BOOK DESCRIPTION
This book is principally about landscape archaeology, and how people experience the world around them. The authors of these highly original and varied 19 chapters/papers use the term landscape in its broadest possible sense to describe the entire material, spiritual and emotional world of people in the past. Thus, human artefacts such as tools or pottery vessels are as much part of landscapes as 'natural' features such as rocks and mountains, rivers and lakes. Buildings, towns and cities, trackways and roads, animals and plants - all of these form part of the human experience of landscapes, as do memories, myths, and stories. In fact, trying to define landscape archaeology can often prove as elusive as attempting definitions of landscape itself. Many archaeologists have argued for a much closer integration of artefactual, contextual and visual information within the text, and for ways of writing that transcend the limitations of conventional reports; the authors have therefore produced a different kind of archaeology book. Some of these papers are highly interpretative, but are based on solid, well-recorded empirical fieldwork carried out by the authors or others. Some papers are more experimental explorations of how landscapes are inhabited and viewed. Throughout the volume however, the contributors combine innovative ways of writing about the past with much greater and more integrated use of photographs and drawings. These images have a dynamic relationship with the text, and are themselves powerful statements of meaning, part of a dynamic dialogue. They do not merely supplement or complement the text, but are integral to our explorations of inhabitation and identity, space and place. Some images are meant to be challenging, or even unsettling, but we also hope that they will make the reading of this book a richer and more sensual experience as a result. Contents: 'Geographies of sentience' - an introduction to space, place and time Adrian M. Chadwick; Mountains and hills Adrian M. Chadwick; Where many paths meet: towards an integrated theory of landscape and technology Danny Hind; Rivers, lakes, springs and streams Adrian M. Chadwick; A 'movement of becoming': realms of existence in the early neolithic of southern Britain Joshua Pollard; Trees, plants and fungi Adrian M. Chadwick; Who's afraid of the Big Bad Woods? Forest Wilderness in the Middle Ages Helen Evans; Flora Magicka Adrian M. Chadwick; Husbandly Furniture Thomas Tusser; From Mexico to Mayab: a landscape voyage Bill Bevan; Architecture and buildings Adrian M. Chadwick and Lesley McFadyen; We take memories into our spaces. The landscapes of Fulbourn Field 126 The Cambridge Women and Homelessness Group; Animals Adrian M. Chadwick; Reassembling labour Melanie Giles; Boundaries Adrian M. Chadwick; Picking up the trail: People, landscapes and technology in the Peak District of Derbyshire during the fifth and fourth millennia BC Danny Hind; Paths, roads and routeways Adrian M. Chadwick; “Footprints in the sands of time.” Archaeologies of inhabitation on Cranborne Chase, Dorset Adrian M. Chadwick; The Dead John Burnside.