Landscape Archaeology

by

Bruno David, Jessie Birkett-Rees

• LAST MODIFIED: 20 August 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0299

Introduction

Landscape archaeology is the study of how people interacted with their surroundings, as evidenced by the archaeological record. This may appear to be an all-encompassing remit, but not all archaeology is “landscape archaeology.” Rather, landscape archaeology involves those dimensions of archaeology that relate to place and may imbue many different archaeology projects. The notion of “landscape archaeology” became popular among archaeologists in the 1980s and has remained so ever since. This popularity came about as a result of a number of converging factors. In the 1960s and 1970s, the New Archaeology that revolutionized practice in much Anglophone archaeology brought with it a focus on environments as habitats and resource zones. The archaeology of cultural practices often became synonymous with, and reduced to, investigations of habitat and economy as adaptive practices. Yet cultures, and life—all the things that people do that leave archaeological traces—involve more than resources for survival. The notion of “landscape,” originating from the tradition of 16th–17th-century Dutch art, brought with it the idea that people, values, and representations are more than the environment as a source of material sustenance. “Social landscapes” and “social archaeology” became catchphrases that signaled this change in approach. A second factor that affected this changing attitude in the 1980s was the explosion of cultural heritage management projects that was taking place in light of industrial developments and the increasingly legislated government protection of archaeological sites. This necessitated a broader approach to archaeological landscapes beyond spatially isolated dots on maps, one that increasingly took into account the extensive terrains that contained the threatened sites. Third, the 1980s also saw an increased general awareness of the calls of First Nations peoples whose landscapes were being targeted for research as well as for destruction through developments. The individual sites that archaeologists often focused on were, and are, interconnected nodes in First Nations landscapes. In a supposedly postcolonial world—or at least one striving beyond colonialism—ethical behavior required a more considerate approach to “archaeological” (read “living First Nations”) landscapes. Landscape archaeology thus quickly emerged as a social archaeology that approached places as connected across space and through time, reaching into the present. Landscape archaeology continues to contribute to contemporary issues through engagement with questions of human adaptation to changing climates and sustainable development. Landscape archaeology takes place at nested spatial scales and considers the dimensions of life’s activities and perspectives across space. Such a broad remit is best approached through transdisciplinary research across multiple spatial scales. In this context, “landscape” has also served as a privileged shorthand for seascapes, riverscapes, skyscapes, and spiritscapes as well as the land. Two likely, connected reasons for this are that most people largely reside on the land, and archaeologists mainly look at things from fixed positions on the land, even if those things relate to the sky, waterways, and cosmologies. But in recent years, such a terrestrial perspective has been questioned by many researchers whose gaze has shifted toward the sea, sky, and other scapes.

Textbooks and Handbooks

There have been thousands of books and articles in archaeology that focus on regional case studies—see, for instance, Crumley and Marquardt 1987 and Wilkinson 2003—but they are far too numerous to list here. In contrast, few textbooks, handbooks, and book-length overviews dedicated to the methods and ideas of landscape archaeology have been published. Surprisingly, to this day the only handbook to have systematically tackled the topic remains David and Thomas 2016, commissioned by the World Archaeological Congress. Other influential books that have brought together varied approaches to landscape archaeology include Ashmore and Knapp 1999 and Layton and Ucko 1999. Johnson 2006 is a leading book-length text that reviews and constructively springboards from landscape archaeology. It is refreshing that landscape archaeology as a research concept and practice has not developed isolated in its own sound-box: some of the most influential texts in landscape archaeology have not come from archaeology at all, but from other disciplines, such as social anthropology (e.g., Ingold 2000), ecology and art history (e.g., Schama 1995), philosophy (e.g., Casey 1997), and geology and other Earth sciences (e.g., Gilbert 2017).

• Ashmore, Wendy, and A. Bernard Knapp, eds. 1999. Archaeologies of landscape: Contemporary perspectives. Oxford: Blackwell.

  Explores how people constructed their worlds as ideational landscapes amenable to archaeological investigation. Each chapter presents a distinctive case study from around the world.

• Casey, Edward S. 1997. The fate of place: A philosophical history. Oakland: Univ. of California Press.

  A masterful exposition of meanings of “space” and “place” in Western philosophy, in historical perspective. Casey’s philosophical work has been influential in archaeology, such as in how the purportedly abstract notion of “space” underpinning “spatial analysis” is a cultural construct by which the analyst affects the results. Explores the Western philosophical history that both explicitly and subliminally informs our notions of space and place today—important concepts in landscape archaeology.

• Crumley, Carole L., and William H. Marquardt. 1987. Regional dynamics: Burgundian landscapes in historical perspective. New York: Academic Press.

  A multidisciplinary study of the history of the Burgundian landscape of east-central France, from the Iron Age to recent times.

• David, Bruno, and Julian Thomas, eds. 2016. Handbook of landscape archaeology. London: Routledge.

  The “go-to” handbook in landscape archaeology. Commissioned by the World Archaeological Congress, it introduces landscape archaeology’s broad range of themes and approaches. With sixty-five chapters written by eighty specialists, it remains the single key reference volume to learn about the topic.

• Gilbert, Allan S., ed. 2017. Encyclopedia of geoarchaeology. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.

  DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-4409-0

  A rich online resource that defines terms and explains methods of archaeological science founded in the Earth sciences for landscape archaeology.

• Ingold, Tim. 2000. The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge.

  A rich and inspirational set of essays by a leading social anthropologist. Explores how people learn skills (“culture”) while engaging with each other and surroundings.

• Johnson, Matthew. 2006. Ideas of landscape. Oxford: Blackwell.

  Reviews ideas and practices of “landscape archaeology,” especially in the British Isles, and critiques its intellectual foundations in British Romantic notions of “landscape.”

• Layton, Robert, and Peter J. Ucko, eds. 1999. The archaeology and anthropology of landscape: Shaping your landscape. London: Routledge.

  An eclectic range of papers on landscape archaeology from around the world, from a period in the 1990s when “landscape archaeology” rapidly developed as a popular theme in world archaeology.

• Schama, Simon. 1995. Landscape and memory. New York: A. A. Knopf.

  A beautifully written book that traces the origins and history of the concept of “landscape” in the West. Describes how landscapes are at once physical and imaginary, expressions of place that develop as people engage with their environments through social life, imbuing places and social relationships with cultural value and power along the way.

• Wilkinson, Tony J. 2003. Archaeological landscapes of the Near East. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press.

  DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv1jf2ddx

  Wilkinson brings clarity to the diverse and significant cultural practices and environments of the ancient Near East, integrating his own pioneering research in Near Eastern landscape archaeology with syntheses of an array of regional studies. A masterful study of archaeological landscapes from the Neolithic to modern day.