Katherine Leckie | University of Cambridge (original) (raw)
Book Chapters by Katherine Leckie
Humans and the Environment: New Archaeological Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century, Jun 2013
PhD Thesis by Katherine Leckie
This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work ... more This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.
Papers by Katherine Leckie
Cambridge University Press, 2012
Humans and the Environment, 2013
Exploring human–environment relations has been an area of great interest to archaeologists, espec... more Exploring human–environment relations has been an area of great interest to archaeologists, especially for the purpose of reconstructing past environments and investigating methods of human adaptation in the face of changing climates. However, despite the great fruitfulness of such research, particularly in raising awareness of the diversity of human practices, archaeologists often do not account for the influence that preconceived notions of human– environment relationships have in such reconstructions. In fact, archaeology can play a part in constructing or reinforcing Western perceptions of the environment, and as such, sometimes tell us more about our own associations with the natural world rather than informing us about those in the past (see Stump, Chapter 10 and Armstrong Oma, Chapter 11 this volume for similar statements). Using the example of the prehistoric Swiss lake dwellings, this chapter argues that preconceived notions of human–environment relations affect how we inte...
This dissertation asks how knowledge about the past is made and transmitted, and what the role of... more This dissertation asks how knowledge about the past is made and transmitted, and what the role of material culture is in this process. Taking as its case study the Swiss lakedwelling collections acquired in Britain between 1850 and 1900, it uses a selection of these collections as primary sources of the material and social networks that were central to the development of archaeology as a discipline. The project not only supports the more widely held assertion that scientific knowledge is a form of cultural production (Lenoir 1998), but emphasises the material basis of such production, and the traces it leaves. In particular, it pays close attention to previously unexamined aspects of historic collections; namely the transformative practices - such as the conservation, packaging, labelling, cataloguing and illustration - by which lake-dwelling artefacts were salvaged, documented, and displayed. It uses this perspective to shed light on the social networks which motivated such practices, and develops a method of analysing the collections in dialogue with other contemporary representations, underscoring the variety of material contexts and media through which knowledge about lake-dwellings was represented and encountered. This research will hopefully reinvigorate further research into historic collections and their implications for the discipline of archaeology and the museum's own reflections on its historicity and methods of knowledge production.
Antiquity, 2010
Lake dwellings, most of them dating from the late Neolithic to the Bronze Age, are exceptionally ... more Lake dwellings, most of them dating from the late Neolithic to the Bronze Age, are exceptionally well-preserved settlement sites, found in the littoral zone of the lakes of Switzerland, southern Germany and northern Italy (eg Keller 1866; Menotti 2004). Vast quantities of organic ...
Book Reviews by Katherine Leckie
Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 'Movement, Mobility and Migration,' Issue 23.2, pp 204-209, Nov 2008
Humans and the Environment: New Archaeological Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century, Jun 2013
This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work ... more This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.
Cambridge University Press, 2012
Humans and the Environment, 2013
Exploring human–environment relations has been an area of great interest to archaeologists, espec... more Exploring human–environment relations has been an area of great interest to archaeologists, especially for the purpose of reconstructing past environments and investigating methods of human adaptation in the face of changing climates. However, despite the great fruitfulness of such research, particularly in raising awareness of the diversity of human practices, archaeologists often do not account for the influence that preconceived notions of human– environment relationships have in such reconstructions. In fact, archaeology can play a part in constructing or reinforcing Western perceptions of the environment, and as such, sometimes tell us more about our own associations with the natural world rather than informing us about those in the past (see Stump, Chapter 10 and Armstrong Oma, Chapter 11 this volume for similar statements). Using the example of the prehistoric Swiss lake dwellings, this chapter argues that preconceived notions of human–environment relations affect how we inte...
This dissertation asks how knowledge about the past is made and transmitted, and what the role of... more This dissertation asks how knowledge about the past is made and transmitted, and what the role of material culture is in this process. Taking as its case study the Swiss lakedwelling collections acquired in Britain between 1850 and 1900, it uses a selection of these collections as primary sources of the material and social networks that were central to the development of archaeology as a discipline. The project not only supports the more widely held assertion that scientific knowledge is a form of cultural production (Lenoir 1998), but emphasises the material basis of such production, and the traces it leaves. In particular, it pays close attention to previously unexamined aspects of historic collections; namely the transformative practices - such as the conservation, packaging, labelling, cataloguing and illustration - by which lake-dwelling artefacts were salvaged, documented, and displayed. It uses this perspective to shed light on the social networks which motivated such practices, and develops a method of analysing the collections in dialogue with other contemporary representations, underscoring the variety of material contexts and media through which knowledge about lake-dwellings was represented and encountered. This research will hopefully reinvigorate further research into historic collections and their implications for the discipline of archaeology and the museum's own reflections on its historicity and methods of knowledge production.
Antiquity, 2010
Lake dwellings, most of them dating from the late Neolithic to the Bronze Age, are exceptionally ... more Lake dwellings, most of them dating from the late Neolithic to the Bronze Age, are exceptionally well-preserved settlement sites, found in the littoral zone of the lakes of Switzerland, southern Germany and northern Italy (eg Keller 1866; Menotti 2004). Vast quantities of organic ...
Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 'Movement, Mobility and Migration,' Issue 23.2, pp 204-209, Nov 2008