Landscape Archaeology

Whether implicit in terms such as ‘environment’ or ‘territory’, or more explicitly articulated, an active concern with landscape lies at the heart of all archaeological enquiry. Past individuals and social groups lived out their lives somewhere, and it has long been realized by archaeologists that a detailed understanding of the character of their lived worlds is integral to any attempt to write histories of the deep past. Indeed, an active concern with the ways in which past activities and settlements were arranged across the surface of the earth has characterized over a century of research and investigation. However, despite its centrality to archaeological enquiry, the last twenty or so years has witnessed the dawning recognition that there had been a tendency to treat the concept as largely self-evident; until recently, many researchers had blithely sought to study landscape without feeling any obligation to define what precisely it was that they were setting out to study. Moreover, when critical attention was finally brought to bear it rapidly became clear that, rather than a coherent body of theory and practice, the result had instead been a flurry of radically different landscapes each of which had spawned its own academic cottage industry. In Chris Gosden’s words, landscape might best be defined as a ‘usefully ambiguous concept’. Consequently, as the learned editors of this new four-volume collection from Routledge note, a fledgling archaeological student of landscape might well be forgiven for not knowing whether first to direct his critical attention to walking boots and a map or to Julia Kristeva’s writings on intertextuality. The bold ambition of the editors of this ‘mini library’ of key works is not only to map out the full breadth of landscape approaches, and the many kinds of landscape (and therefore past) they encompass, but also to capture the dynamism and energy of the ongoing debates within the discipline as to the status of landscape. The collection’s structure allows scholars to access the crucial writings that have framed and guided current debates and the often eclectic traditions of scholarship that have informed and inspired them. Indeed, Landscape Archaeology meets a pressing need for a wide-ranging and authoritative reference work to enable users to appreciate both the inherent slipperiness of the term ‘landscape’ and the wide range of landscape archaeologies that have emerged as a direct result.

Volume I: Landscapes: handmade artefacts (wrested from nature) 1. William George Hoskins, ‘The Landscape Before the English Settlement’, The Making of the English Landscape (Hodder & Stoughton, 1955), pp. 17–44. 2. Carl Sauer, ‘The Morphology of Landscape’, University of California Publications in Geography, 1925, 2, 2, 19–53. 3. Richard Hartshorne, ‘"Landschaft" and "Landscape"’, The Nature of Geography (The Association of American Geographers, 1939), pp. 149–74. 4. Henry Clifford Darby, ‘On the Relations of Geography and History’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 1953, 19, 1–11. 5. Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford, ‘Deciphering the Palimpsest: Roman Roads’, Archaeology in the Field (Phoenix House, 1953), pp. 51–9. 6. Peter Fowler, ‘The Idea of Cultural Landscape’, Landscapes for the World: Conserving a Global Heritage (Windgather Press, 2004), pp. 15–32. 7. Randall H. McGuire, ‘Building Power in the Cultural Landscape of Broome County, New York, 1880–1940’, in R. H. McGuire and R. Paynter (eds.), The Archaeology of Inequality (Blackwell, 1991), pp. 102–24. 8. Sam Turner and Graham Fairclough, ‘Common Culture: The Archaeology of Landscape Character in Europe’, in D. Hicks, L. McAtackney, and G. Fairclough (eds.), Envisioning Landscape: Situations and Standpoints in Archaeology and Heritage (Left Coast Press, 2009), pp. 120–45. 9. Tom Williamson, ‘Historic Landscape Characterisation: Some Queries’, Landscapes, 2007, 2, 64–71. 10. David L. Clarke, ‘Spatial Information in Archaeology’, in Clarke (ed.), Spatial Archaeology (Academic Press, 1977), pp. 1–32. 11. William H. Marquardt and Carole L. Crumley, ‘Theoretical Issues in the Analysis of Spatial Patterning’, in C. L. Crumley and W. H. Marquardt (eds.), Regional Dynamics: Burgundian Landscapes in Historical Perspectives (Academic Press, 1987), pp. 1–18. 12. Robert Foley, ‘Off-site Archaeology: An Alternative Approach for the Short-sited’, in I. Hodder, G. Isaac, and N. Hammond (eds.), Patterns of the Past: Studies in Honour of David Clarke (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 157–83. 13. Jorge Luis Borges, ‘On Exactitude in Science’, in L. Borges: Collective Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (Penguin, 1999), p. 325. 14. Christopher R. Whittaker, ‘Mental Maps: Seeing like a Roman’, in P. McKechnie (ed.), Thinking Like a Lawyer: Essays on Legal History and General History for John Crook on his Eightieth Birthday (Brill, 2002), pp. 81–112. 15. Evžen Neustupný, ‘Structures and Events: The Theoretical Basis of Spatial Archaeology’, in E. Neustupný (ed.), Space in Prehistoric Bohemia (Institute of Archaeology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 1998), pp. 9–44. 16. John C. Barrett, ‘Chronologies of Landscape’, in P. J. Ucko and R. Layton (eds.), The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape (Routledge, 1999), pp. 21–30. 17. Mark P. Leone, James M. Harmon, and Jessica L. Neuwirth, ‘Perspective and Surveillance in Eighteenth-century Maryland Gardens, Including William Paca’s Garden on Wye Island’, Historical Archaeology, 2005, 39, 4, 138–58. 18. Mary C. Beaudry, ‘Why Gardens?’, in R. Yamin and K. Bescherer Metheny (eds.), Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape (University of Tennessee Press, 1996), pp. 3–5. 19. Wendy Ashmore, ‘Classic Maya Landscapes and Settlement’, in J. A. Hendon and R. A. Joyce (eds.), Mesoamerican Archaeology (Blackwell, 2004), pp. 169–91. Volume II: Landscapes: sites of experience: repositories of memory (saturated in stories) 20. Christopher Tilley, ‘Round Barrows and Dykes as Landscape Metaphors’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2004, 14, 2, 185–203. 21. Keith H. Basso, ‘Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on a Western Apache Landscape’, in S. Feld and K. H. Basso (eds.), Senses of Place (School of American Research Press, 1996). pp. 53–90. 22. Susanne Küchler, ‘Landscape as Memory: The Mapping of Process and its Representation in a Melanesian Society’, in B. Bender (ed.), Landscape: Politics and Perspectives (Berg, 1993), pp. 85–106. 23. Chris Gosden and Gary Lock, ‘Prehistoric Histories’, World Archaeology, 1998, 30, 1, 2–12. 24. Charles E. Orser Jr, ‘Invented Place, Created Space’, A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World (Plenum Press, 1996), pp. 131–58. 25. Denis R. Byrne, ‘Nervous Landscapes: Race and Space in Australia’, Journal of Social Archaeology, 2003, 3, 2, 169–93. 26. Elizabeth Colson, ‘Places of Power and Shrines of the Land’, Paideuma, 1997, 43, 47–57. 27. Miriam Kahn, ‘Stone Faced Ancestors: the Spatial Anchoring of Myth in Wamira, Papua New Guinea’, Ethnology, 1990, 29, 51–66. 28. Sarah Katherine Croucher, ‘Facing Many Ways: Approaches to the Archaeological Landscapes of the East African Coast’, in D. Hicks, L. McAtackney, and G. Fairclough (eds.), Envisioning Landscape: Situations and Standpoints in Archaeology and Heritage (Left Coast Press, 2009), pp. 55–74. 29. Martin Hall, ‘Identity, Memory and Countermemory: The Archaeology of an Urban Landscape’, Journal of Material Culture, 2006, 11, 1–2, 189–209. 30. Kathleen C. Stewart, ‘An Occupied Place’, in S. Feld and K. H. Basso (eds.), Senses of Place (School of American Research Press, 1996), pp. 137–66. 31. László Bartosiewicz, ‘"There’s Something Rotten in the State ...": Bad Smells in Antiquity’, European Journal of Archaeology, 2003, 6, 2, 175–95. 32. John C. Barrett and Ilhong Ko, ‘A Phenomenology of Landscape: A Crisis in British Landscape Archaeology?’, Journal of Social Archaeology, 2009, 9, 3, 275–94. 33. Christopher Evans, ‘Sentimental Prehistories: The Construction of the Fenland Past’, Journal of European Archaeology, 1997, 5, 2, 105–36. 34. Matthew Campbell, ‘Memory and Monumentality in the Rarotongan Landscape’, Antiquity, 2006, 80, 1, 102–17. 35. Paul Rainbird, ‘An Archaeology of the Sea’, The Archaeology of Islands (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 46–67. Volume III: Landscapes: representation, performance, and practice (performed into being) 36. Peter Gow, ‘Land, People, and Paper in Western Amazonia’, in E. Hirsch and M. O’Hanlon (eds.), The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space (Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 43–62. 37. J. Brian Harley, ‘Deconstructing the Map’, in T. J. Barnes and J. S. Duncan (eds.), Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape (Routledge, 1989), pp. 231–47. 38. Alfred Gell, ‘How to Read a Map: Remarks on the Practical Logic of Navigation’, MAN, 1985, 20, 2, 271–86. 39. Denis Cosgrove, ‘Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 1985, 10, 1, 45–62. 40. Julian Thomas, ‘The Politics of Vision and the Archaeologies of Landscape’, in B. Bender (ed.), Landscape: Politics and Perspectives (Berg, 1993), pp. 19–48. 41. Adam T. Smith, ‘Sublimated Spaces’, The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities (University of California Press, 2003), pp. 30–77. 42. Stephan Harrison, Steve Pile, and Nigel Thrift, ‘Guide for Readers’, in Harrison, Pile, and Thrift (eds.), Patterned Ground (Reaktion Books, 2004), pp. 43–5. 43. Hayden Lorimer, ‘Cultural Geography: The Busyness of Being "More-Than-Representational"’, Progress in Human Geography, 2005, 29, 1, 83–94. 44. Mike Pearson, ‘Introduction’, <> Performance, Memory and Landscape (University of Exeter Press, 2006), pp. 2–17. 45. Tim Ingold, ‘The Temporality of Landscape’, World Archaeology, 1993, 25, 2, 152–74. 46. Mark Edmonds, ‘Taskscape, Technology and Tradition’, Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia, 1997, 29, 99–110. 47. Peter Whitridge, ‘Landscapes, Houses, Bodies, Things: "Place" and the Archaeology of Inuit Imaginaries’, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2004, 11, 2, 213–50. 48. Lesley McFadyen, ‘Landscapes in the Mesolithic and Neolithic’, in J. Pollard (ed.), Prehistoric Britain (Blackwell, 2008), pp. 121–34. 49. Paul Gough, ‘Calculating the Future: Panoramic Sketching, Re