From time to time I will post 'bite size' chunks of the material I am preparing for my PhD thesis: works in progress, but content which I feel may be of interest to a wider audience. All will be very much draft versions, not necessarily - probably not - reflecting the final wording that will eventually appear in the Thesis. In-text references are included but a full bibliography is not. This paper is based on a section of the initial literature review.
Approaches to the study of landscape archaeology and history
Landscape archaeology in context
Figure 1: A landscape-scale view of medieval strip lynchets flanking an Iron Age hillfort with a post-medieval deer park in the background, Dyrham, Gloucestershire (Author).
In 1998 a collection of papers that examined the contemporary
state of landscape archaeology was published in honour of one of the discipline’s
key founding figures: Christopher Taylor. In his introductory chapter Tom Williamson
(1998, 1) provided a lucid explanation of what archaeological research at a
landscape scale encompasses (see Figure 1):
‘It is
distinguished, not so much by a coherent body of applied technique or theory,
but by subject-matter. In essence, landscape archaeologists are concerned with
explaining how what we see today came to look the way it does, and with
interpreting the spatial patterns and structures created in the past in terms
of social and economic behaviour. In particular, landscape archaeology is
characterised by an interest in scales of analysis wider than that of the ‘site’:
it focusses on the broader matrices of settlement patterns, field systems,
territories and communications. Lastly, its tools tend, for the most part, to
be non-destructive – aerial photography, earthwork surveys and field walking’.
To
this list we should now add Geographical Information Systems (GIS), remote
sensing, satellite imagery and other spatial computing technologies. Williamson
goes on to point out that landscape
archaeology and landscape history
are to some extent interchangeable terms and many researchers who are involved
in this area would be hard-pressed to confirm which of the two disciplines they
fall into. I will make no distinction here and will use landscape archaeology, with an implied use of physical evidence
alongside documentary sources, as short-hand for both terms from now on.
The academic foundations and historiography of landscape
archaeology will be touched on in due course but first it is instructive to briefly
turn to the absence of theory touched on in Williamson’s quote. Theoretical
context may not be thought to weigh heavily on contemporary landscape
archaeology practice but is increasingly ingrained in academic discourse within
the field, perhaps emblematical of a widening hinterland of complementary ideas
and approaches that have the potential to converge around the concept of
landscape. Two books which reflect on and aim to advance the relationship
between landscape archaeology and theory provide examples of this.[1]
In the introduction to their edited volume Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary
Perspectives, Ashmore and Knapp (1999, 1) explicitly identify the move from
landscape seen purely as passive backdrop, resource or object of gaze to an
emphasis on its ‘socio-symbolic dimensions: landscape is an entity that exists
by virtue of its being perceived, experienced, and contextualized by people’.
In this sense they are acknowledging the increased importance of social theory
in archaeological study of landscape: understanding how people interrelate with
and imbue meaning to space and place through time. Foundational to this are the
ideas of the pioneering American social geographer, Carl Sauer who first
conceptualised the notion of cultural landscape,
distinct from but interrelated to the natural landscape (Sauer 1963; Wylie 2007, 19). Building on this
theoretical broadening Bender’s influential edited volume, Landscape: Politics and Perspective (1993), sought to bring
together archaeological, anthropological and geographical perspectives on the
cultural landscape (including phenomenological ideas of landscape as experience
discussed later in this chapter), although with an emphasis on urban settlement
and specific monuments. Ashmore and Knapp (1999, 4) sought to further embed a
cross-cultural approach to the total landscape and therefore include a broad
spectrum of contributors, in part to break-down the barriers between different
academic traditions (e.g. American and British, processual and
post-processual).
Of particular relevance to this Thesis are the
‘terms and themes’ that Ashmore and Knapp (1999, 8-19) identify for landscape.
Building on UNESCO’s categorisation of cultural landscapes,[2] they
provide a more nuanced triptych of interpretive descriptors: constructed
landscapes, conceptualized landscapes, and ideational landscapes (the latter
recognising imaginative and emotional ‘insider perspectives’). Within these
categories they locate four often overlapping themes. Firstly, landscape as
memory, where continuity (e.g. re-use, reinterpretation etc.) becomes an
important consideration, and a key theme also examined at length by Shama (1995). Secondly landscape as
identity, to help people self-locate the place they most identify with or that
identifies them. Thirdly, landscape as social order: the role of place in
cultural relationships, encompassing considerations of gender, class, race etc.
And finally, landscape as transformation, recognising the interrelatedness of
space and time and that: ‘Ancient sites, monuments and even entire landscapes
may be transformed and re-used as people encounter and interact with particular
places, as they re-create the past’ (Ashmore
and Knapp 1999, 19). This will be a useful conceptual
framework to return to in the interpretive and discursive sections of this
Thesis.
In Ideas of
Landscape (2007a) Matthew Johnson adopts a more partisan approach via a
clear and stated agenda to deconstruct the empirical English landscape
tradition of landscape archaeology, historical geography and local history, as
exemplified by the pioneering work of Hoskins, Beresford and others (Hoskins
1955; Beresford 1957; Beresford and St Joseph 1958), and contrasting it with
the more theoretically grounded explorations of landscape found in
anthropology, cultural geography and post-processual archaeology (see, for
example, Bender 1993; Cosgrove 2008; Ucko and Layton 1999, Wylie
2007). Moreover his aim is to
promote a new agenda that brings together the best of these different
approaches. In contrast to the focus on ancient and prehistoric landscapes in
Ashmore and Knapp’s work, Johnson (2007a, 201-2) is keen to advocate a new
landscape approach for non-intrusive historical archaeology, a discipline which
he feels has been marginalised (or has perhaps always been marginal),
particularly in the ‘sharp, critical environments’ of Oxbridge.
Johnson articulates a perceptive description and
critique of existing traditions that to some observers (particularly in a
lively debate with Andrew Fleming in the pages of the Landscapes journal (Fleming 2007, 2008; Johnson 2007b)) is excessive in its attack on still
vital and relevant fieldwork techniques and only sets out a new agenda in brief
and rather vague terms (Fleming 2007, 97; Pryor 2010, 748; Rippon 2009,
244-45). However, the author does helpfully articulate a clear
delineation (within the UK) between scholars and practitioners engaged in landscape archaeology research and
interpretation, and those who consider landscape from a cultural geography
perspective. This somewhat fractured approach to landscape study is a recurring
theme when reviewing the literature of the past forty years or so and might
explain, or be a symptom of, the fact that there is no tradition of a single,
unified landscape discipline in British academia. This is an on-going
disconnect and there would seem to be significant scope for greater
cross-fertilisation of knowledge and ideas (Fairclough 2012; Schofield 2007).
Johnson’s underlying call for
combined methodologies is reflective of the direction of travel of academic
discourse and one that is taken up in this research project.
The development of landscape archaeology
The antecedents of the fieldwork tradition that
Johnson critiques and which remains very much part of contemporary British
landscape archaeology can be found in antiquarianism but were particularly
developed by O.G.S Crawford during his long term of office as
Archaeology Officer for the Ordnance Survey in the inter-war period and up to
1946 (Hauser 2007, 155-161; Rippon 2009, 232). His ground-breaking combination
of field archaeology, aerial photography and mapping to record and understand
the landscape, for instance the distinction between what he termed Celtic
fields and later Saxon or medieval field systems, laid the foundations for
modern archaeological interpretation on a landscape scale (Bowden 2001, 29;
Gardiner et al 2012, 3).[3]
In
the early post-war period historical geography and economic history were the disciplines
providing the impetus for later developments in landscape archaeology, through local studies (e.g.
village plans) and the mapping of historical data at a regional and national
scale (Baker 2003, 6-9; Rippon 2009, 230).[4] W.G. Hoskins’ The Making of the English Landscape (1955)
has, of course, to come into the picture here. Hoskins (see Figure 2) was an
economic historian by background rather than a landscape archaeologist, and the
book is now seen as very much of its time, outdated and open to criticism - for
instance, acknowledgment of the role of monasteries in the landscape was
limited (Bond 2000, 63; Fleming 2008, 74; Gardiner and Rippon 2007, 1; Jones
2015, 2-4). However, this remains a seminal empirical work that informed and
inspired much of the later development of landscape archaeology, as well as setting the template for later
widescreen landscape narratives at county, regional and national level.[5]
Figure 2: W.G.
Hoskins, author of The Making of
the English Landscape in the countryside of his native Devon (en.wikipedia.org).
Beresford,
Crawford, Hoskins and their contemporaries provided the realisation that
archaeology, particularly from the medieval and post-medieval periods, was not
just buried in the ground but also all around as relict or still extant
features in the modern countryside (Gardiner et al 2011, 4). It was on the
shoulders of these pioneers of landscape history that the graduates of the new
or expanding archaeology, geography and history departments of the 1960s, and
the staff of the Royal Commissions on Ancient and Historical Monuments, helped
refine and professionalise a distinctively British practice of landscape archaeology as a modern
discipline, both in the field and in academia (Bowden and McOmish 2011, 21;
Rippon 2009, 232). Within this
tradition comes the large body of research and publications that spans the
period from the 1970s up to the early years of this century.[6]
Here is a legacy of immensely practical
field guides to the analytical techniques of observing, interpreting and
recording landscape features that are certainly not overburdened with theory.
Innovation was, though, to the fore, for example: integrating New
Archaeology agendas of spatial analysis adopted from geography; challenging the
previously dominant invasion and migration paradigm to explain landscape
development in the early Middle Ages; and placing a greater emphasis on studying the origins of the modern historic
landscape and the largely anonymous ordinary lives of those who inhabited the
villages, fields and farmsteads (Fowler 1988, 15; Rippon 2009, 233-4). Fowler and others also developed a new
landscape-scale research agenda, combining traditional survey with aerial photo
analysis, field-walking and paleo-environmental analysis (Rippon 2009, 232).
An
important contribution to landscape
archaeology from the same generation and one that brought valuable expertise from
the fields of botany and ecological history was provided by Oliver Rackham
(Rackham 1986; Rippon 2009, 230). His work helped to illuminate
the distinction between the Planned and Ancient countryside of different
English regions or pays, a general division that seems to have
survived successive changes in land-use, settlement development etc. (Jones and
Hooke 2011, 41; Rippon 2009, 228),[7] as well as demonstrating
that woodland and other natural but managed vegetation could be just as
indicative of the history of the landscape as more obviously man-made features (Gardiner et al 2011,
4). More recently, Rippon (Rippon 2012a, 240; Rippon et al 2013) has
demonstrated a practical integration of ecological data into landscape archaeology through the
use of paleo-environmental sequences from medieval sites (e.g. for preserved
cereal remains and animal bones) to help provide evidence of changes in
land-use over time.
Contemporary landscape archaeology research
In
the context of the historic landscape, a number of key themes have been
prominent in recent research activity that together help us understand many of
the drivers and processes that saw the British landscape crystallise into the
general character we still to a large extent see today (Gardiner and Rippon
2007, 2). Much of the rich and active research on medieval settlement and
landscape is clustered around the membership and activities of the Medieval
Settlement Research Group (Gardiner et al 2011, 6). A non-exhaustive and
greatly simplified, but nevertheless indicative, list would include the
following:
- Settlement evolution, including debates about the origins and development of the village (perhaps most extensively examined in Roberts and Wrathmell 2002; see also Jones and Page 2006; Lewis et al 2001; and contributions in Christie and Stamper 2011);
- Regional distributions of countryside typology, notably Woodland or Ancient and Champion landscapes (see Williamson 2003 for an outline of the different landscape types and debates around this subject; also Rippon 2004a, 2012b);
- The origins, development and workings of the manorial system and transition from feudalism to a market-based economy (Dyer 2000; Faith 1997; Johnson 1996);
- Elite landscapes of power and other designed landscapes (Creighton 2002, 2013; Finch and Giles 2007; Johnson 1996; Liddiard 2007).
The
work of medieval historians such as Dyer has also emphasised the centrality of
the activities, needs and interests of the, often unnamed and therefore
unheralded, people of town, village and field in the dynamics of shaping the
landscape (Dyer 2000, 2009; Whittock 2009). This self-evident relationship
between common people and the land has become more embedded in landscape study
(see, as illustration, contributions in Turner and Silvester 2012). Whilst much
of this research is of relevance to the Welsh Marches landscapes of this study,
the importance of regional and local variation also needs to be acknowledged.
As Gardiner et al (2011, 7) stress, it is often difficult to discern clear
patterns in research outcomes across this plethora of activity, in many ways
the picture has become increasingly complex and locally nuanced. The body of
research work in Wales (and Scotland) has tended to be less well developed than
for many of the English regions with a focus on upland contexts and a reliance
on empirical approaches (Austin 2006, 193).[8]
There is much evidence
of a broadening of landscape
archaeology research techniques and application across a wider spectrum
of spatial and temporal contexts in recent years, together with an evolution
from the largely descriptive to a focus on interpretation and explanation
(Gardiner and Rippon 2007, 8). In Making
Sense of an Historic Landscape (2012, 4) Rippon provides a particularly
useful synthesis of the approaches that can now be used to study an historic
landscape (in this case the Blackdown Hills), integrating traditional landscape archaeology methodologies
with the study of other elements that can contribute to the understanding of
local and regional landscape character variation, such as how landscape was
perceived and the expression of identity through vernacular architecture and
naming in the landscape. Other examples would include:
the wide application of Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC), witness the
county-level HLC’s sponsored by Historic England and other public bodies,
though with a different approach adopted in Wales, where the focus has been on landscapes defined as of
specific or outstanding interest rather than systematic mapping of the whole
landscape (Fairclough 2013a; Rippon 2004a) (see Figure 3); the
Whittlewood project applying integrated archaeological and historical research
to examine in detail how villages developed (Jones and Page 2006); Partida et
al’s (2013) reconstruction and mapping of the medieval landscape of
Northamptonshire; the Fields of Britannia Project addressing
continuity and discontinuity in the rural landscapes of Roman Britain (Rippon
et al 2013); and the EngLaId project analysing mapping and artefact data on a
national scale to help calibrate understanding of how the English landscape
developed from the Bronze Age until the Domesday survey (http://englaid.com/about/
accessed 8/10/15).
Figure 3: The first HLC in England – carried out in Cornwall (©
Cornwall County Council 2007 and ©Crown Copyright. All rights reserved.
100019590. 2007).
One
important driver for such innovative landscape-framed approaches has been the
opportunities presented by new technologies in terms of surveying, remote
sensing, satellite imagery, data analysis, mapping and modelling, which is
particularly apposite in the context of the harnessing of GIS to develop
digital HLC mapping and to digitise modern and historic Ordnance Survey maps
and some Historic Environment Records (HERs). Primarily developed to inform the
planning process, HLC is not without its critics as comparatively broad-brush
and one-dimensional in its reliance on field morphology and lines on the map in
conveying landscape character (Rippon 2013, 180; Williamson 2007, 67-70).
Nevertheless, its comprehensive application has led to some significant
discoveries and provided a large resource of accessible data (Rippon 2009,
242). HLC data can also be integrated with other data layers in GIS as part of
a broader process of historic landscape analysis (as espoused in Rippon 2004a).
The use of GIS has enabled a move towards larger scale studies both regionally
and thematically in the work of bodies such as Historic England’s Survey Team
and the Royal Commissions in Scotland and Wales (Rippon 2009, 238). Verhagen (2012)
provides further examples of the embedding of innovative practice in mainstream
landscape archaeology at an
international level (ranging from the detection of new features through the use
of LiDAR to digital terrain modelling and the GIS application of cost surface
and viewshed analysis), but also explores the challenges arising from the
limitations of particular technologies, faddism, keeping pace with
technological development and ensuring new tools are used in an appropriate and
focussed way.
Connecting with other approaches to landscape
The
brief overview provided here has identified that the study of the history of
landscape is approached from a number of different traditions (empirical
archaeological fieldwork, historical geography, cultural geography and so on). Mention
has also been made of the historical lack of a clear body of ingrained and
underpinning theoretical concepts within landscape archaeology in Britain. Some have proposed that any
relative lack of engagement with theory is strongly counter-weighted by the
establishment of well-developed and innovative methodologies for field work and
the integration of new technologies (Jones and Hooke 2011, 31-5). Moreover, as
Gilchrist (2009, 386, 397) has argued, the dichotomy between scientific,
empirical data and theoretical approaches is largely a false one: theory has often
reframed the types of research questions and methodologies used within landscape archaeology, theoretical
developments across the humanities have been implicitly assimilated and, in any
case, all methods of empirical data-collection are socially constructed and
therefore intrinsically theoretical (Gardiner and Rippon 2009, 70).
While debates such as the
Johnson-Fleming exchange mentioned above are generally a sign of a vibrant and
healthy research environment, lack of communication between disciplines is not
(Rippon 2009, 245). In part given impetus by pan-European convergences in the
wake of the European Landscape Convention, there are perhaps the stirrings of a
greater degree of coalescence around the concept of landscape across academic
and professional boundaries, as evidenced by the complementary contributions
from a wide range of disciplines in Howard et al’s The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies (2013). An incisive
and thought-provoking identification of the opportunities for landscape archaeology to become a
central element in an emerging ‘super-discipline’ is
provided by Fairclough’s (2012) paper presented at LAC2010, the first
international conference devoted to landscape
archaeology. Fairclough (2012, 472-5) proposes that landscape archaeology can occupy
the middle ground, a bridge between scientific approaches to landscape and
cultural geography and social science perspectives, suggesting that ‘the
underlying question is whether Landscape Archaeology exists to use the idea of
landscape only to study the past (which will mainly interest historical
disciplines) or also (or mainly) to use archaeology to study the landscape of
the present-day, in both its materiality and mentality, and thus to connect to
all landscape disciplines and to a wider public’. This idea of connectivity
with approaches from other branches of landscape study will be explored further
in my next PhD research post.
[1] Muir
(1999) has also provided a more conventional historiographical
perspective, exploring the key concepts, theories and philosophies of landscape
study and surveying the various strands that encompass the landscape corpus in
Western thought.
[2] ‘Clearly defined’, ‘Organically evolved’ and ‘Associative cultural’.
[3] Work that was brought to a
wider audience with the publication in 1953 of his book Archaeology in the Field (Johnson 2007, 55; Muir 1999, 33).
[4] In particular, the regional Domesday Geography and Agrarian History of England and Wales series’.
The historical geography tradition has also continued to be closely aligned
with landscape archaeology, through the work of Darby, Hooke (see,
for instance, her edited volume Landscape:
The Richest Historical Resource (2000)), Thirsk and others (Baker 2003;
Thirsk 2000).
[5] See, for instance: Hodder and
Stoughton’s The Making of county
series of the late 1960s and early 1970s; Collins England’s Landscape regional guides (2006-7); and Pryor (2010).
[6] Key
examples include: Aston and Rowley’s Landscape
Archaeology: An introduction to Fieldwork Techniques on Post-Roman Landscapes (1974); Aston’s Interpreting
the Landscape: Landscape Archaeology in Local Studies (1985); Brown’s Fieldwork for Archaeologists and Local Historians (1987); The New Reading the Landscape (2000) and Landscape
Encyclopaedia: A Reference Guide to the Historic Landscape (2004) by Muir; Fowler’s Archaeology and the Landscape (1972) and Landscape Plotted and Pieced: Landscape
History and Local Archaeology in Fyfield and Overton, Wiltshire (2000) and
the prodigious output of Taylor, including his handbook on Fieldwork in Medieval Archaeology
(1974).
[7] A pattern also reflected in
other categorisations of landscape character, such as the Highland and Lowland
Zones identified in Fox’s Identity of
Britain as far back as 1932, Roberts and Wrathmell’s (2002) settlement
research, Phythian-Adams (1999)
Cultural Provinces and HLC mapping.
[8] Volumes edited by Edwards (1997) and
Roberts (2006) provide a useful overview, see also Leighton and Silvester
(2003).
