1 / 9

Place on the Plains

Place on the Plains. Conceptualizing a Landscape Approach to Archaeology. Terry Beaulieu University of Calgary Plains Anthropological Conference Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 4-October-2012. Introduction. Landscape affects interpretations Changing definition Often vaguely or poorly defined

kedma
Télécharger la présentation

Place on the Plains

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Place on the Plains Conceptualizing a Landscape Approach to Archaeology Terry BeaulieuUniversity of CalgaryPlains Anthropological ConferenceSaskatoon, Saskatchewan, 4-October-2012

  2. Introduction • Landscape affects interpretations • Changing definition • Often vaguely or poorly defined • Leads to confusion and misunderstanding • Three key concepts • Space • Place • Environment

  3. Space • Newtonian space • Independent and unchanging • Space is location • Fixed and independent of human perception • Can be referenced either absolutely or relatively

  4. Place • Place • Mobile, not fixed • Has varying levels of significance • Among places, between individual/groups and over time • Place • Should not be used interchangeably with space • Conceptual occupation of space • Constantly being created and recreated • Cultural construction of the mind

  5. Environment • Environment • Intimately linked to space and place • “a piece of reality that is simply there” (Tuan 1979) • Exists independent of human conception • “a full sense of agency is never achieved” (Trifkovic 2006) • Affordances • What is offered by the environment (Gibson 1979) • Some claim they are simply environmental properties • Relational affordances (Chemero 2003) • The relations between organisms and the environment

  6. Landscape • Landscape • “is not ‘land’, is not ‘nature’, and it is not ‘space’” (Ingold 1993) • The web created by the collection of recognized places • Is a cultural creation, not a physical reality • Landscape • All places within a landscape are related to one another • Unique over time and between individuals/groups • Are continuously being created and recreated

  7. On The Northwestern Plains • Most archaeology has been ecological • Landscape approaches • Called into question assumptive biases • e.g. the archaeological ‘site’ is a modern construction • Proposed new interpretations of tipi ring significance • Recognized the importance of place names • Realized the complex culture/environment connection • Presented new interpretations of seasonal movement • Reconciled the archaeological record and environmental evidence with a non-Western world view

  8. Conclusion • Landscape Archaeology • The intersection of space, place, and environment • The recognition our world is but a perception of reality that is inherently biased – but it is within those biases that the most satisfying interpretations are found

  9. Thank you REFERENCES CITED Chemero, A. 2003 An Outline of a Theory of Affordances. Ecological Psychology. 15(2):181-195. Gibson, J.J. 1979 The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Ingold, T. 1993 The Temporality of the Landscape. World Archaeology 25(2):152-174. Trifkovic, V. 2006 Persons and Landscapes: Shifting Scales of Landscape Archaeology. In Confronting Scale in Archaeology: Issues of Theory and Practice, edited by G. Lock and B. L. Molyneaux, pp. 257-271. Springer, New York, NY. Tuan, Y.F. 1979 Thought and Landscape: The Eye and the Mind's Eye. In The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, edited by D. W. Meinig, pp. 89-102. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

More Related