One Land, Many Landscapes: Papers from a session held at the European Association of Archaeologists Fifth Annual Meeting in Bournemouth 1999 9781841712727, 9781407353395

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BAR  S987  2001   DARVILL & GOJDA (Eds)   ONE LAND, MANY LANDSCAPES

One Land, Many Landscapes Papers from a session held at the European Association of Archaeologists Fifth Annual Meeting in Bournemouth 1999 Edited by

Timothy Darvill Martin Gojda

BAR International Series 987 B A R

2001

One Land, Many Landscapes Papers from a session held at the European Association of Archaeologists Fifth Annual Meeting in Bournemouth 1999 Edited by

Timothy Darvill Martin Gajda Constructed world

Inter-tribal space

Tribal space

Village space

Domestic space

BAR International Series 987 2001

Published in 2016 by BAR Publishing, Oxford

BAR International Series 987 One Land, Many Landscapes

© The editors and contributors severally and the Publisher 2001 The authors' moral rights under the 1988 UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act are hereby expressly asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, stored, sold, distributed, scanned, saved in any form of digital format or transmitted in any form digitally, without the written permission of the Publisher.

ISBN 9781841712727 paperback ISBN 9781407353395 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781841712727 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library BAR Publishing is the trading name of British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd. British Archaeological Reports was first incorporated in 197 4 to publish the BAR Series, International and British. In 1992 Hadrian Books Ltd became part of the BAR group. This volume was originally published by Archaeopress in conjunction with British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd/ Hadrian Books Ltd, the Series principal publisher, in 2001. This present volume is published by BAR Publishing, 2016.

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Contents

Contents Key acronyms and abbreviations List of contributors

iii lV

1. One land, many landscapes: an introduction Timothy Darvill and Martin Gajda

1

2. Post-processual landscape: the lost world of aerial archaeology? Wlodzimierz Rqczkowski

3

3. Archaeology and landscape studies in Europe: approaches and concepts Martin Gajda

9

4. Space, environment, and cultural landscape in Polish archaeology Paul Barford

19

5. Traditions oflandscape archaeology in Britain: issues of time and scale Timothy Darvill

33

6. Dynamic changes in the central Bohemian Holocene alluvial landscape Dagmar Dreslerova

47

7. Interpreting archaeological site distribution in dynamic sedimentary environments Keith Wilkinson and Clive Jonathon Bond

55

8. Geomorphological aspects oflandscape archaeology: examples from Neolithic sites in the centre of the Russian Plain Alexander Smirnov

67

9. Marginal landscapes: survey and interpretation biases in low finds density regions in Italy Martijn van Leusen

71

10. Environmental controls on Mesolithic locational behaviour in the northeast of Belgium Veerle Vanacker, Gerard Govers, and Philip van Peer

75

11. The landscapes of gallery graves in Sweden. The use of gallery graves in the transformation of Neolithic landscapes Curry Heimann

85

12. Incorporating the natural environment: investigating landscape and monument as sacred space Gail Higginbottom, Andrew Smith, Ken Simpson, and Roger Clay

97

13. Environment and setting of the Baitovo archaeological complex (Kurgan, Russia) Esther Gonzalez Mazariegos

105

14. Alan settlements of the first millennium in the Kislovodsk Basin, Russia Irena Arzhantseva, Irena Turova, Maria Bronnikova, and Elia Zazovskaya

115

15. Grazing and hearths in west 6stergotland, 1000-1 BC Maria Petersson

125

16. Early urban and colonized regions of central and south Italy: a case study in comparative landscape archaeology Peter Attema

147

17. Agrifertiles ac silvosi: landscape, production, and trade in north coastal Etruria Marinella Pasquinucci and Simonetta Menchelli

157

18. Estate surveys Christopher Currie

165

ii

Key acronyms and abbreviations

AAR ASHLY AZP

BAR Cadw chemozem CBA CVS DoE DEM DTM GIS GPR GPS HMSO

TAR ODZ OUCA NGR RCAHMS RCHM RCHME RPC sandur SMR solod TRB VES

vvs

Indicates the furthest possible boundaries on the horizon that could be associated with a monument Areas of Special Historic Landscape Value Archaeological Monuments of Poland project British Archaeological Reports Welsh Historic Monuments Black earth - an unleached soil similar to a prairie soil Council for British Archaeology Cumulative viewshed Department of the Environment Digital Elevation Model Digital Terrain Model Geographical Information Systems Ground penetrating radar Global Positioning System Her Majesty's Stationery Office Inner azimuth range, comprising two values which mark the inner indicated range of a monument Centre for the documentation of monuments Oxford University Committee for Archaeology National Grid Reference Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland Royal Commission on Historic Monuments Royal Commission on Historic Monuments in England Regional Pathways to Complexity project An outwash plain of fluvioglacial deposits, covering a widespread area, produced by deposition from meltwater streams. Sites and Monuments Record Salt-earth podzol Trichterrandbecherkultur Vertical electrical sounding Visual viewshed

iii

List of contributors Irena Arzhantseva. Department of Archaeology, Faculty of History, Moscow State University, Moscow. Russia. Email: [email protected] Peter Attema. RPC Project, Institute of Archaeology, University ofGroningen, Poststraat 6, 9712 ER Groningen. Netherlands. Email: [email protected] Paul Barford. Wloscianska 8 m 10, 01-710 Warszawa. Poland. Email: [email protected] Clive Jonathon Bond. Department of Archaeology, King Alfred's College, Winchester. Hampshire. SO22 4NR. United Kingdom. Email: [email protected] Maria Bronnikova. Department of Soil Science, Moscow State University, Moscow. Russia. Email: [email protected] Roger Clay. Department of Physics and Mathematical Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia. Australia 5000. Email: [email protected] Christopher Currie. 71 Upper Barn Copse, Fair Oak, Eastleigh. Hampshire. SO50 8DB. United Kingdom. Email: [email protected] Timothy Darvill. School of Conservation Sciences, Bournemouth University, Fem Barrow, Poole. Dorset. BH12 5BB. United Kingdom. Email: [email protected] Dagmar Dreslerova. Institute of Archaeology, Letenska 4, 11801, Prague. Czech Republic. Email: [email protected] Martin Gojda. Institute of Archaeology, Letenska 4, 11801, Prague. Czech Republic. Email: [email protected] Gerard Grovers. Laboratory for Experimental Geomorphology, Catholic University ofLeuven. Redingenstraat 16, B-3000 Leuven. Belgium. Email: [email protected] Curry Heimann. Department of Archaeology, Goteborg University, Box 200, 405 30 Goteborg. Sweden. Email: [email protected] Gail Higginbottom. Centre for European Studies and General Linguistics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia. Australia 5000. Email: [email protected] Martijn van Leusen. Department of Archaeology, University of Groningen. The Netherlands. Email: [email protected] Esther Gonzalez Mazariegos. Centre de Recherches Archeologiques, 250 Rue Albert Einstein, Sophia Antipolis, 06560 Valbonne. France. Email: esther.gonzalez(alcra.cms.fr Simonetta Menchelli. Dipartmento di Scienze Storiche del Mondo Antico, University of Pisa, via Galvani 1, 56126 Pisa. Italy. Email: [email protected] Marinella Pasquinucci. Dipartmento di Scienze Storiche del Mondo Anti co, University of Pisa, via Galvani 1, 56126 Pisa. Italy. Email:[email protected] Philip van Peer. Laboratory for Prehistory, Catholic University ofLeuven. Redingenstraat 16, B-3000 Leuven. Belgium. Email: philip. [email protected]. be Maria Petersson. Riksantikvarieambetet, UV Linkoping, Jarnagsgatan 8, 582 22 Linkoping. Sweden. Email: [email protected]

iv

Wlodzimierz Rl:J:czkowski.Institute of Prehistory, Adam Mickiewicz University, sw Marcin 78, 61-809 Poznan. Poland. Email: [email protected] Ken Simpson. Department of Physics and Mathematical Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia. Australia 5000. Email: [email protected] Alexander Smirnov. Rescue Archaeology Section, Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Archaeology, 19 Dmitria Ulianova, Moscow 117036. Russia. Email: [email protected] Andrew Smith. Department of Physics and Mathematical Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia. Australia 5000. Email: [email protected] IrenaTurova. Moscow State University, Moscow. Russia. Email: [email protected] Veerle Vanacker. Laboratory for Experimental Geomorphology, Catholic University ofLeuven. Redingenstraat 16, B-3000 Leuven. Belgium. Email: [email protected] Keith Wilkinson. Department of Archaeology, King Alfred's College, Winchester. Hampshire. SO22 4NR. United Kingdom. Email: [email protected] Elia Zazovskaya. Moscow State University. Moscow. Russia. Email: [email protected]

V

vi

1. One land, many landscapes: an introduction Timothy Darvill and Martin Gajda

Background In a physical sense, and increasingly in a political sense, Europe can be seen as one land: a tract of countryside punctuated by towns, rivers, lakes, and seas. There is integrity in terms of the way that some common threads to history have shaped the form, structure, and content of the land. But there is also diversity as a result of impacts from distinctive cultures, traditions, and even languages. The one land has within it many landscapes both contemporary and historical; the purpose of this volume of papers is to explore themes of unity and diversity in the way that archaeologists have come to explore and understand elements of the land ofEurope. Landscape as a cultural phenomenon has been one of the principal themes of theoretical and practical studies within European archaeology since the postmedieval period and early modem age of Romanticism. Since the sixteenth century antiquarians established and developed the traditions of field archaeology, historical topography, and local studies. Archaeologists - specifically in those European countries where prehistoric sites and monuments remain visible above ground either as stone constructions or earthworks - have never lost sight of these approaches and routinely evaluate the evidence of human settlement processes in their spatial or landscape context. Obviously, there were periods during which studies favoured different aspects of the human past, for example material culture as an expression of ethnicity and identity, and times when specific methodologies were given preference. However, since the early settlement patterns and processes began to be analyzed through the combined efforts of archaeologists and geographers, landscape and space have become central concepts in European archaeology. Since the 1970s there has been a number of shifts in the conceptualization of landscapes as phenomena for study, and also in the way that methodologies and field techniques have been applied. Within landscape-history what has been called 'total archaeology' became the guiding methodology, especially for the creation of period-specific summary maps and the regression of the modem countryside to some former state. With the application of postprocessual thinking to landscape archaeology, and especially the introduction of post-modem perspectives relating to the social construction of reality, there has been a period of much theorizing but

relatively little practical application. In consequence, there are many questions on the lips of archaeologists all over Europe: how can new approaches to past and present landscapes be applied in the field, or do they only work at a theoretical level? What methodologies are appropriate? Have useful things been recorded in the past or do we need to re-set the agenda so far as routine survey and recording work are concerned? The papers in this volume were brought together in an attempt to begin addressing some of these questions and concerns, in the first instance by exploring the range of work going on in Europe and the results of current and ongoing research. Most of the papers were presented in the session entitled 'Landscape archaeology: new approaches to field methodology and analysis' at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists held at Bournemouth University between 14th and 19th September 1999. Since their presentation, however, all the papers have been expanded and re-worked in the light of the discussions that followed the lectures. Some additional papers offered by members of the audience in Bournemouth and from colleagues who were unable to attend the EAA meeting have also been included. In bringing together a body of work dealing with the question of landscape on a truly panEuropean scale there are two points that stand out. First, the study of landscape and the social use of space is a phenomenon which is both practically treated in field projects and considered as a theoretical issue not only in UK and northwest Europe, but all over Europe including former Sovietblock countries. Indeed it was only during the run-up to the 1999 EAA meeting and the response we received to the call for papers that we realized how timely it was to draw together a group of scholars who shared these interests yet worked in so many different states and organizational situations. Specifically we had in mind the idea to bring together views from countries where landscape archaeology was well established with scholars working in regions where such ideas were only just taking root. Second, the variety of topics in landscape studies, and the methodological instruments related to it, are incredibly diverse. It is now difficult, if not impossible, to place strict limits on what constitutes landscape archaeology. Indeed, there is good reason to celebrate the differences in current

1

approaches to landscape as a truly multi-disciplinary field of inquiry. At one level it is obvious that the traditions of archaeological work found within individual studies all over Europe are firmly grounded in the praxis of the countries to which they relate. But at a quite different level the key question then becomes: how far different approaches to landscape can cooperate in the process of studying past human spatial behaviour and bring a synthesis, or does the current community prefer looking at landscape histories from various perspectives as offered by science, philosophy, and art? We believe that the occasion of the 1999 EAA meeting provided a rare opportunity for scholars interested in landscape archaeology from all parts of Europe to come together and discuss their interests and concerns. Equally, in putting together the papers for publication we recognize that few comparable volumes exist, and that the full range of theoretical, methodological, and case-study oriented papers between a single set of covers is rarely achieved. The present volume consists of contributions on theoretical issues (fulckowski; Gojda; Barford; Darvill), on the relationship of sites to the environment (Dreslerova; Will(inson and Bond; Vanacker et al.; Petersson; Arzhantseva et al.); on field survey and post-survey methodology (van Leusen; Attema; Smirnov; Pasquinucci and Menchelli), on the problem of interpreting landscapes (Higginbottom et al.; Heimann), and there is also one paper illustrating the practical use of landscape archaeology for the management and protection of regional (estate in the present case) heritage (Currie). Looking at the content of the volume we can identify contributions that follow a fairly scientific approach to the past, which label-makers would probably term processual, and also those with a quite different accent in their authors' minds which may generally be seen as post-processual. We have not tried to separate out these contributions according to the

theoretical positions of their authors, but consider it important that the two approaches meet in one book. Landscape is the common ground where these different approaches meet; perhaps it is here that both perspectives can be made more reflexive. One of the most attractive characteristics of much landscape archaeology as currently practised is that it is largely non-destructive. This is a perhaps one of the reasons why more and more archaeological communities are turning their attention to this branch of human (pre)history. Moreover, the analyses and interpretation of the social dimensions of past landscapes by means of such methods are respected by theorists in a way hardly comparable to the earlier times. This is obvious, especially in countries of the former 'communist' part of Europe, in which advanced methods and high-tech equipment relevant to landscape research has been introduced since 1990. It is important to stress the non-destructivity point at the beginning of the new millennium when the destruction of cultural (as well as natural) heritage continues rapidly all around the globe. Against such a background it is important that archaeological practice provides a model of sustainability and the careful and sensitive treatment of valuable sites and monuments. The organization of the conference session and the preparation of this volume of papers has involved many people and all deserve grateful thanks, most especially Eileen Wi&es for co-ordinating the presentation of the session, skillfully editing the abstracts for the conference documentation, and then repeating the process for these papers; Louise Pearson for sorting out correspondence and liaison; and all the staff in the School of Conservation Sciences in Bournemouth and the Institute of Archaeology in Prague for their help and advice. Jenny Moore undertook the technical editing and report production. The editors would like to thank David Davison for his help and forbearance.

2

2. Post-processual landscape: the lost world of aerial archaeology? Wlodzimierz Rqczkowski

Abstract From its very beginnings, landscape archaeologists integrated aerial photography in their research strategies. Although the notion of landscape in archaeology has changed continuously with new developments in archaeological theory, the idea of 'a map' and 'a view from afar' continue to be basic elements for analysis; aerial photographs continue to play a critical role in 'reconstructions' of past landscapes. Yet, it is the recent post-modern concepts that have greatly impacted our so-called 'understanding' of landscape. Particularly relevant is the focus on individual experiences of space; the view the landscape can be studied solely from the perspective of a single person. Taken to its extreme this would mean that aerial photographs lose their cognitive value because of their 'non-human' perspective. But do post-structural arguments really mean an end for aerial photography as a valid resource and as an analytical tool in landscape studies? Clearly, 'place' is one of the key concepts in a post-modern approach to landscape, and many different ideas have been put fonvard based on Husserl's and Heidegger's works on phenomenology. One particular argument stresses the role of experiencing, creating, and organizing 'place' through the acceptance and appropriation of space. Description and the measuring of physical space is proposed as a means to convert 'natural environments' into 'cultural landscapes'. It is essentially this last point that acts as a justification and revitalizes the fortunes of aerial photography in relation to the new theoretical concepts for epistemological analysis.

Introduction Since the time of Friedrich Ratzel and diffusionism, spatial analyses and the use of maps have been part of standard research procedure in archaeology. Even today the studies of space and landscape remain the predominant interest of post-processual archaeologists. Yet, though aerial photographs ( specifically vertical photographs) are the best maps possible they are not used by post-processual archaeologists (Shanks 1992; Tilley 1994; Thomas 1996). Why? There is a clear shift of emphasis in postmodern philosophical reflection on the world. Modernism was dominated by historical thinking, postmodemism is dominated by space interpreted in a humanistic way. Before space was treated as nondialectic, immobile, bound and dead, whereas time was perceived as abundant, vivid, dialectical (Foucault 1980, 70). In the new philosophical debate, space and history are not placed in opposition but rather looked upon as significant features of cultural reality. We owe this perspective to Martin Heidegger who orientated the discussion towards new phenomena (Rewers 1996, 7-9; Thomas 1993a).

Christopher Tilley (1993; 1994) and Julian Thomas (1993a; b) and was related to the gradually increasing and philosophically inspired critical reflection on geography and archaeology (Cosgrove 1984; Wagstaff 1987). The new approach refers to the phenomenology that understands and describes things the way they are experienced by the subject. It is based on the assumption that space is constituted socially. The term 'space' in itself means nothing. Communities, groups, and individuals function in different spaces. The spaces cannot exist without people functioning within them. Through everyday practice and human functioning space is located in the centre with regard to the relations with people and is subject to cultural reproduction and changes (Llobera 1996, 614). Space is also constituted semantically. Such humanized space is both the means and the result of human functioning. It comprises a complex set of connections between natural physical elements, the state of human body, the space of intellectual cognition and the space of movement. Within that set of connections people interrelate with the cultural and natural environment. Social creation of space is subject to cultural reproduction, though space and its elements may be perceived, interpreted, and understood in various ways. The key word to understand the process of

Post-processual landscape: some ideas The tum in archaeological thinking about space came with the works of Barbara Bender (1993), 3

archaeological theories. Personality of Britain (1932) by Sir Cyril Fox is considered the point of departure in the discussion of the term in British archaeology (Daniel 1978, 306-8) though the word 'landscape' is never used in the book. In aerial archaeology the term has been frequently, though differently throughout time, seen through complex relations between archaeological sites, groups of sites or complexes and natural environment ( eg. Bradford 1949; 1957; Hoskins 1957; Pickering 1979; Miles 1983; RCAHMS 1994). Today the term is defined within the realm of post-modern philosophy. Tilley (1994, 25) refers to landscape as 'the physical and visual form of the earth as an environment and as a setting in which locales occur and in dialectical relation to which meanings are created, reproduced, and transformed'. As already mentioned, 'place' is one of the major terms in the post-modern debate on space. There are two major approaches bearing clear reference to Husserl's and Heidegger's phenomenology (Rewers 1996, 50):

social space creation is the specificity of 'place'. Consequently, the meaning of space is always subjective and cannot be seen in separation from the symbolically constructed social and cultural world. Space has no meaning as such, the meaning of space is relative, born through relation between people and places. Thus space is shattered ( detotalized) because it is relative and differently perceived, created by individuals, groups or communities. Space is dependent on the person that experiences it and the way he/she experiences it. In that way space is related with time. Space is always created, reproduced, and transformed with regard to previously created spaces. Thus space is strongly connected with the forming of human fates and social relations (Tilley 1994, 1011). 'Place' is the key term in the discussion on space (cf Rewers 1996, 48). Space creates a situational context for the 'place' but simultaneously it derives its meaning from 'places'. There is no space without 'places' - they are of paramount importance, being the centre of human activities, meanings and emotional relations. They constitute the context of human experience, movement, and memory. The identity of individuals and social groups is built with regard to 'places'. Experiencing geography starts from 'places', they create landscapes or regions (Tilley 1994, 15). 'Places' are experienced and conceptualized on different spatial levels - from the level of an individual to the level of a region. They are located in space and become known through shared experience, symbols, and meanings. They become key factors in creating the identity of individuals and groups and in formulating their history. This means that 'places' are both 'internal' and 'external' with reference to the subject. The 'internality' of 'places' is connected with human consciousness of their existence and the 'externality' of 'places' is connected with their physical presence in space (Tilley 1994, 18). For a place to exist externally and internally it must be recognized and named. The names may refer to topographical elements (fall, spring, gill, dune, river bend) or to 'places' created or transformed by people ( camp, settlement, meeting place, barrow, etc.). Such 'places' acquire new meanings and senses through the act of giving names, the changeability of social development and mythological relations. The cultural importance of 'place' names is great because it transforms physical dimension into historical and social experience. Without names the cultural importance of 'places' disappear, the space is empty (Tilley 1994, 18-9).

1) one starts from the description of how 'places' are created, experienced, and organized, ie. how people 'humanise', or 'tame' fragments of space; 2) one starts from the description and measurement of a physical space and aims at showing the process in which the natural environment turns gradually into landscape comprising human activity and experience in space. The first approach is exemplified in Tilley's A Phenomenology of Landscape (1994) though the book also comprises some elements of the other approach. Tilley refers clearly to Heidegger's phenomenology, especially on the ontological level. In his analysis paramount importance is attached to the metaphor of 'perspective'. In that way the phenomenological analysis shows how a view of landscape could have been constructed (Smith 1995, 247). No wonder that on the epistemological level Tilley rejects the usefulness of maps (1994, 75) in the analysis. The basis of the analysis is elements of landscape and the way they are perceived. The possibility of viewing these elements from different perspectives enables us to understand the role a 'place' had in the studied culture. To view the elements means to walk from place to place. In Tilley's book the visualization of space is done through photographs taken from the 'human' perspective. The problem yet to be solved is the question of two different levels of space perception which is closely related to time. The first level is the space perceived, created and experienced by members of past communities. The other level is the space of the archaeologist who walks around and experiences the space, watching monuments located within it. Regardless of whether the problem can be solved or not, aerial photographs offering a different perspective seem to be useless in such an analysis.

Aerial photography and landscape studies: some perspectives The concept of landscape changes with philosophical inspiration reflected in various geographical and

4

The archaeologist's direct presence in the landscape being analyzed prevents the barrier of time and culture from being broken or an insight into how that landscape was experienced in the past from being formed. Thus the experience of space is always constructed by the archaeologist. Moreover, he/she is not always able to walk around and watch 'places' from different perspectives, under different conditions and circumstances. One way around the problem could be to create 'virtual reality', a substitute of landscape. A 3-D image of space can be created by means of modem computer technology and the use of stereoscopic vertical aerial photographs. In the image natural and cultural elements can be 'reconstructed', even those that are no longer visible in the landscape but known and deducted from field survey (cf Hodder 1999, 126). Walking in 'virtual space' offers possibilities of repeated 'experiencing' and 'perception' of space from different perspectives, in sunshine and rain, at dawn and at dusk, in summer and in winter. The range of the analysis would only be restricted by the archaeologist's imagination. There are no real grounds to think that such an analysis would be epistemologically less valuable than Tilley's. In the second approach great importance is attached to terms like 'place of residence' and 'place of stay'. Someone staying in a place is a subject who attaches names and meanings to 'places' and the world, he/she extracts them from an anonymous physical world, 'tames' them and introduces them to the realm of culture. A point on a map represents a concrete 'place' included into human existence (Rewers 1996, 50-1). It may be a farm, a field, a detached pasture, a road, a place of religious rites or exploitation, a burial site etc. Gradually introduced into landscape, they acquire metaphorical senses ( eg. a house) and in a way hamper human behaviour, surrender it to the rules of 'taming'. Mapped and described 'places' become the basis of interpretation of how landscape is formed. A map is a special form of 'place' representation. It is also an abstract language of documentation that points at the simultaneity of spatial phenomena. 'Thanks to the map a viewer is transformed into a wanderer heading towards the chosen place on the map, each time defining a new centre, peripheries and edges' (Rewers 1996, 90).

photographs in post-processual landscape archaeology. Ancient Landscapes of the Yorkshire Wolds is a compilation of all accessible information on archaeological remains in the Yorkshire Wolds. It is based on an enormous set of over 35,000 vertical and oblique aerial photographs taken over the region since the 1950s and up to the year 1991. The interpretation of the photographs has been given a visual form in a set of precise 1:25000 to 1:5000 survey maps that include all archaeological objects recognized. According to the standard previously worked out for that type of documentation the analysis comprises the morphology, typology, and chronological classification of every archaeological object in the photographs. The placement of the objects is the point of departure for a traditional discussion on landscape, its changeability and organization in different periods of time. For the oldest periods (the Neolithic, the early and middle Bronze Age) the only monuments left are burial or ritual sites (long barrows, burial mounds, circles, cursus, etc.). There is no evidence of settlements from that time. In the late Bronze Age and RomanoBritish period linear earth banks, tracts, fortifications, settlements, square tombs, round barrows, etc. came into existence (Stoertz 1997, 62, table 2). Linear objects (banks and ditches) were identified and interpreted as boundaries. A system of physical elements visible in the landscape was gradually developed in which old elements mingled with new ones. It cannot be ruled out that some natural elements (stone, trees, etc.) played an important role as well. The division of space that can be seen in aerial photographs today represents presumably only a fragment of the then existing network of boundaries. Within the system of linear elements (roads, ditches, banks) certain sets can be distinguished suggesting the gradual creation of an orderly landscape in which a specific way of 'controlled' exploitation was developed. These sets include spheres of activity, places of landscape 'control' which 'supervised' the access to different blocks of space separated by lines (Stoertz 1997, 67). The spatial arrangement of boundaries suggests a well-thought-out division of landscape into large blocks and passages between them. Different sizes and shapes of these blocks lead to the conclusion that they were gradually marked out and fenced in depending on the needs and previous status. This is particularly visible in the location of Iron Age and Romano-British settlements. They were frequently built along roads. Main linear elements (banks and ditches) served as division lines of blocks and exploitation spheres and as access passages to separate blocks of space. Additionally they specified 'check' points through which different sections could be accessed. Spheres that were not 'controlled' or exploited are also very legible in the studied region. They were usually placed in the peripheries of settled

An example: Ancient Landscapes of the Yorkshire Wolds Catherine Stoertz's Ancient Landscapes of the Yorkshire Wolds (1997) does not aspire to be a postprocessual approach to the landscape of northeast England. Though if one regards the book in the light of Ewa Rewers' observations about 'place' and 'map' in post-modem philosophy it can lead to interesting suggestions in terms of the application of aerial

5

and exploited areas. Elements of the landscape, both natural and man-made, 'governed' and 'organized' the way to move within it. They were signs that told their own stories and provided conditions for the preservation and reproduction of existing structures. Known histories of 'places' 'imposed' the necessity of moving in certain directions towards other 'places'. The 'places' could be gradually changed and rebuilt. Some elements lost their meaning under new circumstances and were removed from the system of recognizable signs. Presumably many of such elements had physical dimensions and could be recognized (in changed shape or position) in aerial photographs.

participants in Professor J Topolski's seminar for very fruitful discussions about post-modem thinking in history and archaeology. They are not to be held responsible for what has been left in.

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It is clearly seen that the approach in question

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constitutes a frame of reference to 'place of residence', 'place of stay' and the map. A great deal of 'places' (or perhaps 'places' from the archaeologist's perspective) have been identified and mapped in a precise way. They exist in their 'nonidentity'. Imagination is needed to understand them (Shanks 1992, 138). Automatically we have created spatial relations between 'places' - a farm, a fence, a field, a pasture, a graveyard, a road, etc. We can 'travel' on the map between the points, along the roads that 'existed' in the past. We can never reach down to the meaning of these registered 'places' but in our 'imaginative wandering' we can try to understand past landscape, the landscape encoded in 'places', their locations, traces on aerial photographs, and symbols on maps. Aerial photographs enable the construction of maps so precise that the post-processual interpretation of past landscape becomes possible. Moreover, maps may be useful for Tilley's way of walking and experiencing the landscape. It lies with aerial archaeologists to create images of past landscape inspired by post-processual reflection and persuasive enough to be accepted by academic archaeology. Only new thinking about potential analytical possibilities of aerial photographs can help aerial archaeology get out of the vicious circle of incapacity and become a conscious and active participant in the discussion on the basics of modem theoretical reflection in archaeology.

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First and foremost, I would lilrn to thank Marilyn Brown, Cathy Stoertz, David Wilson, Rog Palmer, and Bob Bewley for their help during my study of aerial photography in Britain. I am also very grateful to my colleagues from the Department (D MintaTworzowska and A Marciniak) as well as a group of

Smith, J A, 1995, Three images of the visual: empirical, formal and normative. In C Jenks (ed), Visual culture. London. Routledge. 238-259

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Stoertz, C, 1997, Ancient landscapes of the Yorkshire Wolds: aerial photographic transcription and analysis. Swindon. RCHME Thomas, J, 1993a, The hermeneutics of megalithic space. In C Tilley (ed), Interpretative archaeology. Oxford. Berg. 73-97 Thomas, J, 1993b, The politics of v1s10n and the archaeologies of landscape. In B Bender (ed), Landscape. Politics and perspectives. Oxford. Berg. 19-48 Thomas, J, 1996, Time, culture and identity. London. Routledge Tilley, C, 1993, Art, architecture, landscape [Neoliiliic Sweden]. In B Bender (ed), Landscape. Politics and perspectives. Oxford. Berg. 49-84 Tilley, C, 1994, A phenomenology of landscape: places, paths and monuments. Oxford. Berg Wagstaff,

J (ed), 1987, Landscape and culture. Geographical and archaeological perspectives. Oxford. Blackwell

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3. Archaeology and landscape studies in Europe: approaches and concepts Martin Gajda

Abstract This paper is an attempt to summarize two points. Firstly, the terminology of that part of historical/archaeological study which deals with the phenomenon of landscape and human/social space and second, the development of landscape/spatial studies and the agenda of various disciplines concerned. These points are examined by an individual from central Europe where the concept of site as the most important constituent of archaeological analysis has been traditionally given preference to that of landscape and space. In the first part of the paper attention is focused on different definitions and understandings of terms like landscape archaeology, landscape history, landscape studies, natural vs. cultural landscape, contested, buried or interactive landscape, spatial archaeology and settlement archaeology as used throughout Europe. In the second part the author presents his vision of the main streams in the history and the formation of landscape studies both in the Anglo-American academic environment, and in the central/east European milieu. It is especially the different approaches to landscape archaeology as a result of general progress in science and philosophy of the post-war period that are analyzed.

The landscape phenomenon in contemporary archaeology and anthropology As is also true in the case of landscape ecology, in contemporary archaeological and anthropological professional discussions it is common to meet with attempts to define the phenomenon of landscape and to adjoin to it various heterogeneous attributes. Thus the interactive landscape is spoken of, into which both natural and anthropogenic elements are tied; the forming of the appearance of the landscape in specific periods is at the same time always determined by characteristics and limits which were imprinted on its development in the preceding periods (Zvelebil 1994, 32). Terms such as buried, archaeological, prehistoric, and historic landscapes are also commonly used. It is of course necessary to note that the content of these concepts is rarely specified. Generally, it can only be said that while the first two concepts are oriented rather towards formal definitions, the latter two characterize a landscape in its chronological framework. Within such a division a gnoseological difference is implicit: its quality depends on a knowledge of the shape of the landscape in a far-distant past, from which neither written nor iconographic sources have survived, or in a historical past, where resources of these kinds are available (Roberts 1987, 87 distinguishes a total of three different paths to reconstructing landscapes). Perhaps the most commonly met terms of all are cultural (artificial) landscape, with its opposite, the natural landscape. Discussions on themes of this division have appeared in the archaeological

literature frequently, particularly in the last two decades. The majority of authors tend to categorically oppose this breakdown as received, being of the opinion that the landscape is a complex phenomenon communicating important relationships between natural processes and human settlement practices, and therefore in the study of landscapes it is senseless to separate natural and human components ( eg. Coones 1985 esp. 5-6; Darvill 1987, Chapt. IV; Gramsch 1996, 24 and 32; Darvill 1996). 1 This opinion is certainly well-founded, but this depends on the angle from which landscape is approached. From the point of view of assessing the physical state of the contemporary landscape, virtually the whole surface of the earth has been affected to a greater or lesser degree by human activity, and the concept of virgin nature as a result loses its sense. Alongside all this however, the social dimension of the landscape should not be forgotten, into which the human community has since time immemorial dissembled its environment. In this, the M Zvelebil, (1994) mentions several earlier works and contrasts the expressions 'landscape' and 'scenery'. B K Roberts (1987, 79) defines landscape as a whole, comprising natural features, half naturally and artificially created. This whole gives character and diversity to the surface of the earth, and forms the physical framework in which human societies exist. The composition of the landscape is variable over time, and extremely complex in its character. On the landscape types of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia and their characteristics see Juva et al. 1981, 52-56.

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world of the living is differentiated from that of the dead, and the intensively exploited landscape is differentiated from that left in its original wild state. The British historical ecologist, Oliver Rackham, in his well-known work on rural history places two extremes in looking at the landscape in oposition to one another - the last century saw the clear antithesis of the urban environment, while today among social scientists the dominant opinion is that whole landscapes are actually some kind of artefact, expressing people's ambitions. In this sense, there is no difference between Trafalgar Square in the middle of London and the broad landscapes of rural England. In reality, the natural environment in many places, even in the world of mature civilizations, develops independently of human agency. The extent of human impact on the landscape is extremely wide, and in many areas the boundary between cultural and natural landscapes is very sheer (eg. in an area of annually cultivated fields, next to a natural upland heath or marsh (Rackham 1986, xiii)). While archaeology has in its history frequently been oriented towards inquiry into human relationships with the natural environment (hence the coining of the term 'environmental archaeology' in the post-war period) the word 'landscape' has never permeated its vocabulary so often as in the last three decades or so.2 This development occurred particularly after archaeology began thematically to draw closer to problems that had previously lain in the domain of geography and in places historical research - space and its internal relationships in the past. Great interest in the phenomenon of the landscape has been recorded in the last decade and this in the context of symbolic and post-processual archaeology. This is a reaction to the abstract geometry of the spatial models of the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast to the New Archaeology, which supported the application of these models, it seeks symbolic, ideological, and social dimensions in the landscape, attempting with the aid of hermeneutics to determine how prehistoric people perceived and ordered, and how their social memory operated in the selection of settlement sites. It is interesting to observe how at the turn of the millennium the main subject and theme of post-processual archaeology is the landscape itself. This is almost a repeat of the situation of the first third of the nineteenth century, with its movement away from rationalism and towards a freeing of the sense of enjoyment in the environment of the historic landscape, in the memory of which the archetypes of the social relationships of our forebears are enciphered. Post-modernist authors often still move archaeology from the analysis of sources, from the testing of models and syntheses of

data processing, towards abstract philosophical concepts. With the abandonment of the physical forms and structural dimensions of the landscape in this way, interest has shifted to its metaphysical and social aspects. It is emblematic that while the archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s gave priority to the concept of space, at the end of the second millennium it prioritizes the term landscape (space being a part thereof). Barbara Bender, an anthropologist at University College London and one of the most identifiable personalities in current post-modem landscape archaeology, wrestles with the question of why the landscape has become such an important theme today. She proposes a heterogeneous explanation, which has to do with, for example, the separation of culture and nature (this being essentially alien to the post-modem way of thinking). As a result she believes that the landscape connects people and the material world not only in terms of understanding, but also everyday life and politics, that this phenomenon represents practically every reality. The language itself is full of so many landscape metaphors, that it can be said that people speak and live in a landscape for every moment of their existence. 3 Whether the landscape is seen from the point of view of its practical use ( agricultural/industrial landscape) or from the point of view of its aesthetic value (the picturesque/surrealist landscape), only the visible surface of the earth is evaluated. Thus, the landscape is perceived as something passive, standing outside us. In reality, the landscape as a general concept does not exist, and it is necessary to speak of landscapes plural. Their identity is formed by people, both as individuals and as societies or nation states (Bender 1998, 25). In the same spirit, Chris Tilley has attempted to understand the social dimensions. His work A phenomenology of landscape in the mid 1990s criticized in detail the traditional and New Archaeologies, which in his view concentrated almost exclusively on natural environmental factors. The siting of settlements within the space of a landscape is explained as a result of the processes of purely rational decision-making, in which several of these factors were taken into account. The author is of the opinion that the statistical correlation and important functional relationships that are drawn upon in this approach, are part of the modem myth and western logic of thought, which is applied unceremoniously to the past. To identify how given people understood their landscape environment is adjudged to be an end either unattainable or unnecessary. Tilley places emphasis on two fundamental points: on symbolism in the relationship

2 A general overview of treatments of the development of the relationship between people and nature in the Czech archaeological literature, beginning with J E Voce! and finishing with the last synthesis of Czech prehistory, is given in Matousek, V (1994 ).

3 In B Bender's work (1992, 742), the author presents a total of six themes that are deemed as important in connection with understanding the landscape. One of these is the conviction that natural and cultural elements of the landscape cannot be separated.

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of humans and landscape, and on the role of social memory in the choice of settlement, burial and sacred sites. Nevertheless, it is necessary to emphasize that this is not in opposition to economic rationality and the culturally symbolic aspect of human behaviour, but shows their connectedness and mutual influence. In this way, Tilley approaches the analysis of the siting of specific Mesolithic settlements and Neolithic burials, with regard to their surrounding landscapes, ie. rivers, coastlines, spurs, the edges of precipices, rocky outcrops, etc. These elements of the landscape were probably an important source of symbolism for the prehistoric population; neither for hunter-gatherer nor for agricultural communities was the natural landscape a mere backdrop for interaction between people. The environment was always bound up with diverse human associations, memories and local names, which gave it a human dimension. The greater part of daily experience in pre-industrial societies is physical and biological experience of landscape components such as earth, water, wood, stone, wind, rain, high points, the sun, stars, etc. The landscape has an ontological meaning, because human societies live within it and about it, because it is an intercessor of cultural meaning and symbols. It is not merely something on which - or around which - it is possible to see, a feature suitable only for contemplation, description, or preserving in a picture; all places and all landscapes thus consist in time of individual and social memories (Tilley 1994).4 Such a briefly presented concept of approaches to the landscape goes hand in hand with the well-known work of Simon Schama, professor at Columbia University. His Landscape and memory falls on the border between several literary genres, and is a highly significant work in its deep probing into the moulding of the relationship between humans and the natural landscape in the processes of ancient and modem history. Its conception is very close to the notions with which the archaeological postmodern has recourse to historic landscapes, while its literary form is very attractive and necessarily arouses admiration(Schama 1995). It is a fact that interest in the study of spatial relationships in prehistory and in the reconstruction of buried landscapes is traditionally the domain of western European professionals. Central and eastern Europe lived until the recent past in the grip of the typological paradigm, which survives to this day in Germany and its adjacent regions. In spite of this, even from here important impulses have come to

change this conception. While Germany has traditionally approached spatial relationships in prehistoric settlement through the medium of the socalled 'settlement archaeology' (Siedlungsarchiiologie), as personified by the main representative of the Gtittingen school, H Jankuhn, significant voices have been raised in the recent past in support of landscape studies (see the following section for more details). Alexander Gramsch defines the landscape as a social phenomenon, the sense and culturally specific meaning of which are formed through the lifestyles and practices of people, through their work and perceptions. It is formed of three basic elements: space, place, and boundary (Gramsch 1996, 25). According to the Spanish archaeologist, Parcero Gubin.a, landscape is the result of the conceptualization of space. The creation of its forms is always the result of the mutual relationships between the natural, economic, socio-political points of view and the symbolic dimension. While the first three aspects are more or less imperceptible to archaeology, although possible with the aid of other historical sources, assessment of the sense and importance of symbolism in the landscape is difficult, mainly because of confrontation with a way of thinl(ing which has long been separated from rationality, and has been lost in the reahns beyond recall. While symbolism was itself a journey, it was expressed individually and collectively in the conceptions of people who lived long ago; to penetrate these conceptions as they materialized in artefacts and to order them within landscape spaces is complex(Parcero Gubin.a 1995, 128-9 and 135). It is reassuring that interest in the study of historic landscapes has also arisen in the Czech lands. Here at the same time it is necessary to bear in mind in particular theoretical concepts and models of spatial relationships, the application of GIS to the analysis of the relationships between natural components and settlement units, aerial prospection, surface survey or geophysical measurements. Alongside the traditional interests in the reconstruction of medieval landscapes, particularly rural settlements (villages, cultivated areas, the links between central places and their agricultural hinterlands), there has been intensive development in recent years in systematic research into settlementspatial relationships in prehistory. The results have made it necessary to change approaches to such terms as 'archaeological site' and consider rather such categories as 'settlement area' or 'continuous settlement area'. 5

4 Tilley recommends direct experience of the landscape for the interpretation of ancient settlement, ritual, and burial sites. He believes that to evaluate only two-dimensional types of documentation (maps, plans, photographs) does not allow a sufficient understanding of settlement topography. While aware of the fact that excursions into the contemporary landscape are full of complications, and that in no case is it possible to gain some kind of emphatic understanding of its sense for our prehistoric forebears, he remains convinced that personal experience with such places as prehistoric cemeteries has great importance for understanding them.

5 A sununary of the various approaches in current archaeology to the landscape has been offered by another important figure in contemporary post-processual research, Julian Thomas (1995, 1926); he is interested in ways of interpreting ritual landscapes in the vicinity of the largest European stone circle at Avebury. In this, he emphasizes his conviction that prehistoric ritual and funerary structures well reflect social relationships in the communities of the time and changes therein. It is thus important to bear in mind the social dimension when studying landscape, and to see within it

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In a similar manner to landscape ecology, archaeology in the last decade has started to use the phrase 'landscape memory' more commonly. Simon Schama used this in the title of his inspirational, philosophical-aesthetic work mentioned above. In Czech archaeology, this term was used in the title of the book on the medieval history of the landscape around Most by J Klapste, and more recently in the titles of professional articles and one part of a wider study by M Kuna and E Neustupny (Klapste 1994; Kuna 1998b; Neustupny 1998b, 41). 6 It is appropriate at this point to present an accurate picture of the basic problem areas that today interest archaeologists in cultural landscape studies, and of the questions to which answers may be sought. Above all, interest is directed towards ascertaining which forms of organization distinguish the landscape at given times. In other words, in what ways our prehistoric and medieval forebears divided the environment from its lowest organizational level (inhabited space or village settlements) to its highest ( cultivated zones, territorial boundaries, the symbolic demarcation of burial areas, etc.). Also, to what extent such organization of the landscape was dependent on basic environmental factors (the articulation of the terrain, hydrogeological, soil, and climatic conditions), and how far the needs of human communities dictated the level of material and social (ideological) relationships. Thus, for example, what in fact was the shape of the Early Iron Age landscape along the central Labe (Elbe) valley (a traditionally fertile area, part of the 'old settlement land') or in the more extreme areas of the Czech-Moravian Uplands, colonized in the High Middle Ages? In this connection, what is interesting are settlement structures and hierarchies, central places and their hinterlands, the forms and extents of fields, and the distribution of cemeteries, hunting grounds, etc. This range of questions aims at a synchronic (horizontal) reconstruction of buried cultural landscapes. Another set of questions follows: diachronic (vertical) changes in the appearance of this phenomenon, such as when changes in the organization of the landscape occur in the same place in subsequent periods? Were these changes only formal or were they systemic? Over time, how did the genius loci and landscape memory form? How can the formal shape of the landscape reflect the social structure of prehistoric communities or medieval parishes, demesnes, or states?

Landscape and spatial archaeology The term 'landscape archaeology' crystallized in Great Britain during the 1970s following attempts to realistically identify the direction taken by the majority of the archaeological community in post-war England. It is necessary to emphasize that this community comprised not only professionals, but also amateurs, people like Leslie Grinsell, 7 whose intensive fieldwork resumed the tradition of regional local history and non-destructive archaeological topographical survey. This was a direction that, in the words of Stuart Piggott, was one of the most important British contributions to the development of archaeology. The so-called 'field archaeology', was until recently understood strictly to be aimed at field survey without excavation, and was first named by J P Williams-Freeman. In 1915 this collaborator of 0 G S Crawford published a booklet on the prehistoric monuments in Wiltshire. In his descriptions, he was the first to use the term 'field archaeology', which was influenced by the widespread phrase 'field scientist'. This latter term was used to describe those researchers who - by contrast with the scientists working with material conserved and stored in museums - left their workplaces because they wished to study animals and plants in their living state directly in the field (Crawford 1954, 36). The content and methods of the work of these 'field archaeologists' were described and developed by Crawford. With the development of the post-war sciences, and hand in hand with the intensive incorporation of knowledge from the natural sciences and excavation techniques, the study of historic landscapes began to be enriched by new impulses and perspectives. Environmental archaeology, which entirely re-evaluated ideas about the character of the landscape, and particularly the degrees of difference between various prehistoric and historic phases, developed as never before. Thanks to Beresford and Hoskins' study, the term 'landscape history' was constituted. Aerial prospection is gradually being introduced as a departure point for surface survey in the field. Systematic surveys and also the first rescue excavations have emerged at an unprecedented rate. Particular attention is given to the investigation of lost field patterns, signalling the transition from archaeology directed towards settlement points in the landscape (on-site archaeology) to that directed towards settlement areas ( off-site archaeology). The term 'landscape archaeology' was used for the very first time in a book title in 1974. It was applied by Aston and Rowley, who appreciated this term as a more appropriate replacement for the phrase 'total archaeology' (an approach in which all of the disciplines capable of bringing relevant information

the constant presence of people and human societies (Thomas 1995, 29-44; Coones 1985, 8; Tilley 1994, 2). 6 The landscape came to be frequently defined as a spatial phenomenon, in which archaeological data are strewn more or less continuously, sometimes as an empty space with a mosaic of solitary settlement points (cf Zvelebil et al. 1993). For the development of studies of the medieval landscape, the greatest credit must go to Z Smetanka and J Klapste; J Neustupny concentrated on the problems of prehistoric landscape spaces, and at the present time it systematically occupies the Department of Spatial Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, in particular M Kuna, N Venclova, D Dreslerova and M.Gojda.

7 Other researchers worthy of mention here include Z Smrz and J Benes. Prior to his untimely death, J Rulfwas also dedicated to landscape archaeology.

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to settlement history are applied). Their university training in geography symbolizes their links to the Crawford school (Aston and Rowley 1974).8 The coming together of archaeology and geography in the British milieu peaked with the publication of the collection Landscape and culture in 1987 (Wagstaff 1987). In this experts attempted to define the extent of the mutual impact of these two disciplines, leading towards an understanding of settlement history in the past and the present. Landscape archaeology thus developed under the influence of the tradition of 'field archaeology'. Alongside this, however, it began to be influenced by the established approaches of the New Geography and the New Archaeology, and in particular by the birth of their offspring, a paradigmatically new discipline 'spatial archaeology'. Retrospectively, examination of the development of landscape archaeology shows that to define this discipline simply is virtually impossible. In principle, its relatively short history can be divided into two phases, which immediately contain several trends:

approaches and Hodder's contextualism, is the stance of the American processual 'scientific' school. In opposition to landscape archaeology, this presents the so-called 'landscape approach', inspired predominantly by Butzer's contextual orientation and 'off-site archaeology'. This approach is based on the conviction that the dispersion of artefacts and anthropogenic objects always bears a relationship to landscape elements (not only are the mutual spatial relationships between artefacts and features important); this provides an opportunity to look at the social and economic organization of the past. The landscape standpoint is linked to regional geomorphology, studies of taphonomic processes and ethnoarchaeology. There is a strong emphasis on the importance of ecological and geological changeability. In principle, of course, this conception is in many ways closer to the 'traditional' landscape archaeology than the post-modem approach (see below). 9 Phase 2: Under the influence of post-modem, ie. post-processual or interpretive, paradigm, in the 1990s it became clearer that landscape archaeology had reached a fork in the road. The traditional direction continued to develop, but its previous aims (in the light of new sites, reconstructions of shifted settlement areas and their hinterlands, etc.) widened to the understanding of the human dimension of the landscape. Emphasis was placed on the need to 'fill the landscape with people' and to attempt to understand, rather than the formal, functional relationships between humans and their environment, the relationship between the cultural landscape, social practices and the period view of our forebears ( eg. Fleming 1998, 3). 10 Alongside this 'middle course', however, an entirely new, and from the gnoseological point of view more or less speculative, concept began to assert itself, the departure points for which were hermeneutics and phenomenology. Ever more frequently, the theme of this conceptual approach has

Phase 1: In England during the 1970s and 1980s, landscape archaeology pursued a direction in which the identified buried and other physical remains of settlement activity from prehistory and more recent times were deciphered as a landscape palimpsest. In the spirit of Hoskins' concept, this helped to reconstruct the 'morphology' of the terrain, ie. the cultural landscape at individual stages in the prehistoric and historic past. Landscape archaeology conceived in this way is the major part of 'landscape history', and indeed was sometimes seen as identical with it (Roberts 1987, 78 sees virtually no difference between the terms given). The words of well-known British specialist Andrew Fleming could be set in stone, that ' ... landscape archaeology is interested in a huge, diverse range of sources. Beginning with an assemblage of flint tools found during surface survey and finishing with the geometric plans of eighteenthcentury gardens' (Fleming 1998, 3). Since the beginning of the 1990s, even more attention has been devoted to the creation of theoretical concepts and methodologies which attempt to anchor this discipline in the new (processual) paradigm, and integrate it with the advances and data of environmental and settlement archaeology (eg. Zvelebil (1994) distinguishes three approaches - the reconstructive, the processual, and the interactive - that form the basis of modem landscape archaeology). In overt opposition to the 'traditional' British directions in landscape archaeology described above, arising from historical

9 Leslie Grinsell was an example of the unbelievably diligent and zealous amateur who became one of the most important figures in non-destructive archaeological field survey. His interest in history was very broad-based, encompassing written sources, local names, folklore, regional histories (he was the author of an extensive census of monuments for the Victoria County History of Wiltshire), and in particular prehistoric tumuli, their identification, mapping, and documentation. He identified and recorded more than 6000 such features, of which he personally (without the aid of an automobile) visited and documented 5750 (!). For more than four decades his active involvement (spanning the period from the 1930s to the 1960s) was rewarded by the publication of a collection of papers in his honour (Fowler 1972). 10 M Aston is also the author of a later handbook on landscape archaeology in regional studies; this work can be regarded as a basic methods primer, particularly for landscape archaeology oriented towards the Middle Ages and later periods (Aston 1985). Aston's approach to the study of landscapes has recently been criticized by J Thomas (1995, 25-26), who regards it as empirical. This criticism is largely aimed at the traditional approach of English settlement archaeological topography. In several respects this could be justified, but it is nevertheless overly obviously conforming to the post-modern paradigm.

8 The theme of landscape memory is also presented in an interesting manner by S Kuchler, who places it in opposition to two views of landscape in the exotic environment of Melanesia those of natives and colonizers (Kuchler 1995).

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attained socio-political connotations. On the one hand it contains a contemplation of the relationship of contemporary societies to dominant categories of historic landscape (particularly diverse burial or ritual structures, eg. Stonehenge, Avebury or other megalithic monuments). On the other hand, the contemporaneous formation of cultural landscapes necessitated, for example, in areas where they are the result of the coexistence of different ethnic groups. 11 As well as in Britain and the United States, landscape archaeology has developed fairly successfully in several other countries. What is probably the most important European centre of landscape archaeology outside Britain is to be found in Spain. This is the Research Group for Landscape Archaeology (El Grupo de lnvestigaci6n en Arqueologia de! Paisaje), which is an independent department at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain. Their approach derives from a conviction that there is a need for mutual linkages between basic and applied research. This means that to obtain the deepest understanding of the past it is necessary to apply preprepared methodological procedures to the practical needs of rescuing and preserving the archaeological heritage. Unlike the majority of British projects, the work of this group is much more clearly oriented towards practice, although at the same time its members participate in important ways in the development of theoretical bases in the discipline, and in the resolution of projects that are soundly theoretically anchored. The group takes as its main aim the development of procedures, criteria, and specifics that allow the transposition of archaeological methodology to the processes of cultural resource management. Specific items of interest are: •

•

• •

one is oriented towards methodology (CAPA) and one towards the preliminary reports of field actions (TAPA). 12 Relatively marked attention is devoted to landscape archaeology in Scandinavia. In Denmark, research has traditionally been oriented towards settlement archaeology and in recent decades, the application of natural science methods to obtain and analyze data connected to the reconstruction of prehistoric landscapes. It is thus rather more environmental than landscape archaeology, which profiles the practice of contemporary Danish archaeology. 13 This direction has also been adopted recently in other countries in northwestern Europe, particularly the Netherlands and Germany, as noted above, 14 where it was said that Germany traditionally developed the so-called 'settlement archaeology' (Siedlungsarchaologie). Its earliest incarnation was that of G Kossinna. Promising signals for the development of German post-war archaeology in terms of landscape studies were represented by H J Eggers at the beginning of the 1950s. He is credited with establishing the journal Archaeologia Geographica, which was intended as a platform for theoretically-rooted settlement archaeology oriented toward the methodological study of spatial relationships, especially on work with distribution maps. What it showed, however, was that in 1950s and 60s Germany there was no general interest in this topic. The positivism of the chronological-typological paradigm guarding against any form of theoretical discussion (which, being predominant in intensely ethnic interpretations, had had a strong tradition in pre-war Germany) became emblematic of the direction taken by German archaeology. In the 1970s, however, a new school of settlement archaeology arose, led by H Jankhun. This was oriented towards the processes associated with colonization, settlement and expulsion, without the interpretation of these processes being concentrated on ethnic or tribal aspects. This so-called Gottingen school was, together with settlement geography and settlement history, bound up as part of the science of settlement. Attention was given in the main to lifting the veil on the economic aspects of prehistory, and to the relationship of settlement to the basic elements of the natural environment. It tended to be disinterested in questions relating to an understanding of social

basic research in the area of the creation of the social dimensions of space in prehistory and proto-history technological research aimed at developing methods and procedures for cataloguing, evaluating and using archaeological monuments contract research for the needs of a variety of institutional and private clients services linked to the provision of special technical processes for managers, consultants and professionals concerned with the protection of the world cultural heritage.

It is worthy of note that the group publishes its own series of monographs and two periodicals, of which

12 Benes (1993) has extensively conveyed the current concept oflandscape archaeology among Czech archaeologists. 13 In this context a favourite term (particularly difficult to render into Czech) is 'contested landscape'. This approach to landscape studies was presented in depth at the Fourth World Archaeology Conference in Cape Town (January 1999). 14 One of the most important members of this group is Felipe Criado Boado, who has actively disseminated his theoretical work both in domestic and international archaeological publications (eg. Criado 1993). His approach stems from criticism of functionalist and empirical approaches, and is close to hermeneutics and phenomenology.

11 This 'landscape approach' is represented above all by a collection of papers published in the first half of the 1990s by a team of American anthropologists and one Czech-British archaeologist (Rossignol and Wandsnider 1992). This includes work by Lewis Binford, in which the founder of the New Archaeology defends the site concept. The notion of off-site archaeology entered the literature at the beginning of the 1980s (Foley 1981).

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structures, particularly on the basis of understanding settlement forms as other than settlement processes. 15 The development of landscape archaeology in Germany was repeatedly expressed by J Liining, who at the beginning of the 1980s brought the concept of 'cultural landscape' (Kulturlandschaft) into the German professional literature (Liining, 1982). He became a critic of the 'tried and tested' settlement archaeology, and did not like that the choice of localities to be investigated was not preceded by a setting out of questions. In the traditional conception there was no place for exacting theoretical justification of the need for field excavation. 16 In 1997, he put forward a study in which he patently read the known methods and processes of landscape archaeology into the practice of German projects. At the expense of the traditional wide-area survey, he proposed the widespread use of aerial photography in combination with other progressive methods, GIS in particular (Liining 1997). The extensive collection of aerial photographs (the largest in Central Europe as a whole) now available to German archaeologists, thanks especially to the intensive, 20-year long survey carried out by 0 Braasch, raises the hope that this resource will become a basis for the further development of landscape archaeology in the largest of the middle European countries. Another country with great potential, from the point of view of the discipline under consideration, is Poland. Thanks to the Archaeological Monuments of Poland project (AZP), which lasted from the 1970s almost to the present day, the surface of the country has been mapped archaeologically. The results of surface surveys are detailed and precise archaeological maps at the regional scale are the basis for expanded settlement and landscape studies. This potential has recently been shown in connection with the introduction of aerial survey into Polish archaeology, not to mention the possible combination of data gained from the AZP project and the aerial prospection project. The cross-evaluation of information drawn from these two mutually complementary survey methods not only enriches the Polish finds register, but also shows the possibilities and limits of both methods in various types of landscape relief, and this on a scale without

parallel in any other country (Rc:tczkowski1996; see also Barford in this volume). As noted above, landscape archaeology has also become an important theme within the archaeological community in Bohemia (Czech Republic) in the last decade of the twentieth century. Its development is linked in particular to two important events. During the 1980s professional publications from the Anglo-Saxon world were more commonly obtainable here, from which it was clear that at least in terms of theory and methodology Bohemian archaeology, in common with that in other Central and East European areas, was seriously falling behind global trends. Even before the fall of the communist regime, several specialists began to make the first small steps towards building personal contacts with western colleagues, the majority during isolated trips to international conferences. It was the fall of communism itself at the tum of the 1990s that led, amongst other things, to the freeing-up of space for the introduction of several research methods which previously would have been very difficult and not particularly effectively deployed. This was the second event to contribute to the development of landscape archaeology. In the first half of the 1990s, the Department of Spatial Archaeology of the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague began a programme of aerial archaeology, 17 as well as a Czech-British international project (Ancient Landscape Reconstruction in North Bohemia). This latter was oriented towards the investigation of settlement structures and the shape of the cultural landscape in two chosen transects in the northern part of Bohemia, this primarily being done through the application of wide-area surface surveys. 18 Moreover, the department has also obtained financial support from the Grants Agency of the Czech Republic for the years 1997-2002 for the realization of a complex project entitled 'Settlement areas of prehistoric Bohemia: the contribution of non-destructive methods of archaeological survey'. The amounts released for material investment in this project have enabled the project team (led by the author) to obtain expensive instruments and teclmical equipment, including a survey aircraft, that today place the Institute of Archaeology in Prague among the top

15 Denmark has never even slightly opened the door to postmodern trends in theoretical archaeology, and continues with the development of 'scientific' archaeology aimed at the positive resolution of economic and ecological questions (cf Jensen 1993). This long-term post-war trend is also very clear, as to the pattern of contributions to anthologies of post-war Danish archaeology, particularly those of the 1970s and 1980s (Hvass and Storgaard 1993). By contrast, elsewhere in Scandinavia (specifically Sweden) this decade has seen research into aspects of the prehistoric landscape from the point of view of the phenomenological approach of Tilley (1995). 16 One of the largest projects in Germany during the last two decades of the twentieth century aims at landscape and settlement reconstruction in the brown coal districts of the Rhine valley (esp. the Garzweiler mine lying close to Grevenbroich, south of Monchengladbach.

17 The Introduction to settlement archaeology (Jankulm 1977) became the basic handbook of the Gottingen school of landscape archaeology. 18 Alexander Gramsch, in the lucid and well-founded study mentioned above (1996) discusses the two lines being followed by German archaeology today: the majority continue in the tradition of positivism and eco-determinism as meant by Jankulm's Siedlungsarchdologie (settlement and the genesis of settlement areas). This direction is represented by the periodical Siedlungsforschimg, Archdologie, Geschichte, Geographie, which publishes studies on historical geography, historic studies, and archaeology (Grarnsch 1996, 22-23).

15

centres for landscape archaeology in Europe. 19 In addition, it is also necessary to mention the work of the Institute for Archaeological Monument Care in Northwestern Bohemia (formerly a branch of the Institute of Archaeology). In connection with extensive rescue activity on the overburden of the brown coal basin area, it was possible to complete several smaller projects concerned with the question of the development and change of settlement structure in prehistory, not only at a local/regional level but also in more general terms (eg. Smrz 1994a; 1994b). In addition, it is the only institution outside Prague to practise systematic aerial survey of the settlement areas of northwest Bohemia (Smrz 1996).20 In summary, in Bohemia there are two institutions whose strategy tends towards an understanding of the relationship between settlement and landscape, towards a knowledge of the characteristics of settlement process from the earliest agricultural periods to the High Middle Ages. In writing of the situation in Bohemia, it is useful to briefly consider a branch that is very close to landscape archaeology - spatial archaeology. Why this branch is particularly close in this part of the world will readily become apparent. The relationships of the spatial dispersion of archaeological sites, settlements, cemeteries, etc. have in terms of their paradigms been considered rather by traditional archaeology. The creator of true spatial archaeology, and of the term itself, was David Clarke. 'True' means that this term, to this day, indicates an entirely specific offshoot of processual archaeology, and the majority of western (at least British) archaeologists would identify with this expression in the sense intended by Clarke. On the other hand, as I have attempted to show above, the term 'landscape archaeology' also has many meanings, not least among which are several qualitatively different approaches that are all encompassed by the phrase. Criticism of spatial archaeology began soon after it arose, at the beginning of the 1980s. With the development of landscape archaeology and the introduction of post-processualism it was pushed, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, into the background, gaining favour in those areas influenced by German settlement archaeology. Interest in spatial relationships in archaeology in Bohemia (western part of the Czech Republic) became central to that part of the professional public concerned with theory and modelling. This Czech school, thanks in particular to the long-term interest of its leading representative, E Neustupny, kept pace even from the 1960s with the

dynamic development of theory and especially paradigms on a global scale, attempting to creatively contribute to such development. Finally, at the beginning of the 1990s, a new department was established within the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, originally labelled 'methodological' but soon being renamed the Department of Spatial Archaeology.21 The work of this unit - the only one in the country - is oriented towards systematic research into the landscape and settlement areas in prehistory and early history through the concept of field survey. Practising primarily non-destructive methods (aerial survey, surface collection, relict location, geophysical survey) this unit is also closely bound up with the analysis of the data obtained with the aid of sophisticated modem methods (especially GIS) and the theoretical modelling of the spatial behaviour of prehistoric communities. While in the 1980s this Czech school was enriched by the settlement area theory (later enlarged into the concept of the prehistoric community area), in the following decade the theory of 'otherness' was developed. Work began on a theory on the transformation of artefacts within the landscape, ie. settlement components. 22 A method of analytical surface survey was developed, the application of which changed traditional concepts of landscape spaces (the stability and continuity of prehistoric settlement areas, the location of settlement (residential) areas dependent not only on natural conditions, but also on, for example, the social and symbolic needs of the people of the time), 23 to a significant degree. Attempts have been made to identify settlement components of a greater order than settlement areas (production areas; Neustupny and Venclova 1996; 1998). The term 'polygon' has been proposed and developed as a basic part of spatial analysis in archaeology (Neustupny and V enclova 1996, 620-621 ), and a model of settlement economy developed for prehistoric microregions in relation to natural conditions on the basis of archaeological data (Dreslerova 1995a; 1996). Great importance has also been attached to the systematic conduct of research into relationships between prehistoric settlement and the floodplains of rivers (Dreslerova 1995b; 1998).24 21 The selection of this name is perhaps not the most fortunate, since, as noted in the text, the term 'spatial archaeology' abroad is linked to specific definitions within processual archaeology. The title Department of Landscape and Settlement Archaeology would perhaps better indicate the direction of the department. 22 These themes were last comprehensively treated and published in the anthology Space in Prehistoric Bohemia (see also Neustupny 1998a; 1998b; 1998c; 1998d). 23 In this country, M Kuna has devoted himself the most to the theoretical questions linked to the reconstruction of the relationship between settlement components and landscape relief with the aid of analytically executed surface surveys (most recently in Czech 1998a, and in English 1998b). 24 These problems in European scholarship generally were summarized by Rulf in 1994. In Britain, research into floodplains and their prehistoric settlement is termed 'alluvial archaeology', and this has most recently been treated in a comprehensive manner

19 For an evaluation of the aerial archaeology programme of the Institute of Archaeology in Prague from its inception to 1996, see M Gojda 1997. 20 The results of the project have been published in the form of a number of studies, and a monograph is in preparation. For the best presentation to date of the project's aims and methods see Zvelebil et al. 1993.

16

Darvill, T, 1987, Ancient monuments in the countryside: an archaeological management review. London. English Heritage

It would appear that the Czech school is closest in concept to the American landscape approach mentioned earlier (Rossignol and Wandsnider 1992, see also note 9). Its basic parameter is that research is aimed at resolving theoretically conceived questions, to which answers are sought with the aid of the purposeful gathering of archaeological data, which in turn are interpreted with the aid of models. This interpretation arises from the conviction that the formation of the cultural landscape and the structure of settlement areas are divided both 'tangibly' by natural parameters, and by social and symbolic needs. This approach is not common within Europe; while it is clearly influenced by both processual and post-processual paradigms (as a mmnnum it is currently affected by phenomenology25), it is hard to describe it as their synthesis .26

Darvill, T, 1996, Prehistoric Britain from the air. A study of space, time and society. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press Dreslerova, D, 1995a, A socio-economic model of a prehistoric micro-region. In M Kuna and N V enclova (eds), Whither archaeology? Papers in honour of E. Neustupny. Prague. Institute of Archaeology.145-160 Dreslerova, D, 1995b, The prehistory of the Middle Labe floodplain in the light of archaeological finds. Pamatky archeologicke, 86, 105-145 Dreslerova, D, 1996, Modelovani pfuodnich podminek mikroregionu na zaklade archeologickych dat. Archeologicke rozhledy, 48/4, 605-614 Dreslerova, D, 1998, Kerarnika jalm indikator zmen krajiny. Archeologicke rozhledy, 50/1, 159-169

Bibliography

Dreslerova, D, 1999, Osidleni a vyvoj holocenni nivy Labe mezi Nymburkem a Melnikem. Zaverecna zprava grantu (rnnscr), Praha

Aston, M, 1985, Interpreting the landscape. Landscape archaeology in local studies. London. Batsford

Fleming, A, 1998, Swaledale. Valley of the wild river. Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press

Aston, M and Rowley, T, 1974, Landscape archaeology. An introduction to fieldwork techniques on postRoman landscapes. Newton Abbot. David and Charles

Foley, R, 1981, Off-site archaeology: an alternative approach for the short-sited. In I Hodder, G Issac, and N Hannnond (eds), Pattern of the past studies in honour of David Clarke. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 157-18

Bender, B, 1992, Theorising landscapes, and the prehistoric landscapes of Stonehenge. Man (NS), 27, 735-55 Bender, B, 1998, Stonehenge. Making space. Oxford. Berg Benes,

Fowler, P (ed), 1972, Archaeology and landscape. Essays for L V Grinsell. London. John Baker

J, 1993, Ke koncepci krajinne archeologie. Archeologicke rozhledy, 45/3, 404-417

Gojda, M, 1997, Letecka archeologie v Cechach - (Aerial archaeology in Bohemia). Praha. Archeologicky ustav AV CR Gramsch, A, 1996, Landscape archaeology: of mal(ing and seeing. Journal of European Archaeology, 4, 19-38

Coones, P, 1985, One landscape or many? A geographical perspective. Landscape History, 7, 5-12 Crawford, 0 G S, 1954, Archaeology in the field. London, Phoenix House

Hvass, S and Storgaard, B (eds), 1993, Digging into the past. 25 years of archaeology in Denmark. Copenhagen. Aarhus Universitetsforlag

Criado, F, 1993, Limites y posibilidades de la arqueologia del Paisaje, SPAL. Revista de prehistoria y arqueologia, 2, 9-55

Jankuhn, in a series of monographs published by Oxbow Books (Needham and Macklin 1992). In this country, 1999 saw the completion of a unique project conducted by an archaeologist and a team of Quaternary geologists, who studied the settlement and development of the Holocene floodplain of the Labe (Elbe) between the towns of Melnik and Nymburk (Dreslerova, 1999). 25 This relates to the landscape approach of post-processual landscape archaeology, as described earlier in the text. 26 A rather more practical, and to a certain extent tactical, question, is whether it is most appropriate to renew and continue to use today the term 'spatial archaeology' for research into settlement structures and the spatial behaviour of people in prehistory. It is felt that using this expression will lead the majority of theoretically-oriented foreign specialists to link the Czech approach to Clarke's 'spatial archaeology'.

H, 1977, Einfiihrung in die Siedlungsarchiiologie. Berlin. Walter de Gruyter

Jensen, J, 1993, 25 years of archaeology in Denmark. In S Hvass and B Storgaard (eds), Digging into the past. 25 years of archaeology in Denmark. Copenhagen. Aarhus Universitetsforlag. 8-15 Juva, Kand Zachar, D (eds), 1981, Tvorba krajiny CSSR. Praha - Bratislava. Academia-Veda Klapste, J, 1994, Zmena - sti'edoveka transformace a jeji pi'edpoklady, Mediaevalia archaeologica bohemica 1993 (Pamatky archeologicke -

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supplementum 2). Praha. AVCR. 9-59

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R 4czkowski, W, 1996, Aerial reconnaissance and fieldwalking survey: British and Polish reality. AARG News Newsletter of the Aerial Archaeology Research Group, 12, 16-17

Kuchler, S, 1995, Landscape as memory: the mapping of process and its representation in a Melanesian society. In B Bender (ed), Landscape. Politics and perspectives. Oxford. Berg. 85-106

Roberts, B, 1987, Landscape archaeology. In J M Wagstaff (ed), Landscape and culture. Geographical and archaeological perspectives. Oxford. Blackwell. 77-95

Kuna, M, 1998a, Keramika, povrchovy sber a kontinuita praveke krajiny. Archeologicki rozhledy, 50, 192-223

Rossignol, J and Wandsnider, L (eds), 1992, Space, time, and archaeological landscapes. New York. Plenum Press

Kuna, M, 1998b, The memory of landscapes. In E Neustupny (ed), Space in prehistoric Bohemia. Praha. Institute of Archaeology. 106-115

Rulf, J, 1994, Praveke osidleni stfedni Evropy a niva. In J Benes and V Bruna (eds), Archeologie a krajinnti ekologie. Most. Nadace Projekt Sever. 55-64

Liining, L, 1982, Siedlung und Siedlungslandschaft in handkeramischer und Rossener Zeit. Offa, 39, 933

Schama, S, 1995, Landscape and memory. London. Harper Collins

Liining, L, 1997, Landschaft archaologie in Deutschland Ein Programm. Archiiologische NachrichtenbliiUer, 2, 277-285

Smrz, Z, 1994a, Vyvoj osidleni v mikroregionu Luzickeho potoka na Kadansku (severozapadni Cechy) - cast I. Archeologicki rozhledy, 46, 345-393

Matousek, V, 1994, Pfuoda, clovek a ceska archeologie: obrazky z vystavy. In J U Benes and V Bruna (eds), Archeologie a krajinnti ekologie. Most. Nadace Projekt sever. 75-83 Needham,

Smrz, Z, 1994b, Vysledky studia pravekeho pi'irodniho prosti'edi v mikroregionu Luzickeho potoka na Kadansku. In J Benes and V Bruna (eds), Archeologie a krajinnti ekologie. Most. Nadace Projekt Sever. 84-93

S and Macklin, M G, 1992, Alluvial archaeology in Britain. (Oxbow Monograph 27). Oxford. Oxbow

Smrz, Z, 1996, Aplikace metody letecke archeologie v severozapadnich Cechach. Archeologicki rozhledy, 48, 213-219

Neustupny, E, 1998a, Introduction. In E Neustupny (ed), Space in prehistoric Bohemia. Prague. Institute of Archaeology. 7-8

Thomas,

Neustupny, E, 1998b, Structures and events: the theoretical basis of spatial archaeology. In E Neustupny (ed), Space in prehistoric Bohemia. Prague. Institute of Archaeology. 9-44

J, 1995, The politics of v1s10n and the archaeologies of landscape. In B Bender (ed), Landscape. Politics and perspectives. Oxford. Berg. 19-48

Tilley, C, 1994, A phenomenology of landscape. Oxford. Berg

Neustupny, E, 1998c, The transformation of community areas into settlement areas. In E Neustupny (ed), Space in prehistoric Bohemia. Prague. Institute of Archaeology. 45-61

Tilley, C, 1995, Art, architecture, landscape (Neolithic Sweden). In B Bender (ed), Landscape. Politics and perspectives. Oxford. Berg. 49-84 Wagstaff, J M (ed), 1987, Landscape and culture. Geographical and archaeological perspectives. Oxford. Blackwell

Neustupny, E, 1998d, The search for events and structures in prehistoric landscapes. In E Neustupny (ed), Space in prehistoric Bohemia. Prague. Institute of Archaeology. 62- 76

Zvelebil, M, 1994, Koncept krajiny: sance pro archeologii. In J Benes, and V Bruna (eds), Archeologie a krajinnti ekologie. Most. Nadace Projekt Sever. 20-36

Neustupny, E and Venclova, N, 1996, Vyuziti prostoru v latenu: region Lodenice. Archeologicki rozhledy, 48,615-642 Neustupny, E and Venclova, N, 1998, The Lodenice region in prehistoric times. In E Neustupny (ed), Space in prehistoric Bohemia. Prague. Institute of Archaeology, 84-105

Zvelebil, M, Benes, J and Kuna, M, 1993, Ancient landscape reconstruction in Northern Bohemia landscape and settlement progranime. Projekty rekonstrukce stare kulturni krajiny V severni casti Cech - krajina a sidla. Pamtitky archeologicki, 84,93-158

Parcero Oubina, C, 1995, Elementos para el estudio de los paisaJes castrenos del noroeste peninsular. Trabajos de prehistoria, 52/l, 127-144 Rackham, 0, 1986, The history of the countryside. London. Dent

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4. Space, environment, and cultural landscapes in Polish archaeology Paul Barford

Abstract This paper attempts to consider some aspects of how landscape and space have been conceptualized and studied in Polish archaeology in recent decades, in the light of the general development of archaeological theory and practice. The characteristics of settlement archaeology are described and their connection with the culturehistory approach presented. The use of these data in social and economic interpretations, and the relationship with the natural environment, are considered. The Polish Archaeological Record is discussed as producing evidence of a new order, and then the (un)suitability of these data for the study of the archaeology of landscape is explored. The way that data concerning the development of the landscape in the past have been utilized in research is a function of the way that archaeology itself has been conceptualized. Despite the levelling effects of international discussions, the various schools of landscape archaeology exhibit different approaches. This paper attempts to consider some aspects of how landscape and space have been conceptualized and studied in Polish archaeology in recent decades in the light of the general development of archaeological theory and practice. There is a vast literature on the subjects touched on here, and treatment can only be selective, in particular, the whole question of urban sites has been omitted. Most of the remarks below refer to the archaeology of the rural landscape. The dominant paradigm in Polish archaeology is a traditional culture-history approach, though from the 1950s, the new trends based around historical materialism gave rise to an archaeology which was christened 'progressive' by its adherents. From about the I 980s Polish archaeology had a half-hearted flirtation with the New Archaeology; we are currently observing a moderate interest in post-processual trends in certain milieu. These trends have all had their effect on how landscape archaeology has developed in Poland.

Site and settlement been the basic unit of study. In the original conception of the idea of a site, and in the dominant anthropological paradigm at the tum of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the main type of archaeological evidence sought on sites was 'cultural' (artefacts). Spatial and chronological distributions of sites were linked with artefactual and cultural assemblages (for example in the German siedlungsarchiiologie). Most definitions of a 'site' in Polish archaeology still revolve around a central concept that it is 'a place where archaeological data are found' and the main type of data sought are artefacts. This has in tum affected our perception of archaeology and our mode of management of the archaeological resources in the landscape. What was thought to have been worthy of investigation and preservation are places where the artefacts of the past have been and can be found. The culture-historical approach studies the distribution in the modem landscape of traces of human activity, the settlements and pottery scatters in modem ploughed fields, the earthworks of ancient settlements, field systems and

The techniques of searching for and recording new sites by walking over ploughed fields ('ploughwalking', 'fieldwalking') and other subsoil exposures together with localizing and collecting artefactual material are endemic to the epistemology of archaeology in most areas of the world. Poland is no exception to this general rule, but for the past 20 years this activity has been institutionalized in a state-funded project, the so-called Polish Archaeological Record (the abbreviation of the Polish name is AZP). The study of the distribution of archaeological material in the modem landscape (ie. on the surface) has primarily been connected in European archaeology with broadly-conceived 'settlement archaeology' (Jankuhn 1977). This is primarily concerned with the spatial relationships between archaeological sites and the landscape. Since its development in the nineteenth century, the concept of 'archaeological site' has had a fundamental significance for the way that European archaeology was to develop, and for a long time has

19

roads. This type of evidence - archaeologically visible to varying degrees, if it is sufficiently recognized and studied - allows us to study a broad pattern, an overall picture of a settlement network, of the size and distribution, as well as broad dating of scatters of surface rubbish and other traces of human activity. The settlement archaeology paradigm considers the distribution of 'sites' as the fossil of a cultural system; the cultural and social interpretation of spatial distributions are thus the main subject of study. Settlement archaeology considers mainly the 'site/non-site' opposition, the archaeological record is seen as the result of the contrast between areas of concentration of finds and areas where finds are scarce or absent. Settlement archaeology is thus by nature positivist, the 'empty' space around the 'sites' are treated mainly of interest as that which defmes the spatial arrangements which are the prime subject of study, and forming the mere physical background on which the sites are set. The empty space around the sites is not totally ignored, settlement archaeology has tried to relate the spatial evidence to data such as local topography, soil type, hydrology etc. with the aim of detecting regularities in the distribution of sites which allows the construction of settlement models. Settlement archaeology is also a history of isolated 'events' for which the landscape merely forms the scenery. A site is founded, used, may undergo changes, and is abandoned. The main thrust of study of this type is concerned with identifying 'where?' 'when?' and 'how long?' these events occurred, and if possible to try to determine their causes. Due to obvious difficulties of dating sites known from unstratified surface collections on a close timescale the settlement archaeologist is most often forced to treat data as relatively static 'timeslices' (Hallstatt A, Classic Maya, etc.), and not in terms of smaller social units (individual farming units within a cluster, generations). The history this creates is holistic and a compilation of a series of microhistories. Settlement history had been studied in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Polish historians and geographers such as T Wojciechowski, F Bujak and K Potkanski, though they based their work on the non-archaeological written, cartographic and toponymic evidence (Lowmianski 1967, 11-21; Kumatowski 1977). Fieldwall(ing was also being employed in Polish archaeology ( and archaeological research carried out in regions which are now part of Poland) by the nineteenth century and developed as a major research activity in the inter-war period (Kumatowski 1977). In the period after 1918 it was carried out by individual researchers and as student excursions. The period before the second World War was characterized mainly by attempts to cover broad areas by means of linear 'marching routes' (Figure 4.1 ). The aim of this work was primarily to locate

new sites which may eventually serve as the object of an excavation ( or preservation). There were close connections made in this period between Polish archaeologists and geographers, the development of the discipline of historical geography was underway (Kumatowski 1977, 165-168); and one of the areas of emphasis was the study of historical settlement patterns. A good example of the archaeological utilization of these concepts is the study (Kowalenko 1938) of strongholds in Great Poland which related the sites to their location in the landscape (topographical siting, soil types, afforestation, etc.). In the areas adjacent to pre-1939 Poland, German investigators were also carrying out similar work on the mapping of the distribution of settlement. The general pattern which began to emerge from this type of fieldwork was that the remains of settlements of most periods are unevenly spread over the landscape. Attention began to be paid to why some areas had dense settlement, while others were archaeological blank spots. Though this attention was being paid to the relationship between the settlement network and the natural environment, in accordance with the prevailing concepts of the time, the relation of clusters of sites producing material of similar character to social ('ethnic') phenomena (and through this, the term 'siedlungsarchiiologie' was initially used in Germany with a slightly different meaning see Janlrnhn 1977). These interpretations were often seen in culture-history terms of areas inhabited by separate groups ('tribes') or due to geographical features (such as the presence of especially good or bad soils). Although this type of work led to the discovery of many new sites of potential interest, due to the search methods, most of these early excursions found sites in the more predictable locations, for example along river valleys. This was due to the assumption that this is where most of the primary and densest settlement would be concentrated (and thus searching these areas would be most cost-effective). This concentration on waterways also automatically gave rise to linear patterning of the discovered sites. The nature of the fieldwork ensured that the concentrations of sites found in this period often reflected the areas of activity of individual researchers, university chairs, or museums. Characteristic of work carried out in an age prior to the general availability of cars, distributions of newly-discovered sites often clustered nearer to railway stations. The distribution and type of chance finds reported to museums and other institutions was similarly uneven and depended on a variety of associated circumstances, as did the recognition and degree of recording of earthwork sites. All of these factors introduced a bias into the picture of ancient settlement of the areas which now form the modem state of Poland. 1 1 Another problem for later researchers intending to study settlement patterns on the basis of such information were the

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