5. Artifact, Landscape, and Temporality in Eastern Mediterranean Archaeological Landscape Studies (original) (raw)
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The fieldwalkers and specialists of the Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project investigated a wide variety of physical and cultural landscapes on the northern edge of the Troodos Mountains in central Cyprus over six field seasons. These landscapes range from the cultivated Mesaoria Plain in the north to the forested Troodos Mountains in the south, and from the rich and fertile Karkotis Valley in the west to the drier and narrower Lagoudhera Valley in the east. Across this physical topography lie the cultural landscapes of food and fibre production, natural resource extraction, water conveyance and industry, ritual and burial, and the structures assocated with villages, farms and copper mines. Our regional perspective and time span of at least 12,000 years mean that the research issues are inevitably wide-ranging. At the core is the complex and dynamic relationship between people and their landscape, as it was played out in resource extraction, communication, settlement, social organisation, and the manipulation of soils, plants and water. This conceptual focus opens out onto a wide range of case studies, both chronologically and thematically. Our stratified sampling strategy focused on six Intensive Survey Zones, which ensured representative coverage of the diverse landscape of our 165-km2 Survey Area. Our core field method consisted of fieldwalking in individual Survey Units. From each one the field teams recorded a variety of information and collected carefully controlled samples of artefacts. Specific features or locations were recorded as Places of Special Interest (POSIs), initially with a pro forma and subsequently, if required, by a variety of more intensive techniques. All this archaeological fieldwork was carried out under strict geomorphological control, and every field team included a geomorphologist. This core analysis was complemented by a wide range of work carried out by a large team of specialists. Volume 1 of this publication contains a full explanation of the project’s research context, research philosophy and methodology, and detailed analyses of the archaeology, material culture, architecture and environmental record of the Survey Area as a whole. This is followed by a series of period-specific analyses (Prehistoric, Iron Age, Hellenistic–Roman and Byzantine–Modern), and a conclusion which addresses our primary research goals and offers an evaluation of the project.
My research has shown that the type of regional archaeological data analysis required by landscape archaeological approaches is an area where both theory and method are still in their infancy. High-level theories about the occurrence, scope, and effects of processes such as centralization, urbanization, and Hellenization/Romanization cannot yet be supported by middle range theory, which itself cannot be developed until the basic business of generating information of sufficient quality about the archaeological record has been tackled. Currently, archaeological data can be made to fit almost any interpretation generated, ultimately, on the basis of the ancient written sources. If we are to escape from this selfreinforcing cycle, research should perhaps no longer be focused on the classical themes generated by culture-historical approaches, but should seek its own proper field of operation. In the area of methods and methodology, I have demonstrated the pervasive influence of systematic research and visibility biases on the patterns that are present in the archaeological data generated over the past 50 years or so. There are mechanisms at work, both in the traditional archaeological interpretation of limited numbers of excavated sites and historical sources, and in the landscape archaeological approach, that cause the systematic undervaluation of unobtrusive remains. The significance of systematic biases in both the coarse site-based data sets resulting from desktop and ‘topographic’ studies and the more detailed site-based or ‘continuous’ data resulting from intensive field surveys has become much clearer as a result of the studies reported here. This should have practical consequences for the ways in which we study the existing archaeological record, plan future landscape archaeological research, and conduct field surveys. Site databases, the traditional starting point for regional archaeological studies, can no longer be taken at face value; rather, they require careful source criticism before being used to support specific arguments and hypotheses about settlement and land use dynamics. My studies have also shown that future data collection, whether through field survey, excavation or other methods, has to take place in a much more methodical manner if we are to produce data that are sufficiently standardized to be successfully exchanged, compared, and interpreted by others – guidelines for which should become embodied in an international standard defining ‘best practice in landscape archaeology’.