Landscape Research Group Workshop

10.00-17.00, 18th February 2006

Birley Room, Dawson Building

The Department of Archaeology supports an active and varied range of staff with innovative field and research projects designed to investigate both environmental and ideational aspects of past landscapes.

We combine studies of physical and cultural landscape formation processes with key questions intended to assess the impact of human societies on the landscape, the emergence of social complexity, the creation of imperial landscapes, urban-rural relations, the cultural construction of landscape and the morphology of urban and sacred landscapes.

Our research includes the development of new field and analytical techniques, as well as the development of original landscape theory and interpretation and we have major projects funded by AHRC, English Heritage and the Leverhulme Trust in the North Atlantic, UK, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, Egypt, the Middle East and Southern Asia. With chronological interests extending from early hunter-gatherer landscapes through to the post-medieval period, our group has attracted a significant postgraduate community.

With the twin aims of outlining the diversity of members’ existing landscape research and to identify unifying themes which might shape future directions, we are holding a workshop focused on concepts of hierarchies and hinterlands.

Abstracts

New light in dark places: towards a cultural study of underground landscape and environment

Dr. Robin Skeates

This paper focuses on natural and artificial caves and underground systems used by humans between prehistory and the present. It considers them as a particular form of landscape and environment, which, like other types of archaeological site, have been interpreted with reference to the concepts of hierarchies and hinterlands. In this paper, I wish to challenge these concepts, drawing upon recent cultural and sensory approaches to the study of landscape, environment and caves. These enable four new research goals to be established for future studies of the underworld: 1) to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the cultural transformation of caves over a range of historical periods and regions; 2) to re-conceptualise and explore the physical materiality of a range of caves in terms of human experience and perception; 3) to deepen our understanding of the diverse cultural meanings and values that have been ascribed to, and framed by, caves; and 4) to deepen our understanding of the ways in which caves have served as both a source, and subject, of power and authority in a range of cultural contexts. By pursuing these goals, we may finally succeed in leaving behind the enduring traditions of cave archaeology and archaeological classification.

Static settlement versus dynamic river systems in the Nile delta

Dr. Penny Wilson

The Nile delta gives the impression of being a green body with veins of blue blood running through it and that the people who lived there were parasites at the whim of variable flooding and an inconstant mistress. Archaeological and survey work in the western delta will be discussed
within the context of vertical settlement movement at Saïs, the ‘management’ of settlement patterns and river channels and the implications for understanding the ‘choice’ of place for human inhabitation in northern Egypt. How compatible is the human parasite with natural earth landscapes?

Laying claim to the hinterland: case studies from western Syria

Dr. Graham Philip

Archaeological survey indicates that settlement in the Upper Orontes Valley consists of a relatively dense core of occupation focused upon the river, surrounded by two contrasting hinterlands. That to the east of the river consists of Pleistocene marls, that to the west, a basalt landscape. Each of these shows distinctive and variable evidence for human activity. This paper takes a diachronic perspective on the archaeological evidence for the occupation of hinterland space, and attempts to set this in the context of changing political and economic structures.

The city structures the landscape; landscape structures the city

Prof. Tony Wilkinson

As Paul Wheatley has asserted the city configures the region around it, but equally we can see the city as being partly the product of its region and surrounding landscape. Here I discuss the use of data derived from the archaeological landscape to show how settlements and ultimately the city can actively structure their surrounding landscapes. Topics include: field scatters, hollow ways (both local and inter-regional), land use zones as well as satellite communities and settlement patterns. The topic is treated in terms of increasing scale from villages, through towns and cities, political capitals such as those of the Neo-Assyrian capitals, and finally major religious centres. As an alternative I will also examine what might be called "network driven" landscapes in which the network (canals, channels or routes) configures the landscape and settlement pattern. This would be intended as an open-ended paper to stimulate discussion and further research rather than one providing concrete conclusions.

Searching for a 'village moment'

Dr. Chris Gerrard

During the 1990s a ten-year landscape project tackled the question of village origins at Shapwick in Somerset through an integrated archaeological, topographical, historical and ecological study. This
short talk will examine the many techniques applied to the Shapwick landscape and briefly consider the results of that work. Is there really a 'village moment' when the origins of Shapwick's rural settlement can be identified? If so, what forces were at work to motivate a shift from dispersed to nucleated settlement forms and who might have been responsible? Among the themes considered are the role of authority, the power of the image of landscape and settlement movement over time.

Beyond the village: the appropriation, demarcation and furnishing of a Roman rural space

Dr. Paul Newson

How do the inhabitants of a particular village interact with their rural surroundings? For the generic village of the Roman Near East is it possible to delineate different notions of dwelling and attachment within the immediate environs of the village? To what extent did contemporary external influences alter such notions? This paper will attempt to highlight some of these questions through an assessment of the material evidence for the rural spaces of Late Roman Syria. The material evidence for this is relatively rich, with, in some areas, the survival of many small sites. This has the potential to add great detail to analyses of village hinterlands and many thematic concepts such as those of production, memory and transformation. Building from this, the paper will seek to infer the extent to which different cultural and environmental elements may have affected the way the villagers perceived their local rural space.

The Extended Metropolis: Rome and its hinterlands

Dr. Rob Witcher

Where does town end and country begin? How isolated or integrated were urban and rural populations? This paper uses the results of field survey to reconstruct the scale of population in the early imperial hinterland of Rome. The results indicate that the city’s population (conventionally estimated at 0.75-1m) was matched by the population of the suburbium (up to 100km from the city). This observation stimulates renewed consideration of historical and economic models. For example, how far have theories of the consumer city or the myth of the self-sufficient peasant denied the significance of rural demand and consumption? But as well as economic considerations, the scale and mobility of this large population point to changing concepts of community and meaning. The suburbium was also a canvas on which Rome expressed its ideology – its origins, wealth and aspirations. All these ideas are brought together via landscape and its exploitation, transformation and interpretation.

Anuradhapura: hinterlands and theocrats

Dr. Robin Coningham

The UNESCO site of Anuradhapura is one of Asia’s major archaeological and pilgrimage centres. The Sri Lankan capital for 1500 years, its rulers constructed lavish monasteries and lakes, and attracted merchants involved in lucrative Indian Ocean trade. Although, excavations have traced its growth from an Iron Age village to a mediaeval capital, almost nothing is known of the role played by communities in its surrounding plain. In 2005, a multidisciplinary and multinational team began to collect data in order to model pre-urban and urban networks within the plain and to assess the impact of urbanisation on the spatial location, morphology, function and subsistence base of non-urban communities, as well as its impact on the plain’s soils and sedimentary sequences. Funded by AHRC, two full seasons of survey have identified almost 400 sites. As most of these sites are either monastic complexes or extremely short-lived village sites, it increasingly clear that Anuradhapura’s hinterland was devoid of towns. This presentation suggests that in the absence of towns, monasteries performed their administrative and economic duties – presenting a theocratic landscape.

Keynote paper

Social identity in the landscape: a soils-based perspective

Prof. Ian Simpson (Stirling)

Soils are dynamic bodies whose properties reflect the environment in which they have been formed. In cultural landscapes, therefore, identification and analyses of relict and fossil soil properties has the potential to make a considerable contribution to understanding contrasting practices and patterns of early land management. These theoretical perspectives are integrated with innovative methods of soils analyses to explore the emergence and dynamics of Norse cultural landscapes in pristine environment of the north Atlantic, temporally superimposed cultural activities in pre-historic inherited landscapes of the Scottish Northern Isles, and historic local spatial variations in land management in the mixed ethnic landscape of north Nigeria. In doing so, these examples demonstrate the significance of the soils – based cultural record in providing spatial and temporal understanding of social identities in the landscape.

Further details:

For more information, please contact Rob Witcher (r.e.witcher@dur.ac.uk).