LANDSCAPE: A FRUITFUL, YET ENIGMATIC CONCEPT IN

ARCHAEOLOGY

2016 Landscape Qualifying Exam

Sarah Nicole Boudreaux

March 21, 2016

The cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a culture group. Culture is
the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result. Under the
influence of a given culture, itself changing through time, the landscape undergoes
development, passing through phases, and probably reaching ultimately the end of its cycle of
development. With the introduction of a different - that is, alien - culture, a rejuvenation of the
cultural landscape sets in, or a new landscape is superimposed on the remnants of an older
one.
- Carl Sauer (1925: 46)

Cosgrove (1988:1) defines landscape as [Landscape is] a cultural image, a pictorial way of
representing or symbolizing surroundings

- Cosgrove and Daniels (1988:1)

All the visible features of an area of countryside or land, often considered in terms of their
aesthetic appeal; the distinctive features of a particular situation or intellectual activity

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 - OED (2016)

Landscape Archaeology: A Historical Overview

As we can see from the definitions of landscape given, there are a multitude of

meanings and confining it to one concept is not possible (Stoddart and Zubrow 1999). This

paper aims at surveying the word landscape through the past few decades in hopes of

understanding the many meanings the term expresses, in addition to how the term has

enhanced our knowledge of various aspects of the past. Historically, landscape was no

more than an empirical backdrop for archaeological studies, treated as an inactive member

in the culture making process in the British and American schools (Anschuetz et al. 2001;

Knapp and Ashmore 1999). During the late 1980s through the 90s, there was a revolution

of how archaeologists thought of the term landscapelandscape became a concept in and

of itself, and it was understood to be a culturally constructed entity that influences the way

people and society perceive their surroundings (Bender 1993; Mitchell 2000; Robertson

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and Richards 2003; Brown 2007; Cosgrove 1985, 1988; Ingold 1993). This paradigm shift

is also attributed to the humanist resurgence in geography and a response to those who did

not previously consider the practices and the mentalities of the people who built their

environments (Brown 2007; Cosgrove 1985). Knapp and Ashmore (1999:2) concur with

Ingold (1993) when they state that what was once theorized as a passive backdrop or

forcible determinant of culture is now seen as an active and far more complex entity in

relation to human lives. Archaeologists are now using landscape as forefront subject in

their studies in various ways, understanding it as an active member of constructing

peoples worldview (Anschuetz et al. 2001). Archaeologists use it to refer to a swath of

subjects and concepts like that of nature (ecological, geomorphological, geological, and

geographical) and culture (technological, ethereal, organizational, political, and social)

(Anschuetz et al. 2001). Researchers now understand it in an empirical sense and also as an

embodied concept (Brown 2007).

The British and American Schools have different theoretical underpinnings when

employing the landscape concept that is still visible in research today. However, both

schools started from the same place British social scientists, including geographers and

archaeologists, began to study maps in order to evaluate distributional properties of

archaeological remains (Reeves Smyth and Hammond 1983). Distributive entities were

evaluated further in order to garner reasoning behind structural placement (Anschuetz et

al. 2001; Crawford 1922). Motive for social organization and arrangement were based off

of climatic changes over time because archaeological projects were being conducted in

terms of an environmentally deterministic framework (Anschuetz et al. 2001).

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 North American archaeologists borrowed distributional studies from British

researchers, affixed them into a cultural ecological framework and created many influential

settlement pattern inquiries (Anschuetz et al. 2001). One of the founding studies was

conducted by Gordon Willey and the Vir Valley in Peru (e.g. 1956) (Anschuetz et al. 2001;

Stoddart and Zubrow 1999). It is the goal of this paper to understand both tandem

trajectories of how landscape went from an inactive member in archaeological evaluation

into a catalyst for cultural dynamicity in both British and American Archaeology.

19th Century Romanticism and its Archaeological Legacy

The state of the intellectual thought at the beginning of the 19th century was very

interesting. Romanticism grew out of an intellectual critique of the Enlightenment period

(Trigger 1998). Romantics opposed the thought that rational, law-bound individuals made

up societies (Eriksen and Nielsen 2001). They wanted to explore society as whole, and

understand the dynamic and imaginative relationships that made up groups (Eriksen and

Nielsen 2001). Romantic ideas spread throughout Europe during the 19th century

especially in Germany (Eriksen and Nielsen 2001). A notable German philosopher,

Immanuel Kant, heavily influenced intellectuals during the early part of the movement

(Eriksen and Nielsen 2001).

Kant did not create the discipline of social sciences, but he did provide important

ideas that influenced various fields (like that of social sciences and geography)(Eriksen and

Nielsen 2001). He suggested that ways of knowing are self-reflexive and are provided when

people engage with the world around them (Eriksen and Nielsen 2001). He also

contributed to the notion that sensual and rational thought could have a dialectical

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relationship with one anotherempiricism and rationalism were not opposed, but two

sides of the same coin. Knowledge was both sensual and mathematical, objective and

subjective (Eriksen and Nielsen 2001: 17).

However, this dialectical relationship was called into question by Hegel, charging

that conceiving the inconceivable is a paradox (Habermas 1999). Hegel continued the

legacy of Kant, but tried to find a way to mitigate the paradox he discovered in Kants work

(Habermas 1999; Eriksen and Nielsen 2001). Hegel tried to do this by combining Kants

idea of the universal preconditions of knowledge, and the particularistic orientation of

Herder and the Romanticists. Kants knowing subject existed outside context and history.

(Eriksen and Nielsen 2001: 18). He brought the idea that knowledge was relational: one

can only know themselves when known by others (Eriksen and Nielsen 2001). Heidegger

was later influenced by the Romantic school and his work subsequently influenced a large

number of 20th and 21st century British archaeologists.

19th Century Romanticism and Modern Archaeology. Epistemological ideas about how

one acquires knowledge has influenced the British school of archaeology in important

ways, chiefly phenomenology (Brck 2005; Johnson 2011, 2012). Instead of trying to

interpret meaning from material culture, archaeologists are asking how people experience

and understand their surroundings via the relationships and engagements with objects

(Brck 2005; Johnson 2011, 2012). They are using this approach to describe past human

experiences (Brck 2005). Although influenced by the Romantic school, phenomenology

tries to break down the subject-object divide by focusing on the space between (which is

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arguably one of the more fruitful ideas that came from the school [Brck 2005]). This

approach has brought materiality into the forefront of archaeological inquiries.

Phenomenology. Phenomenology, how it is used as an epistemological concept, is

derived from the works of Heidegger (1962). His philosophy stipulates that, as participants

in the world, our consciousness is affected by our social interactions and the physicality of

our environment (OLeary 2013; Heidegger 1962). Therefore, the use of phenomenology in

archaeology has been a very provocative subject within the discipline (Brck 2005). This

school has catalyzed questions concerning the deep intellectual way of evaluating divided

relationships between subject/object, self/other, nature/culture, and has put landscape as

an active member in peoples understanding of the world (Brck 2005:65).

Chris Tilley (After Johnson 2012), defines phenomenology as the following:

Phenomenology involves the study of phenomena. A

Phenomenon is an entity (thing or event) which presents itself
with the conceptualization of subject-object relations. It
involves a description of things as they are experienced in the
world by a human subject Processes of ordinary human
description are of central significance: seeing, hearing,
touching, tasting. Phenomenologists try to ground their
descriptions of the social and material world in this manner in
which people think and feel about it rather than in an abstract
manner.

Instead of material culture being evaluated for meaning, Phenomenological

archaeologists are trying to understand how people move through objects and experience

objects and their surroundings and how they affect how people perceive the world (Barrett

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and Ko 2009; Johnson 2010, 2012). For this reason, phenomenological ideas have been

useful in Landscape Archeology.

One of the main reasons archaeologists were turning to employing phenomenology

in archaeology is that they wanted to turn away from the staunch empirical and Cartesian

understanding of landscape (Brck 2005; Johnson 2010). They wanted the landscape to be

an active member in research and not a neutral entity (Tilley 1994). They felt that this way

of looking at the archaeological landscape took people out of the study and devalued

everyday experiences people had with their surroundings (Johnson 2010). Cartesian

studies of landscape ignored the experiences that influenced peoples world view

objectifying landscape and ignoring memory, meaning, and identity gleaned from ones

surroundings (Brck 2005; Cosgrove 1984).

Two notable archaeologists always appear when discussion phenomenology: Tim

Ingold and Christopher Tilley. They both reject constructivists arguments that

dichotomizes culture and nature (Allerton 2012). This division in thought for Ingold is

found within the ontology of dwelling (Ingold 2000:42). In particular, you cannot

understand a culture as adaptive/responsive to ones environment without understanding

the way interactions with their environment impacted their world view (Allerton 2012;

Ingold 2000). Tilley (2004) adds that things amongst landscapes cannot be seen as passive

or as hermeneutic devices things are thingly (Ingold 2007) and they have agency and

can shape peoples worldview when one entity interacts with the other.

Critiques of Phenomenology. Even though phenomenology gives different

epistemological outlooks on how one understands their surrounding, the usage of the

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concept in archaeology is still scrutinized. To be able to use it, Johnson (2010) states that

one must assume that people have a unified empathic connection with the world in order

to apply a phenomenological framework to an archaeological study. This may have serious

implications to those who do not ascribe to unified consciousness ontology. Barret and Ko

(2009) charge that phenomenology is the study of understanding the ways of Being, and

that practitioners have failed to define the technical aspects of how this approach can be

analytical. Phenomenologists have pushed so far against the empiricists of the Cartesian

approaches, that there is no objective approaches to explore the concept in archaeology

(Flemming 2006). Therefore, phenomenology simply becomes a term for an approach and

phenomenologists have only defined what it is not, and not what it is (Barret and Ko 2009).

The US settlement Archaeology School and its Deep Roots with Cultural Ecology

As for American archaeologists, landscape became synonymous with settlement at

the beginning of the 20th century. The advent of settlement pattern research came with a

reaction against being focused on site cores only. These archaeologists were more

interested in the whole community in relation to the environment. Researchers were

influenced by Stewards ideas about cultural ecology, therefore, most projects were

focusing on cultural responses to the changing environment. In order to do this, large

swaths of land were surveyed in order to discern settlement patterns from a large dataset.

Many US archaeologists at the time were doing this type of research, especially those

studying in the Maya region.

During the end of the 20th century, Maya archaeologists were writing about

landscapes in regard to the environment in a systematic way (Ashmore 2004). Again, this

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was due to the theoretical schools that were dominating the discipline at the time,

especially that of Julian Steward (Ashmore 2004). Again, those who were influenced by

Steward were interested in ecological patterns in relation to settlement placement

(Ashmore 2004).

Julian Stewards Legacy. Julian Steward emerged as one of the greatest thinkers in

20th century anthropology (Grinker 2008). He can be seen as opposing the historical

particularism school of Boas (Harris 1968), because he was more interested in developing

general trends about societies, rather than looking at unique, cultural cases (Grinker 2008).

Steward is not a unilineal evolutionist (Like Morgan, Freud (1913) and Wittfogel (1957)),

but a multilinear evolutionisthe wanted to look at general laws to explain how societies

evolved (Grinker 2008). Steward (1955) detailed his theory in his book, Theory of Culture

Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution (Pinkoski 2008). He wanted to evoke

the idea that cultural evolution happened in various ways, due to diverse places in which

people dwell (Grinker 2008). He created the foundation within this book for cultural

ecology. This book detailed the method to scientifically study culture in relation to

environment. He believed that people diversely adapted to their environments. Ortner

(1984:134) summarizes his theory as the following:

[Steward] emphasized that specific cultures evolve

their specific forms in the process of adapting to specific
environmental conditions, and that the apparent uniformity of
evolutionary stages is actually a matter of similar adaptations
to similar natural conditions in different parts of the world.

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 Harris (1968) comments that his theory is one of the first to investigate a cultures

interaction with their landscape in the context of causal terms, without reverting to a

simple geographic determinism or without lapsing into historical particularism. This

appealed to archaeologists at the time because his theory and method was objective in

nature and scientifically driven in order to understand the organization of various cultures

(Pinkoski 2008). Archaeologists were inclined to adopt Stewards framework at the time in

part because his work coincided with the advent of the New Archaeology school. At the

same time, archaeological research trends were including more than just the site cores of

large archaeological sites they were more interested in the community at large and were

rejecting the Vacant ceremonial center theory (Puleston 1973).

Willeys Viru Valley Survey. One of the most famous of these studies archaeological

studies was that of Gordon Willey in the Vir Valley of Peru (Ashmore 2004). Gordon

Willey conducted a comprehensive and intensive survey on the Peruvian coastal valley. His

goal for this extensive study was three-fold (Willey 1953: xvii):

1) Study the, human adaptation to the valley

environment over a long period of time
2) Understand the life-ways of modern inhabitants within
the Viru Valley
3) To recognize the, natural valley and its environment

To accomplish his three goals, Willey detailed archaeological, ecological, and

modern population trends within his study. He also took time to describe the geological

history of the area. Archaeological material that was recorded, were the visible settlement

remains. He took detailed descriptions of the material, as well as provided drawn maps to

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accompany the descriptions. He evaluated all the data at hand, and offered settlement

patterns for the area.

In summary, Steward and Willeys research were responsible for shaping a whole

generation (Ashmore 2004) of American archaeological studies that still can be seen in

recent research. Both mens body of work laid the foundations for positivist, processualist

ideas in the New Archaeology (Ashmore 2004:89). Therefore, most archaeological

projects dealing with landscape at the time were very objective in nature. Cultural

ecology had become a mainstay to evaluate important perceptions about the environment

(Ashmore 2004).

This study was followed by Pulestons (1973) extensive study of Tikal. He employed

similar survey methods from Willeys (1956) settlement survey projects. His main

objectives were:

1) To understand the nature of the Classic lowland Maya

collapse
2) Explore the mechanics that led to prosperity in the
rainforest

To do this, he surveys an extensive portion of land, excavates along those surveyed

areas, and compares that data to environmental information (Puleston 1973). His

hypothesis was that the Maya stopped relying upon kitchen gardens, and the increased

importance on other subsistence strategies (Puleston 1973).

The legacy of Willeys settlement survey method and hints of cultural ecology can be

seen in a multitude of projects in the Maya area. Along with culture ecological principles

and Willeys survey methods, these projects employed various economic and geographical

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theory to investigate general dimensions of socioeconomic land use practices (Ashmore

2004). During the earlier settlement studies (e.g. Willey 1953 and Puleston 1973), the

landscapes were a mere passive backdrops (Ashmore 2004). Landscapes were spaces to be

quantified and measured in order to be compared to other spaces. Most of these studies

dealt with resources and risks that the Maya had in the Lowlands (Ashmore 2004).

Subsistence practices became one of the more popular topics within this era. In result,

landscape archaeology became subsumed -term interest in the collapse of the Maya, and

the association with resource deficiencies and the role the environment had in the

collapse (e.g. Puleston 1973) (Ashmore 2004). Ashmore (2004:90) states,

For characterizing ancient Maya use of environment

and resources, seemingly unassailable models of ancient
swidden farmers eventually gave way to evidence supporting
other, more complex models recognizing peasants with a
mosaic of quite diverse strategies for food procurement and
production.

Later in the 20th century and until today, evidence from landscape archaeologys

roots are still visible (e.g. Cortes-Rincon et al. 2014,; Tourtellot et al. 1993). However,

projects who are participating in settlement settlement research are using landscape as an

active member, and not just a stage where the action happens. In the late 80s, there was a

movement to use the conjunctive approach in the Maya area (after Ashmore 2004). These

studies employ settlement surveys that dominated the earlier part of the 20th century, but

has included humanistic subjects, like that of iconography, human engagement with the

environment, and ethnographical data (Ashmore 2004). Other interests in ancient

astronomy and the Mayas interaction and movement related to it has become a popular

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topic as well (Ashmore 2004). One example is Houks (2003) site planning inquiries in the

Three Rivers Region of Belize. His study invokes ideas of how the built environment can be

manipulated in such a way to claim celestial rights to rule and to also declare alliances with

other powerful polities in the area (Houk 2003; Houk and Zaro 2011). Along with Ashmore

and Sabloff (2002), all are using settlement-patterning research to comment on

sociopolitical aspects of the Mayas built environment.

In 2004, Ashmore (2004) claims that there are three new directions that Maya

landscape archaeology are going: 1) understanding the full extent of the physical space of

Maya landscapes, 2) understanding the dialectical relationship between the built and

natural environment (or landscape), and 3) understanding the role of time and human

action have in understanding the landscape at large. Surveying the literature since

Ashmores 2004 article has proven her claims correct, however, the categories were broad.

However, for direction 1), there has been a very recent development that harkens back to

the beginning of landscape studies. New technologies are being explored to survey greater

distances at higher accuracy to portray the physical landscape. LiDAR projects have been

employed the last decade to gather a surge of information about physical landscape

patterning beneath the Maya forest (e.g. Chase et al. 2012; Chase et al. 2011; Chase et al.

2014; Prufer et al. 2015). It seem that more focus is on the physical landscape at the

moment, but I attribute to this being because of the high influx of data coming in from these

projects. In the near future, there will be much more information about the landscape of

the Maya in terms of sociopolitical interaction and how the built environment impacted

their world view. Topic 2) has been explored since Ashmores (2004) publication by

scholars such as Braswell 2014, Levi (2012), Cortes-Rincon et al. (2014), Houk and Zaro

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(2011), Peurmaki-Brown (2013). And topic three still remains deeply entrenched in

ecological subjects and substitence situated problems (e.g. (De Montmollin 2004; Fedick

and Morrison et al. 2004) but some have added in postmodern subjects (e.g. Robin et al.

2006; Morehart 2008; White 2005).

Short Comparison of the Two Schools

It should be apparent that there are very different theoretical underpinnings

between the two schools. The British have had a long history with a more humanistic

approach, while the American school comes from a heavy empirical background. This can

be seen in the way each school approaches landscape. The British have always people in

mind when evaluating landscape. US taught archaeologists were more concerned with how

the environment affected population, how people adapted to their environment, and what

impacts people had on the environment. However, both school were born out of the

evaluation of the environment. So the commonality that they share is the idea that people

lived on various landscapes and the nature of societal interaction with the environment.

Critiques of the Landscape Concept

Since Landscape evokes more than one meaning and concept , some have

questioned the validity and usefulness in using the term (Anschuetz et al. 2001; Whittlesey

1997). However, defining the term as just one thing dissipates the useful, multivalent

nature of the concept. Anschuetz et al. (2001:158) state that, Given these intellectual

traditions, it is not surprising that landscape concepts in geography and other social

sciences have a multiplicity of meanings that teeter between the nature-culture scale

(Cosgrove 1985; Hart 1995).

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 No matter the debate of the usefulness of the term landscape in archaeology,

researchers have used it with open arms (as demonstrated in this essay). Landscape has

become a tool to examine the dialectical relationship between nature and culture as well as

a device, to question how populations transform their surrounding space into meaningful

places (Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Anschuetz et al. 2001; Bender 1993; Ucko and Layton

1999; Hirsch 1995). The following are foundational ideas of the Landscape paradigm in

archaeology that are still true in the British and American Schools of Archaeology (after

Anschuetz et al. 2001: 160-161):

1. Landscapes are synthetic entities that are created and

reflected by peoples interactions with their natural
environments and must not be seen as the same as the
natural environment (Anschuetz et al. 2001; Ingold
1993). Landscape subsumes the external world through
the experiences of people; people mitigate nature and
culture through these experiences (Anschuetz et al.
2001; Knapp and Ashmore 1999; Cosgrove 1985).
2. Through peoples activities, beliefs, and values,
landscapes are constructed through culture (Anschuetz
et al. 2001; Cosgrove 1985).
3. Landscapes are where people act within their
community (Anschuetz et al. 2001).
4. Landscapes are dynamic in which each generation
creates their own understanding of the world and
perpetuates the cycle of constructing landscapes
(Anschuetz et al. 2001; Bourdieu 1977). Landscapes are
a cultural process in which it is a conduit for people to
be able to structure their lives and activities (Anschuetz
et al. 2001; Hirsch 1995; Cosgrove 1984).

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 These ideas are manifested in different themes in Landscape archaeology, such as

ideas about the built environment, concepts of power and space, space and place being

separate entities, and also spatiality. These concepts are explored more in detail below.

Other Themes in Landscape Archaeology

The Built Environment. Lawrence and Low (1990) define the built environment as an

abstract concept, referring to the broadest physical alteration of the natural environment

by humans. This includes built forms that include structure, shelter, and be spaces that

are unbounded. This term can also include site plans and arrangement of space. Basically,

anything that people have altered in the sense of physically or mentally can be defined as

the built environment. This is opposed to the natural environment. They go onto list a

number of approaches that researchers take when considering the built environment

(Lawrence and Low (1990:455):

1) How do forms accommodate human behavior?

2) What do forms mean; do they express thought and
aspects of society?
3) How are forms and spatial arrangements an extension
of self?
4) How does society produce forms and the forms
produce society?

The concept of the built environment seems so big and vast that it becomes almost a

reduction in meaning. The built environment is anything that people alter- physically or

mentally, therefore what is really natural? Phenomenologists may adhere to this idea;

however, the built environment still perpetuates the divide between nature and culture.

However, there is merit in investigating the built environment in relation to different

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theoretical frameworks. Studying archaeological remains in such a way may elucidate how

a space gained its meaning by cultural processes. For example, studying the built

environment against political economic topics can tell us about the reproduction of

sociopolitical classes and how the built environment reifies such things (Lawrence and Low

1990).

An example can be seen in Rotman and Nassaney (1997) study of Southwest

Michigan Settlement. They charge that the structures that create the cultural landscape

embody information about their creators because the built environment actively serves

to create, reproduce, and transform social relationships (Rotman and Nassaney 2007).

There are ways of organizing structures to exude power by facilitating movement through

the landscape. The landscape was altered in such a way to communicate status via building

sizes and numbers (Rotman and Nassaney 2007).

Power and Space

Adam T. Smith (2003:5) asks a poignant question at the beginning of his book, The

Political Landscape:

How do landscapes defined in the broadest sense to

incorporate the physical contours of the created environment,
the aesthetics of built form, and the imaginative reflections of
spatial representations contribute to the constitution of
political authority?

What Smith is hinting at is that the built environment can be a way to exude

authority, and a way to convey power and provide meaning beyond verbal communication.

This theme of landscape archaeology normally uses architecture as a way to explore power

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relations within a particular setting. As archaeologists, these important spaces are

recognized by understanding the local history and the recognition of perpetuation or

alteration of the built environment (Ashmore and Sabloff 2002). In this theme, we ask

ourselves, in the Foucauldian sense: How is power exercised, or by what means is it

exercised (Foucault 1982)?. The communication of power is not the goal, but the

experience of power; how do people go beyond language to display power over others

(Foucault 1982)?

Moore (2002) tries to get to this sense of where power comes from, or how is power

exercised in the ancient Chimu state of modern Peru. He starts his article by detailing how

archaeologists normally interpret architecture and power by defining a space as open or

restricted access. Though he goes further and asks: what can that tell us about the people

who built structures and those who are intended to encounter those structures how is

architecture informing people of non-communicative information and what does that mean

about the people who built the structures? Moore (2002) tries to answer this by evaluating

royal spaces in terms of patterning via quantifiable values. He pinpointed the most

commonly shared building style across the area. Moore (1992) found that the u shaped

rooms are mostly found in places of authoritycould it be some type of checkpoint before

a person moves beyond that point? These spaces restricted free flowing movement that in

turn controlled how people moved through the space. The people who built those spaces

were able to control the movement of others without verbally communicating to their

subordinates. Moore (1992) concedes that this evaluation cannot be the sole evidence for

power relations between authority and subordinates, and needs to evaluate more social

institutions to come to a solid conclusion.

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Space, Place and Spatiality

Levi (2003:85 [after Soja 1985]) states that, spatiality is, a term used to convey

the idea that social space is simultaneously the mediator and outcome of social practice.

This suggests, that space is constituted by ideational, organizational, and material

processes that emerge in historically particular contexts (Levi 2003:85). This means that

spaces are unique to the context in which they are constituted. Collective spaces also point

to a shared understanding between society and historical situation (Levi 2003).

Concepts Implemented in Future Research

In my research, I am evaluating two different settlement patterning systems on the

domestic level. I am teasing out common patterning between two different communities. I

would expect to find commonalities between the two sets of data. In turn, this would lead

me to believe there was an institutional aspect for replicating such structures. This would

also tell of the extent of communication and relationships one community had with the

other.

To do this, I will be applying a scalar typology to each household group that I come

across among both settlement areas, I will then compare this to the ecological setting that

they are situated in (which harkens back to my intellectual lineage). In doing this, I will be

able to understand the different resources each household has access to (in terms of

distance). I will put all of these findings into a stat pack and conduct a multilinear analysis.

Hopefully, the data will have significant patterning through statistical analysis. I will

evaluate each group, with respect to the artifact assemblage associated, and will be able to

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evaluate how integrated the domestic economy of each community was with the larger

sociopolitical network.

Concluding Remarks

Landscape is quite a loaded term. It is difficult to define because many scholars

have many different ontological understanding, with very different epistemological ideas

behind it. However, all ideas and concepts of landscape have one thing in common when

used in archaeology it is a means to understand positioning in relational terms.

Positioning can be literal objects, of self, of other. This idea goes back to Kant: one cannot

know oneself without knowing the other you cannot talk about landscape as one single

entity, landscape will always refer associations with other things (things as defined by

Ingold). How researchers mitigate where that association lies; is up to their theoretical

leanings, and they need to be made explicit within research (which Tilley fails to do).

Landscape is the product of evaluating the positioning of things in relation to other things.

- Sarah Nicole Boudreaux, 2016

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