Landscape Archaeology
What is Landscape Archaeology?
Grave Creek Mound Archaeology Complex. West Virginia. Link to source.
Instead of digging on site, scientists Payson Sheets and Tom Sever went above ground. They used satellite imagery and video-game technology to peer through the veils of time, volcanic ash and vegetation cover, focusing on an area near the Arenal volcano in what is modern day Costa Rica. Their technique has uncovered footpaths of a people who lived there 2,500 years ago. Specifically, they have traced pathways from villages to cemeteries, which gives us insight into their social and ritual activities.
Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation
Delicate Arch. Link to source
Introduction, Origins, and History
References Cited:
Anschuetz, Kurt F.; Richard H. Wilshusen, and Cherie L. Scheick. 2001. An Archaeology of Landscapes: Perspectives and Directions. In Journal of Archaeological Research 9(2): 157-211.
Ashmore, Wendy and A. Bernard Knapp (eds). 1999. Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.
Barret, John C. 2001. Agency, the Duality of Structure, and the Problem of the Archaeological Record. In Archaeological Theory Today, edited by I. Hodder, pp. 141-164). Malden: Polity Press.
Bender, Barbara. 2006. Place and Landscape. In Handbook of Material Culture, edited by C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Küchler, M. Rowlands, and P. Spyer, pp. 303-314. London: Sage Publications.
Bender, Barbara. 1993. Landscape: Politics and Perspectives. Oxford: Berg.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971. The Logic of Practice. Oxford: Polity Press.
Cosgrove, Denis E. 1984. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. London: Croom Helm.
Daniels, S. 1989. Marxism and the Duplicity of Landscape. In New Models in Geography II, edited by R. Peet and N. Thrift. London: Unwin Hyman.
Daniels, S. and Denis E. Cosgrove. 1988. Introduction: Iconography and Landscape. In The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, edited by S. Daniels and D. E. Cosgrove, pp. 1-10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dommelen, Peter van. 1999. Exploring Everyday Places and Cosmologies. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspecties, edited by W. Ashmore and A. B. Knapp, pp. 277-285. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.
Fitzjohn, Matthew. 2007. Viewing Places: GIS applications for examining the perception of space in the mountains of Sicily. In World Archaeology 39(1): 36-50
Gallivan, Martin D. 2007. Powhatan’s Werowocomoco: Constructing Place, Polity, and Personhood in the Chesapeake, C.E. 1200 – C.E. 1609. In American Anthropologist 109(1): 85-100.
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: An Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hodder, Ian. 1986. Reading the Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Husserl, Edmund. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Trans. by André S. Rojcewicz. Springer.
Knapp, A. Bernard and Wendy Ashmore. 1999. Archaeological Landscapes: Constructed, Conceptualized, Ideational. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by W. Ashmore and A. B. Knapp, pp. 1-30. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.
Lefebvre, H. 1974. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Marcus, Joyce and Kent Flannery. 1996. Zapotec Civilization: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. New York: Thames & Hudson.
McGlade, James. 1995. Archaeology and the Ecodynamics of Human-Modified Landscapes. In Antiquity 69: 113-132.
Renfrew, Colin and Paul Bahn. 2005. Archaeology: the Key Concepts. London: Routledge.
Thomas, Julian. 2001. Archaeologies of Place and Landscape. In Archaeological Theory Today, edited by I. Hodder, pp. 163-186. Malden: Polity Press.
Tilley, Christopher. 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape. Oxford: Berg.
Online sources:
[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary
[2] http://www.geog.ucla.edu/faculty/cosgrove/cosgrove.html
[3] http://www.seiselt.com/smutheory/maryjaneacuna/theorypages/Thomas%20Sever.html
Because of the relationship between humans and the space they inhabit, an interest in landscape has been a part of archaeology since the early years of the discipline (Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 1; Renfrew and Bahn 2005: 204). During most of the twentieth century the approach to landscape was highly empiricist, focusing greatly on cartography, field survey, and documentary study; excavations to determine the chronological development of land use; subsistence provisioning; risk management; settlement; and site catchment analysis (Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 1; Thomas 2001: 165). As Knapp and Ashmore (1999: 1) point out, landscape was a “backdrop against which archaeological remains were plotted.”
In the past few decades there has been a growing interest in theorizing landscapes, especially in postprocessual and interpretive approaches that focus on the meaning and creation of space and place, relations of power and inequality, the politics and expressions of social identity (including gender) and experiential and phenomenological methodologies (Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Thomas 2001). Interpretive approaches acknowledge that landscapes are culturally constructed and are a reflection of society and the cultural meanings attributed to place (Renfrew and Bahn 2005: 157-58). It is no longer sufficient to think of landscape in minimalist terms, but rather to socialize it in terms of how people thought and felt about the world around them (Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Renfrew and Bahn 2005: 158; Thomas 2001). Space and place are thus constructed and given meaning through the social practices and performances of actors in which landscapes play an active rather than passive role.
This level of understanding landscape resulted from significant attention paid to theoretical discussions. There is a long list of theorists who have contributed to the subfield from various disciplines. Bender (2006: 304) suggests the work of W. G. Hoskins as an early start. Hoskins (1955, cited in Bender 2006) viewed landscape as the material embodiment of people’s activities and as a palimpsest of these activities. In the 1960s and 1970s, the work by Heidegger (1962), Lefebvre (1974), and Bourdieu (1971 and 77) also was greatly influential. From geography, the work by Daniels (1988, 1989) and Cosgrove (1984, 1988) has been crucial in understanding the symbolic meaning of landscapes.
Basic Premises
Archaeology is not the only discipline to be attracted to the concept of landscape. Philosophers, ethnographers, geographers, urban planners, novelists and poets have all grappled with the concept of space (Bender 2006: 303). Landscape is clearly a cross-disciplinary topic as Bender (2006: 304) notes:
“One of the reasons why landscape studies are so interesting, variable, and often cutting-edge is that, invoking both time and place, past and present, being always in process and in tension, they make a mockery of the oppositions that we create between time (history) and space (geography), or between nature (science) and culture (anthropology).”
This lack of disciplinary adherence might explain why there is no consensus on a definition of ‘landscape.’ The Merriam-Webster online dictionary [1] provides a variety of definitions: “the landforms of a region in the aggregate,” “a portion of territory that can be viewed at one time from one place,” and “a particular area of activity.” Commensurate with the dictionary definitions, Olwig (1993: 307, cited in Thomas 2001: 166) and Ingold (1997: 29, cited in Thomas 2001: 166) suggest that ‘landscape’ can mean “the topography and land forms of a given region, or a terrain within which people dwell, or a fragment of the land which can be overseen from a single vantage point, and represented as such.” Landscapes have also been called ‘places of special interest” and “natural places of importance” (Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 2). It might be reasonable to indicate, as Bender (2006) and Thomas (2001) have, that the difficulties in defining landscape are also linked to Western notions of landscape, and to the historical, political, and social contexts in which the researcher is working. Its widespread application and cross-disciplinary nature suggest that an attempt to define ‘landscape’ would in fact constrain its usefulness as a tool for understanding the human past.
Because it is of interest to so many disciplines, and because its definition remains open and malleable, it could be argued that the concept of landscape is a source of theory in its own right. The American geographer Carl Sauer was the first to formulate the concept of “cultural landscape” in 1925 (Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 3). Geography thus has been a major player in the process of theorizing space, a process that is linked directly to archaeological interests. Vital to this has been the work of Denis E. Cosgrove [2], who further developed the theory of cultural geography, and who has stressed that landscapes are meaningful and culturally-laden. The realization of such an intricate relationship between humans, culture, and the physical environment has pushed the study of landscape beyond the category of “backdrop” (see Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 1).
Inspired in part by the earlier cultural historical perspectives, processualists approached landscapes empirically, through the study of land tenure, settlement pattern, and site structure with particular attention to site function. Sites were seen as the locus of economic activities and behaviors, taking into account the surrounding terrain and its agricultural capacity, availability of natural resources (e.g. animal, water, wild foods), as well as architectural modifications across time and space. The primary goal was to reconstruct demographic and economic behaviors, linking site structure and settlement to particular forms of social and political organization. This was especially true in studies dealing with the emergence of complexity and origins of the state, where settlement studies and territorial analysis were useful in defining site size and hierarchy (e.g. Marcus and Flannery 1996). Processual archaeologists as well as new geographers viewed space as “an abstract dimension or container in which human activities and events took place” (Tilley 1994: 9).
Methodologically, processualist approaches have focused on the spatial analysis of archaeological material using statistical techniques and computer modeling (Tilley 1994). This includes GIS (Geographic Information Systems), which has become routine in most studies of space. GIS, global positioning systems, remote sensing, and satellite imagery that were initially developed for military applications by NASA and other government agencies are now widely applied in archaeology. Researchers such as Tom Sever have pioneered these efforts, which are common in the Maya region and other areas around the globe [3].
In contrast, postprocessual or interpretive archaeologies have underlined the importance of reconstructing social meaning, and have targeted the well-known fields of gender, feminist studies, phenomenology, identity and ethnicity, embodiment, agency and practice theories. Focusing on meanings, which are apparent through “the practical engagement with the world” (Renfrew and Bahn 2005: 210; see Tilley 1994), these newer reformulations of landscape have also relied on structuralist and symbolic approaches (see Hodder 1986).
In this framework, space is a medium rather than a container of social action (Tilley 1994:10). Landscapes are repositories of social meaning. They both embody, and empower the people that they encompass and who move through them (Bender 2006). Critical to this view is the concept of habitus (Bourdieu 1984) which explains the relationship between people and their world with reference to experience and practice. However, it is Giddens’ (1984) theory of structuration that addresses more clearly the active dynamism in the creation of social structures, what he called the duality of structure or the recursive nature of the structures (Barret 2001; see also Knapp and Ashmore 1999). This recursiveness is explained by Bender (2006: 306) as “[p]eople are agents; their agency creates the structures; the structures constrain and enable agency.” Landscapes reflect the fundamental relationship between people and the spaces they occupy (Anshuetz et al 2001). Yet, landscapes can take on different meanings for the people that are living in or on them from those who merely perceive them from the outside, which can be a significant barrier for archaeologists. Fitzjohn’s (2007) experimental study in Sicily demonstrates that various people living within the same cultural landscape can perceive it differently and can associate distinct meanings with specific places and spaces. The implication for archaeology is that our notions of landscape in the present may hinder our ability to reconstruct emic notions of space in the past.
The conceptual distinction between place and space promoted by philosophers (Heidegger 1962; Husserl 1989; Lefevre 1974) also provides many challenges to archaeologists. Studies that focus on cosmological, ritual, and supernatural aspects of a landscape tend to use the term “place,” which implies a certain specificity about its nature, function, and meaning. “Space” is a much broader concept that can include place. Thomas (2001: 171) indicates “that ‘space’ is transformed into ‘place’ through a human intervention.” Gallivan (2007) similarly describes place as a social creation of a meaningful space. Spaces, share the properties of being physical, conceptual, or even a lived experience (Gallivan 2007), but can incorporate a multiplicity of meanings associated with various places. Places thus occur within spaces, and both occur within any given landscape. Ultimately, Thomas (2001: 173) sees landscape as a set of relationships created by a network of related places. Landscapes thus take on meaning through the intervention of human agency, whether it is a lived experience or a material transformation.
British archaeologists, especially Christopher Tilley (1994) and Barbara Bender (1993), have championed research on ancient landscapes using a phenomenological approach (see also Bender 2006; Knapp and Ashmore 1999). This focus has relied heavily on Heidegger’s (1962, cited in Bender 2006: 306) approach to the “Cartesian split of mind and body, of nature and culture, his conceptualization of being-in-the-world and of dwelling.” Landscape is viewed as an “actively inhabited space,” an “arena for ritual or ceremonial activity,” “and whereas an ideational or conceptual landscape might be a ‘sacred’ landscape, it is also a stage constructed in the mind to convey meaning to those who inhabit it” (Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 8). The principle methodological tool in phenomenological archaeology is experiential. The researcher in moving through a landscape attempts to experience it as it may have been experienced in the past. These researchers argue that although we are unable to go back in time, archaeologists can experience the remains of the past through familiar sources including excavation, artifact analysis, visiting sites and monuments, and walking through places and landscapes (see Renfrew and Bahn 2005: 203; Thomas 2001: 170-72). Phenomenological archaeology thus aims to reconstruct sensual and experiential phenomena in an attempt to understand the way the world was seen or perceived by past people (see McGlade 1995 for “perceived” landscapes).
In their introduction to Archaeologies of Landscape, Wendy Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp (1999) propose three interpretive descriptions of landscapes: constructed, conceptualized, and ideational. Responding to the restrictive nature of categories imposed by UNESCO in the definition of World Heritage sites, Knapp and Ashmore (1999: 10-13) propose a broader set of criteria for landscape: to Knapp and Ashmore a constructed landscape is one that includes monuments, buildings, and even slight changes in topography that are the result of human intervention. UNESCO’S “clearly defined” and “organically evolved” landscapes would fit within this category. Conceptual landscapes are constitutive of social process - they are interpreted through localized social practices and experience (Richards 1996: 314; Morphy 1995: 197, both cited in Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 11). UNESCO’S “associative cultural” landscapes would be comparable to the conceptualized category. And finally, ideational landscapes are those considered sacred or symbolic landscapes, they are imaginative and emotional, and they are distinct from ideological, which is yet a broader category. Ideational landscapes are meant to elicit an emic perspective, which is often corrupted by the archaeologist’s imposition of a modern world view.
With the accumulation of data and a growing understanding of landscapes in the archaeological realm, it has also become increasingly apparent that the materiality of landscapes is not as straightforward as originally thought (see van Dommelen 1999: 277). This new understanding has served to blur Carl Sauer’s (1925: 343, cited in van Dommelen 1999: 277) idea that “the cultural landscape is fashioned out of a natural landscape.” Instead, perspectives on landscapes have been conceptually altered and include human agency as an influence on the meaning and construction of place. Understanding meaning in a landscape is a significant challenge for archaeologists. Commensurate with this challenge, are the many diverging approaches to landscape and the realization that landscapes are not just “environment” or “surfaces” in and on which things happen. Instead of viewing landscape as the locus of settlement and its attendant parts (e.g. monuments, buildings, agricultural features of all kinds, roads, people); archaeologists now attempt to “read” the social meanings behind the complex networks of relations implied by these parts (see Daniels and Cosgrove 1988: 1).
The complex nature of more recent trends in landscape archaeology has nonetheless drawn some criticism. The phenomenological approach, for example, has been criticized for focusing selectively and exclusively on monuments “rather than more ephemeral traces of human activity” (Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 4) and the recursive nature of landscapes. More important are the perceptions imposed by archaeologists in experiencing place and the lack of verifiability in resulting "emic" interpretations of space.
Studies of landscape have developed alongside the general trends in the archaeological discipline, which have been influenced by a variety of worldwide events including the development of military-based cartographic technologies such as GIS, which have been used by archaeologists to reconstruct past activities, social organization, and the meanings implied by the spatial arrangements of places and things. These efforts began with the work of Carl Sauer, the noted cultural geographer and were applied in Cultural Particularist concepts of culture areas and how these were viewed across time and space from an emic point of view. The focus on systems, settlement pattern, and site function by processualists drew attention to the spatial behaviors associated with particular landscapes, also from an etic perspective. However, this perspective was largely descriptive and empirical with little room for the recovery of meaning. In the past few decades there has been a noticeable change in humanistic studies of landscape that privileges identity, cognition, phenomenology, agency, gender, and heritage. Landscape archaeology thus has undergone transformations that have changed the course of its application in theory and methodology. This includes 3D computer modeling and virtual mapping, GIS studies, ground penetration radar, remote sensing, and satellite imaging. These technologies allow us to better imagine the past in our empirical reconstructions of archaeological materials and they enable us to increase our own powers of perception as a source of additional data in these reconstructions. Perhaps the most significant accomplishment by archaeologists has been the recognition that landscapes are imbued with social meaning even though we may not be able to recover the specific content of that meaning today.
Conclusion