Fields of view in landscape archaeology.

Fields of view in landscape archaeology. A growing literature in landscape archaeology Landscape archaeology is a body of method and theory for the study of the material traces of past peoples within the context of their interactions in the wider (typically regional) social and natural environment they inhabited. reflects moves awayfrom a long-standing preoccupation with excavation of individual sitesand confronts much wider issues of multi-period past landscapes, thedate and social role of fields and boundaries and the considerableproblems of conservation and management which these spatially extensiveresources present.In the vanguard of current prehistoric approaches is the WessexLinear Ditches Project, a landscape survey linked to strategicsmall-scale excavations designed to help date ditches, establish theirrelationships to adjacent artefact See artifact. scatters and obtain environmentalevidence. The survey concerns the military training area of SalisburyPlain Salisbury Plain,undulating, mostly barren chalk plateau, c.300 sq mi (780 sq km), Wiltshire, S England. It is noted chiefly as the site of ancient monuments, of which Stonehenge is the most famous. The region is also an army training ground. which occupies 93,000 acres where the archaeology is much betterpreserved than in surrounding landscapes of intensive agriculture whichis destructive of both earthworks and fragile prehistoric pottery.Keys to the landscape are provided by the hillforts at Sidbury andQuarley from which linear ditches radiate ra��di��atev.1. To spread out in all directions from a center.2. To emit or be emitted as radiation.ra . Both pottery and radiocarbondates demonstrate that the ditches are late Bronze Age Bronze Age,period in the development of technology when metals were first used regularly in the manufacture of tools and weapons. Pure copper and bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, were used indiscriminately at first; this early period is sometimes called the with specificstretches being refurbished during the Iron Age at the time of thehill-forts, the nature of activity preceding hill-fort construction onthese sites remains unclear. Little evidence was found for fieldspre-dating the ditches; many were overlain o��ver��lain?v.Past participle of overlie. and destroyed by Iron Ageand, particularly, Romano-British field systems, which are to beinvestigated during a separate, successor project. Pottery is consideredin an innovative way by Raymond. Styles and fabrics, it is argued, mayhave encapsulated and helped to consolidate the organized perception ofterritory (Raymond, p. 87) yet the settlements that defined theirterritory with ditches still shared a common ceramic tradition withthose that did not.The Foster & Smout volume is the outcome of two originallyunconnected seminars held in Scotland, one on soil history and the otheron medieval and later fields. The combination, in 12 contributions,provides a useful, well-priced publication which highlights the benefitsof linking an ethnohistorical dimension pioneered by Fenton with newanalytical approaches to field remains and soils. Chapters include arethink of Highland field systems (by Dodgshon) and evidence forhumanly-created plaggen soils (by Davidson & Simpson) and muchevidence of post-Medieval manuring, although without much discussion ofthe extent to which these practices may go back to earlier periods andtheir relevance to topics of soil exhaustion and erosion. Catt'sessay provides relevant evidence from the world's longest-runningscientific experiments at Rothamstead, where sustained yields have beenrecorded on manured and unmanured plots since 1843. Though achievable ongood Rothamstead soils, the story was different on sandy soils of theWoburn experiment where acidification acidificationa technology used by processors to preserve foods by adding acids (such as acetic, citric, phosphoric, propionic and lactic acid) and thereby reduce the risk of growth of harmful bacteria. has led to declining yields. Itwould have been interesting to have some observations, howeverspeculative, on how these experimental results may relate to theScottish soils considered in other chapters.Aston & Lewis' medieval Wessex volume is a series of 14closely linked complementary essays, an excellent introductionattractively produced in hardback by Oxbow. The area straddles theinterface between Anglo-Saxon and Celtic / sub-Roman areas, socontinuity and change are recurrent themes in the early chapters whichconsider these problems in terms of burials, communication routes andlinear earthworks. What was happening in the ordinary rural farmsteadremains elusive, with some evidence of changing crop types but ratherlittle exploration of the potential of palaeoenvironmental evidence toprovide an alternative and independent perspective on continuity andchange (Bell 1989). Later chapters include agriculture and ruralsettlement, settlement and villages in Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire andSomerset and an excellent essay (by Rippon) on reclamation of theSomerset clay Levels.The picture of landscape which we get from these volumes is somewhatdominated by the map and air photograph, without much sense of howpeople actually moved through the landscape and articulated its variouscomponents, which tend to be described in separate essays on particularcategories of field remains. Communication routes may help to providethe key. They govern the way in which people habitually move throughlandscape and thus how it is encountered and perceived by successivegenerations (Ingold 1993). Thus networks of social relationships areexpressed which link different spatial dimensions but also havesignificant time depth. Arguably communications should have a centralintegrating role in landscape archaeology but that will only be achievedif the field study of roads and tracks can be lifted beyondantiquarianism an��ti��quar��i��an?n.One who studies, collects, or deals in antiquities.adj.1. Of or relating to antiquarians or to the study or collecting of antiquities.2. Dealing in or having to do with old or rare books. to rigorous analytical investigation. There are signs ofpotential, particularly in the Aston & Lewis volume, wherecommunications are touched on by the contributions of Eagles and Costenwho acknowledge their role in expressing social relationships. Given theemphasis of the Linear Ditches Project on the social role of theearthworks and confusion by earlier generations of their boundary orcommunication roles, it is surprising that trackways do not receivegreater attention by Bradley et al. They are marked on some figures,e.g. 22, 24, 33, and the picture is no doubt a very fragmentary one, butroutes must surely contain important clues as to how this remarkablelandscape actually worked.The capacity of environmental evidence to provide another integratingtheme is shown by Mercer & Tipping's large-scale landscapesurvey of the Cheviot Hills (in Foster & Smout), where pollen andvalley sediments demonstrate two periods of major prehistoric landscapeinstability. One, in the early Bronze Age, is tentatively associatedwith climatic change, although that does seem questionable since theother, around 400-200 BC, very clearly relates to a major period ofdeforestation deforestationProcess of clearing forests. Rates of deforestation are particularly high in the tropics, where the poor quality of the soil has led to the practice of routine clear-cutting to make new soil available for agricultural use. , seen not just in this study area, but widely acrossnorthern England and Southern Scotland. This dramatic period of changestill remains to be evaluated in terms of its relationship to changes,or lack of them, in material culture or settlement patterns. In theCheviots it is argued that the cord rig and extensive terracing,previously thought to be early medieval, are actually associated withsuccessive settlement types in the 1st millennium BC. This highlightsthe considerable benefits of large-scale survey in identifyingfrequently recurring relationships.Detailed analysis of biological evidence in these volumes is limitedto Entwistle's work on the molluscs from the Linear Ditches whichprovide a range of buried soil, ditch fill and colluvial contexts in atopographic transect. A spatial dimension helps to overcome theinherently local nature of mollusc molluscmembers of the phylum Mollusca, which comprises about 50,000 species. Includes snails, slugs and the aquatic molluscs��oysters, mussels, clams, cockles, arkshells, scallop, abalone, cuttlefish, squid. evidence by demonstrating that bothhill-top and valley sites were open, mainly grassland, at the time ofditch construction. More detailed and subtle conclusions may beinhibited by a tendency to base interpretations on other archaeologicalassemblages (with inherent dangers of circular reasoning) rather than oneither analogy from present-day ecology or population structure (Evans1991).Other essays deal with environment much more from a historicalperspective, such as Bond (in Aston & Lewis) who gives a fascinatingsurvey of forests, parks and warrens. Some assumptions in other chaptersabout past environments certainly need critical examination. Hase'smaps of early church locations (in Aston & Lewis: figures 3.4-3.11)mark great tracts of woodland without explanation of their source ordiscussion of the possible complexities of ancient woodlandidentification (Rackham 1980). The possibility of regeneration andwoodland development at various dates needs consideration, ashighlighted by recent work at Sidlings Copse, Oxfordshire where a woodwith plant indicators suggesting its ancient origin has been shown bypollen analysis to be the result of regeneration within the last 1000years (Day 1993).Archaeology beyond the confines of the individual settlement orfunerary fu��ner��ar��y?adj.Of or suitable for a funeral or burial.[Latin fner site raises major conservation issues, which existinglegislation and management practices in Britain have difficultyaccommodating. These books address the problem in relation tofield-systems and rural settlement in Scotland, the ridge-and-furrow ofthe English Midlands and late Bronze Age land-allotment boundaries inWessex. Hall's booklet and his contribution to Foster & Smouthighlight the importance of open fields and ridge-and-furrow whichencapsulate en��cap��su��latev.1. To form a capsule or sheath around.2. To become encapsulated.en��cap the agricultural system of a millennium from around AD 700to about the 17th century. For the surviving traces a conservationstrategy is urgent, destruction is currently occurring at 3% per annum Per annumYearly. and most, or all, of the significant examples in Northamptonshire areexpected to he lost in five to ten years. Hall provides an excellentguide to issues of terminology, historical sources and theinterpretation of field evidence. In Northamptonshire, a conservationstrategy is advocated which particularly favours those parishes withgood map and historical records, but this depends on localcircumstances. A pilot study in Scotland (Foster & Hingley in Foster& Smout) conversely suggest that there historical sources are notthe key to conservation policy; they advocate an approach based mainlyon the quality of the field evidence.Non-statutary protection offers generally inadequate safeguards forfield systems and past landscapes, although in Scotland fields are beingprotected in partnership with farmers in Environmentally SensitiveAreas. Protection is obviously much more difficult to achieve in areaswhere there are strongly competing land-use pressures, such as theEnglish Midlands or the Wessex military ranges. The latter survey isparticularly coy about the extent of damage currently being inflicted bymilitary operations which are very apparent on some photographs. Giventhe importance of the remains of ancient fields to archaeology, theteaching of history and the maintenance of landscape diversity, it is tobe hoped that the greater academic interest and understandingrepresented by these volumes will help to encourage more effectiveconservation.ReferencesBELL. M.G. 1989. Environmental archaeology as an index of continuityand change in the Medieval landscape, in M. Aston. D. Austin & C.Dyer (ed.), The rural settlements of medieval England: 269-86. Oxford:Blackwell.DAY, S.P. 1993. Woodland origin and ancient woodland indicators: acase study from Sidlings Copse, Oxfordshire, UK, The Holocene 3: 45-53.EVANS, J.G. 1991. An approach to the interpretation of dry-ground andwet-ground molluscan mol��lus��canalso mol��lus��kan ?adj.Of or relating to the mollusks.n.A mollusk. taxocenes from central-southern England, in D.Harris & K. Thomas (ed.), Modelling ecological change: perspectivesfrom neoecology, palaeoecology paleoecology, palaeoecologythe branch of ecology that studies the relationship of ancient plants and animals to their environments. — paleoecologic, palaeoecologic, paleoecological, palaeoecological, adj. and environmental archaeology: 75-89.London: Institute of Archaeology The Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of University College London (UCL), in the United Kingdom. The Institute is located in a separate building at the north end of Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. .INGOLD, T. 1993. The temporality tem��po��ral��i��ty?n. pl. tem��po��ral��i��ties1. The condition of being temporal or bounded in time.2. temporalities Temporal possessions, especially of the Church or clergy.Noun 1. of the landscape, World Archaeology25(2): 152-74.RACKHAM, O. 1980. Ancient woodland. London: Arnold.