The Archaeology And Anthropology Of Landscape

The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape contributes to the development of theory in archaeology and anthropology, provides new and varied case studies of landscape and environment from five continents, and raises important policy issues concerning development and the management of heritage.

An Anthropology of Landscape tells the fascinating story of a heathland landscape in south-west England and the way different individuals and groups engage with it. Based on a long-term anthropological study, the book emphasises four individual themes: embodied identities, the landscape as a sensuous material form that is acted upon and in turn acts on people, the landscape as contested, and its relation to emotion. The landscape is discussed in relation to these themes as both ‘taskscape’ and ‘leisurescape’, and from the perspective of different user groups. First, those who manage the landscape and use it for work: conservationists, environmentalists, archaeologists, the Royal Marines, and quarrying interests. Second, those who use it in their leisure time: cyclists and horse riders, model aircraft flyers, walkers, people who fish there, and artists who are inspired by it. The book makes an innovative contribution to landscape studies and will appeal to all those interested in nature conservation, historic preservation, the politics of nature, the politics of identity, and an anthropology of Britain.

An Anthropology of Landscape tells the fascinating story of a heathland landscape in south-west England and the way different individuals and groups engage with it. Based on a long-term anthropological study, the book emphasises four individual themes: embodied identities, the landscape as a sensuous material form that is acted upon and in turn acts on people, the landscape as contested, and its relation to emotion. The landscape is discussed in relation to these themes as both ‘taskscape’ and ‘leisurescape’, and from the perspective of different user groups. First, those who manage the landscape and use it for work: conservationists, environmentalists, archaeologists, the Royal Marines, and quarrying interests. Second, those who use it in their leisure time: cyclists and horse riders, model aircraft flyers, walkers, people who fish there, and artists who are inspired by it. The book makes an innovative contribution to landscape studies and will appeal to all those interested in nature conservation, historic preservation, the politics of nature, the politics of identity, and an anthropology of Britain.

This distinctive book is the first to address the topic of landscape archaeology in early states from a truly global perspective. It provides an excellent introduction toÑand overview ofÑthe discipline today. The volume grew out of the Fifth Biennial Meeting of the Complex Societies Group, whose theme, States and the Landscape, paid tribute to the work of Robert McC. Adams. When Adams began publishing in the 1960s, the interdependence of cities and their countrysides, and the information revealed through the spatial patterning of communities, went largely unrecognized. Today, as this useful collection makes clear, these interpretive insights are fundamental to all archaeologists who investigate the roles of complex polities in their landscapes. Polities and Power features detailed studies from an intentionally disparate array of regions, including Mesoamerica, Andean South America, southwestern Asia, East Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. Each chapter or pair of chapters is followed by a critical commentary. In concert, these studies strive to infer social, political, and economic meaning from archaeologically discerned landscapes associated with societies that incorporate some expression of state authority. The contributions engage a variety of themes, including the significance of landscapes as they condition and reflect complex polities; the interplay of natural and cultural elements in defining landscapes of state; archaeological landscapes as ever-dynamic entities; and archaeological landscapes as recursive structures, reflected in palimpsests of human activity. Individually, many of these contributions are provocative, even controversial. Taken together, they reveal the contours of landscape archaeology at this particular evolutionary moment.

The contributors to the present volume were asked to variously address its central theme from perspectives offered by jointly anthropological and archaeological approaches, as well as to engage some of the philosophical implications of landscape as highly interdisciplinary concept - one, which can and does draw upon a range of life and physical sciences. Contents: 1) Landscape in Mind. Dialogue on Space between Anthropology and Archaeology (George Dimitriadis); 2) New and Old Paradigms: the Question of Space (Livio Dobrez); 3) The Emergent Novelty of Landscape in Poet Orators' Perspectives: Landscape Archaeology and Sustaining Plurality of Future Aspirations (Stephanie Koerner); 4) From the 'Natural' Forest to the 'Forest' of Signs. The Production of Rock-art and the Management of Space in EBA Societies (George Dimitriadis); 5) Entre anthropologie, histoire et prehistoire (Antonio Guerci); 6) Mind Mapping among Mbowamb and around Motten - On the Significance of Landmarks in Interior New Guinea and Ancient Central Europe (Henry Doselda); 7) West Kennet Avenue: Avenue of Gender/Avenue of Power (Sims Lionel); 8) Terra Sapiens: How Landscape Invented Man (Meschiari Matteo); 9) The Connection Between the Terrestrial and Celestial Landscape during the Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin: Orientation of houses (Emilia Pasztor); 10) Political and Religious Expression in Romanesque Sacral Architecture in Slovenia (Sasa Caval); 11) Sacred territories: astronomy, ritual and the creation of landscape at the passage grave sites of Neolithic Ireland (Kate Prendergrast); 12) What was the nature of the relationship between man and natural space at the neolithic stone circles at Avebury in Southern England? (Harry Meaden); 13) Gesture, Image, Architecture: how fire and rock art may have behaved in the passage graves of Anglesey, North Wales (George Nash); Is there a 'natural' space? (Luiz Oosterbeek) 14) To the world I belong: Places and monumental architecture at the Portuguese Alto Douro (Goncalo Velho); 15) Val Bormida (Ligurie, Italie): espace antropologique dans la Prehistoire entre exploitation des ressources locals et domain de montagne (Davide Delfino) ; 16) Des Espaces Bons pour l'Exclusion (Hameau Philippe) ; 17) Room for rivalry and religion - ritualized rock art reflections of the Bronze Age landscape of Tanum in Bohuslan (Ulf Bertilsson); 18) The cultural nature of natural places in the Alps (Franco Nicolis); 19) Some Concluding Observations on Emergent Novelty and Promising New Relations between Archaeology, Anthropology nd Philosophy (Stephanie Koerner).

This volume examines landscapes that have been cleared of inhabitants—for economic, environmental, or socio-political reasons, by choice or by force—and the social impacts of clearance on their populations. Using cases from five continents, and ranging from prehistoric, through colonial and post-colonial times, the contributors show landscapes as meaningful points of contestation when populations abandon them or are exiled from them. Acts of resistance and revitalization are also explored, demonstrating the social and political meaning of specific landscapes to individuals, groups, and nations, and how they help shape cultural identity and ideology.Sponsored by the World Archaeological Congress

This study provides a concrete example of how foraging societies enculturate and transform the natural environment and, through the use of material objects, create sacred spaces and sites. Using ethnographic and ethnohistorical information about the Khanty of Siberia, Jordan shows the shortcomings of both interpretive and materialist anthropological theorizing about hunters and gatherers. He focuses on the rich and complex relationship between the symbolism of the Khanty, their material culture, and the bringing of meaning to physical places. His examination looks at the topic in both historical and contemporary contexts, and in scales from the core-periphery model of Russian colonialism to the portrait of a single yurt community. Jordan's work will be of importance to those studying cultural anthropology, archaeology, and comparative religion.

A series of case studies examines the archaeological evidence for and interpretations of landscape learning from the movement of the first pre-modern humans into Europe to the English colonists at Jamestown.