LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY

Landscape Archaeology

Landscape Archaeology

Introduction

Landscape Archaeology is found in many different areas of prehistoric Europe, but it often appears in similar contexts. It is most apparent in periods in which settlement sites have a rather ephemeral character and in parts of the landscape which are likely to have experienced a mobile pattern of exploitation (Bradley 1993: chapter 3). It is surprising, then, that studies of this phenomenon so rarely take advantage of its connection with the natural terrain. Instead, they have concentrated on the character of the designs, and the main emphasis has fallen on questions of style and chronology. In effect, the motifs have been separated from the rock and its place in the landscape and treated in exactly the same manner as portable artefacts (Anati 1976; Malmer 2002). It is our contention that this approach has obscured their full potential for research and, in particular, the contribution that they have to offer to studies of the prehistoric landscape.

Defining 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 (Criado, 2003). The landscape may be large, such as a wide marshy river delta, or small, such as a back garden; the key feature that distinguishes landscape archaeology from (e.g.) site-based approaches is that there is an explicit emphasis on the study of the relationships between archaeological data (e.g. between sites and/or cultural modifications to landscapes such as ditches, burial mounds, field systems, roads, etc.) and such cultural phenomena and their natural setting or environment. The origins of a specific body of theory dealing with these questions can be traced to at least the 1950s and 1960s in archaeology. Techniques used in landscape archaeology, principally archaeological field survey and associated technologies, are often practised in cultural resources management to identify vulnerable sites (Criado, 2003).

Neolithic & Bronze Age

Neolithic and Bronze Age petroglyphs are widely distributed and occur in many parts of Europe, from the central Mediterranean to Scandinavia. Although there are occasional areas of overlap between the different styles of rock carving, these have obscured the more important point that they may have been created under similar conditions in a variety of different areas. Their interpretation has always presented problems, and has usually been approached in one of two ways. In Scandinavia, rock carvings have been studied using the insights provided by regional ethnography, particularly the traditional beliefs of the mobile peoples who still live beyond the agricultural frontier (Helsgog 2004; Tilley 2003). Elsewhere, in Atlantic Europe, the most promising approach has been through comparisons with other media: the distinctive decoration applied to portable objects and also the motifs associated with stone statues or megalithic tombs (Johnston 2002: chapter 4; Vázquez 2001; Jorge and Jorge 2003). In this paper we suggest another way of looking at this material. We consider that an equally promising method of analysis is to reunite the carvings with the rock ...