Mayer Ch., 2009, Places – Landscapes. Listings – Assessments. Some ideas about the numerical evaluation of archaeological landscapes. In: Peter A.C. Schut (ed.) Listing Archaeological Sites, Protecting the Historical Landscape, EAC occasional paper no 3, 115-125 (original) (raw)
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Landscapes as an archeological heritage
Researching Archaeological Landscapes Across Borders Strategies, Methods and Decisions for the 21st Century, 2019
The publication is divided into two parts and pursues three major questions which must be faced during archaeological project planning:
Archaeology, Landscape and Aesthetics
Landscape archaeology is a recently emerged and very lively branch of archaeology. Its origins go back at least two centuries, to amateur interests in local history and to the writings of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Hazlitt on the English countryside and its inhabitants. Various developments in archaeologytechnical, epistemological, ideologicalhave helped to convert these earlier approaches into a more professional field of enquiry. Sophisticated aerial and satellite photography has made visual access possible to ancient settlements and agricultural sites whose very existence might previously have been a matter only of conjecture. Within archaeological theory, there has emerged the notion of a 'ritual landscape', registering the thought that relentless attention to 'sites', such as Stonehenge, may be myopic, since these have their significance only in the context of the much wider environments in which human beings conducted their lives. Finally, landscape archaeology appeals to those who applaud a certain 'demotic' tendency in contemporary archaeology, its shift of focus on to the lives of 'ordinary' people, such as farmers and foragers, in past centuries. This is because the evidence for how they once lived is often more likely to be found in the land than in remnants of buildings and artefacts at sites.
In Claire Smith & Jo Smith (eds.). 2014. Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York: 4379-4388., 2014
An ever-present characteristic in any definition of Landscape Archaeology is that it refers to a varied and somewhat heterogeneous field of archaeological research. A number of approaches to the archaeological record may be included under this label, which in essence share one common interest: the analysis, through material culture, of the spatial dimension of human activity; in other words, exploring how human communities have related to a geographic space through time in terms of how they appropriated this space, and/or transformed its appearance through work and its significance through cultural practices.
INTRODUCTION LAC2010: First International Landscape Archaeology Conference
2012
The study of landscape archaeology has historically drawn on two different groups of definitions of the term 'landscape' (Olwig 1993, 1996). On the one hand, the original, medieval meaning of landscape is 'territory', including the institutions that govern and manage it. Landscapes according to this definition can be observed subjectively, but also objectively by research based on fieldwork and studies in archives and laboratories (cf. Renes 2011). The second definition developed when artists painted rural scenes and called them 'landscapes'. In the latter, not only the paintings, but also their subjects became known as landscapes. Dutch painters reintroduced the word 'landscape' into the English language, and the word therefore gained a more visual meaning than it had on the Continent. The visual definition turns landscape into a composition that is made within the mind of the individual, so using this definition it could be argued that there is no landscape without an observer (Renes 2011). While in the latter definition the term 'landscape' originates from the Dutch 'landschap' (Schama 1995; David & Thomas 2008), it is probably more accurate to state that the study of 'territorial' landscapes originated as the study of historical geography and physical geography. This can be traced back to the classical authors, with Strabo noting that 'geography (…) regards knowledge both of the heavens and of things on land and sea, animals, plants, fruits, and everything else to be seen in various regions' (Strabo 1.1.1.). Physical geography is by nature an interdisciplinary field (geology, botany, soil science etc.) and in the late 18th and early 19th centuries it continued to focus on the study of the physical environment, for example in the work of the German researcher Alexander Von Humboldt. During the 19th century, most geographers saw human activities in the landscape as strongly defined by the physical landscape (such as in 'Anthropogeographie' in Germany: Ratzel 1882). This approach changed in the early 20th century, when the human element was introduced. During
Landscape in Theory. The Unexpected Virtue of Archaeological Approach
Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología de la Universidad de Granada, 2021
This contribution offers a perspective on the intimate link that is established between theory, practice and results in the field of contemporary Landscape Archeology. With particular reference to the Anglo-Saxon and Mediterranean academic tradition, the discourse aims to investigate the specific way in which the adoption of broad categories and methodological procedures is key to reading the real and ideal Landscape. This analysis highlights how the many different interpretations of the Landscape represent the reflection of the type of questions pertaining to the context of a specific cultural background. I will pay particular attention to the phenomenological approach that seems to cannibalize the debate. Ultimately, I argues for a vision of landscape as a place of asymmetrical relations between human and non-human that cannot be done justice from too strong a phenomenological or materialistic perspective. Even the neo-materialistic collapse of subject and object must be tempered ...