wellbeing. Focusing on cultural heritage in
particular, this paper will discuss these themes with reference to qualitative work undertaken in 2016
and 2017 on resident and visitor perceptions of the prehistoric landscapes of Stonehenge, Avebury
and the Vale of Pewsey, Wiltshire, UK. It will review the phenomenological methods used to
investigate participants’ embodied, in-the-moment and everyday experiences of these heritage
landscapes, and thus the intrinsic values they hold for certain individuals.
Based on this research, the paper demonstrates how the disciplines of archaeology, human
geography, and psychotherapy can combine to reveal the potential of the (pre)historic environment to
facilitate ontological security, existential relatedness and existential possibility. As a result, it presents
different understandings of the social value of cultural heritage which may help to protect and develop
landscape in ways that support individual and community wellbeing. The paper further recognises that
heritage landscapes can only serve the common good in this respect if the preservation and
promotion of such places also mediates the other social, environmental and infrastructural needs of
the communities that live within them. Consequently, it suggests that deeper reflection on the
relationship between self and environment may assist in achieving this balance.