Professional Documents
Culture Documents
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
Session abstract
Increased interest and improved methods in the analysis of archaeological landscapes and
environmental materials throughout Europe has led to a situation where, in some areas, we are
provided with high-quality spatial and temporal patterning. Despite these advances, the
integration of such data into theoretical archaeological approaches does not seem to have kept
pace with the accumulation of data. Indeed, the preponderance to re-use outmoded datasets is
representative of how archaeologists orientate their way around interpreting relationships
between palaeoenvironmental evidence and human activity, highlighting the conceptual
divide between archaeological practice and interpretation. We suggest that understanding of
the archaeological environment requires a comprehension of how different ways of inhabiting
the world became possible, whereby the values that people give to land, plants, animals and
food is fundamental to the construction of social practice.
This session will explore the application of landscape and environmental analyses in the
construction of social and cultural archaeological narratives. We would like to encourage
papers that demonstrate how environmental data is a method of enquiry into the ways that
humans bound their own biographies to that of the environmental resources around them.
From this perspective, social practice does not stand in opposition to nature, but is created in a
complex network of exchanges that bind different lifeforms together in various, what has been
referred to as, symbiotic relationships.
14:15-14:20 Introduction
Fay Stevens, University College London
14:40-15:00 Lakes, life and landscape - merging the archaeology of watery places
Christina Fredengren, Discovery Programme, Ireland
This paper explores different routes towards understanding the different watery
environments that the Lake Settlement Project of the Discovery Programme works with.
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11th EAA Annual Meeting, Cork, Ireland. 5–11 September 2005
There are challenges in merging environmental investigations with theories about social
agency and landscape, but also great gains to make. In particular this paper will draw on
analyses of fieldwork in Lough Kinale, Co. Longford and Lough Gara, Co. Sligo, Ireland in
order to develop ideas of how different types of waters may have been commented upon and
changed over time. It will also try to get to terms with issues of human and non-human
agency and variations in the perception of waters over time.
15:20-15:30Discussion
15:30-15:50CoffeeBreak
15:50-15:55 Introduction
Meriel McClatchie, University College London
15:55-16:15 Living in the Dutch river area during the Bronze Age
Peter Jongste, University of Leiden
In the last decade, numerous Bronze Age settlement-sites have been excavated in the
Dutch river area. The emphasis on the cultural landscape, using physical geography, botany
and zoology has yielded an abundance of new data on human occupation that is currently
being studied at Leiden University (see: www.bronstijd.nl). This not only has led to new
insights in the layout of the cultural Bronze Age landscape, but also in its long-term
developments. Phases of relative stable conditions favourable to occupation alternated with
periods of instability locally when rivers changed their courses or on a regional level when the
number of alvulsions grew significantly (e.g. during the Late Bronze Age). The main
objective of this study is to assess the human responses towards these profound changes in the
dynamics of the landscape and the environmental constraints. Despite these, the river area
remained populated throughout the whole of the 2nd millennium BC.
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11th EAA Annual Meeting, Cork, Ireland. 5–11 September 2005
between human and beaver activity, which include family life, teaching and specialisation, the
making of structures, artefacts and art, patterned deposition, and manipulation of the
environment. For a new perspective on human history, perhaps the most interesting question
relates to the extent of environmental impact: today, the `footprint` of humans is literally and
metaphorically bigger that that of beavers, whereas one could argue that back in the
Palaeolithic beavers had the greater effect - but when was it that humans overtook them?
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