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A Brief Consideration of
Psychogeography: Archaeological
Applications and Possibilities

by T. Michael Perrin
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Among the variety of tools that archaeology has been able to acquire and assimilate
over the years by way of other fields of study, whether scientific or phenomenological,
one of the most enigmatic with regards to actually being defined is psychogeography.
Although this approach to better understanding space and place has become more
ubiquitous in recent years, it can remain elusive for many in its overall intent and
purpose. This essay will clarify what psychogeography really signifies, both in its
original intent as well as its present day use. Did psychogeography flow out of an
anthropological wellspring? Did it originate in psychology? What were the
underpinnings responsible for its creation? Throughout, we will be looking at its
viability as an actual field of study.

After answering these questions, we will consider psychogeography’s value in an

archaeological context. Approaches to past and present mapping will be paramount to
this study. By analysing this field’s origins and development as well as its present-day
application, we can acquire a clearer view of potential future applications for this
constructive new phenomenology.

Rendering Psychogeography

Psychogeography is a fluid and indefinable term by its very nature. In its simplest form,
it may be described as the exploration of a particular environment (traditionally an
urban environment) utilising a heightened sense of awareness in order to record both
sensory and emotive responses. While this is still the predominant perception of the
concept, a clearer and more malleable image may be obtained by analysing its origins
and development.
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Lettrist roots

While most of the credit for the creation of psychogeography has gone to Lettrist
International founder Guy Debord, the true father and cultivator of the concept as we
know it today was LI member Ivan Chtcheglov (O’Rourke 2013:10). After the horrors
of World War I, a group of what we would today call deconstructionists formed in
Zurich to bring new and controversial phenomenologies into the realm of art
(Sanouillet 2009: 31). These were the ‘Dada’, and out of them arose Tristan Tzara and
his abstract ideas concerning perceived and conceptualised space. Tzara would
eventually influence the post-World War II radical Chtcheglov, who would eventually
introduce psychogeography in his work Formulary for a New Urbanism in 1953
(O’Rourke 2013:39). Central to the concept was the dérive: the aimless walk through
the city that the sojourner was meant to take time to complete, taking in all stimuli in
order to retain the sensory images and emotions associated with them.

After Chtcheglov’s exit from LI in the early 1950s, Guy Debord began his in-depth
development of psychogeography and the dérive via his restructured group Situationist
International. Using architecture as the primary focus for his deconstruction of
established social theories, Debord rejected the Euclidean constants in the structure of
the urban landscape that limited both movement and expression. Instead, the early
psychogeographers utilised abstraction of both movement and hermeneutics to arrive
at a resolutely postmodern view of the environment (Debord 1996: 35).

Again, while Debord made great headway in disseminating the concept of

psychogeography to the world, I believe that it is to Chtcheglov that we must return to
in order to capture the true essence, and eventual application to archaeology, of
psychogeography and the dérive. Critics have always tended to label
psychogeographers as either drunkards or dreamers (Kaufman 2006: 33), and
Chtcheglov responds to this by pointing out that dreams originate in reality to begin
with (Chtcheglov 1996: 45). He also notes that it is in reality that dreams are eventually
realised. It was completely necessary to approach the dérive with this idea of utilising
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the subconscious (or more specifically, the sponge-like subconscious) as a means of

inputting the sensory perceptions and emotions that are accrued.

Other approaches

If one takes the idea of Feng Shui into the realm of Chtcheglovian psychogeography,
one immediately sees that it is a type of environmental psychology. Within Feng Shui ,
physical environmental features do tend to correlate to psychological aspects of not
only what and who we are as human beings, but also what we want from life. The
unconscious tends to seek some kind of outward expression or manifestation. One
merely needs to look around his or her home to come face to face with one’s
subconscious. A piano, on a simpler and more physical note, is said to take on its own
‘personality’ when played enough, as its keys and strings have been struck a certain
series of ways over time, thus rendering it with qualities unique to that piano.

Likewise, a forest that has been visited repeatedly as a source of inspiration for a poet
may eventually take on such unconscious traits as happiness, melancholy, invigoration
or whatever is drawn upon. It is here that we enter the world of conceptual space
(Gärdenfors 2000: 2). Senses and emotions themselves become more abstract (e.g.,
smelling colours or tasting sounds). It is this overlapping of sensory and emotional
input that allows for the multimodality of space and place to manifest itself. This
allows for an extensive potentiality in a variety of fields.

From Art to Archaeology

What value, then, does psychogeography hold for archaeology? As with many
theoretical approaches in archaeology, psychogeography starts off with an array of
sociopolitical underpinnings, and these in turn begin to express themselves through art
and literature before settling in to the comfortable security of science. Literature, in
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this case, is considered in its widest possible sense: anything written down or logged in
order to ensnare that essence of what leaves a mark on the psyche or what that
psyche projects outwardly onto the landscape itself (Self 2007: 12). Thoroughly written
poetry, texts, novels or plays but also pulp fiction, comics, journalism, songs,
documents all have bits and pieces that are psychogeographic time frames within
descriptive narrative texts. Eventually, as all the pieces of these fragmented narratives
are brought together, they play the role of a broken pot that has been reconstructed,
enabling the viewer to read the past story of a city (or of any landscape) and thereby
to map its very essence. Literary narrative works are the mediums that allow us to
make contact with the spirits of past places. We can also reverse the process: if we
wish to discover more about works of literature, all we need do is drift through the
city. Psychogeography becomes art in action.

If the map is art, then from the viewpoint of early psychogeographers, the map is
surely a part of psychogeography. People were making predictions of what future
maps may look like as early as the Mesopotamians (Kerrigan 2010: 36-37) in what we
now call the ‘Babylonian Map of the World’ (fig. 1).

Figures 1 and 2 The Babylonian map of the World and its reconstruction (British Museum 2013).

To the casual observer, this map would seem the stuff of mere mythology. In fact, the
British Museum goes so far to say just that in its description of the map (British
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Museum 2013). However, what psychogeographic hermeneutics reveals is that this

representation of the world represents the Babylonians’ hopes and inspirations for the
unmapped areas of the world they knew.

Present approaches

If psychogeography is a way to study the influence that space (either physical or

conceptual) has on human societies and/or culture, then one very useful physical
manifestation is without doubt the deep map. Focusing excessively on absolute space
based on Euclidean coordinate systems can undermine hermeneutical attempts at
interpreting spatial changes over time and how spatial relativities emerge and develop
(Bodenhamer et al. 2013: 173). Deep mapping is a potential platform for the
humanities and sciences to converge in creating an evolved field of the study of space
and place that Bodenhamer calls spatial humanities (ibid: 171).

Deep Mapping has been defined as a “methodology that allows us to combine multiple
quantitative, qualitative and multimedia data about a space or place with the purpose
of building a spatial narrative” (Danielson 2012). However, I would argue that a
methodology in the context of psychogeography tends to funnel all attempts at
enquiry or research into a single pipeline of interpretation. A less methodological
approach and more open hermeneutical stance yields the freedom to engage with
space and place in a variety of new ways. A methodological approach to deep mapping
becomes a narrow and singularist one, whereas the more phenomenological approach
would leave all investigations open for further enquiry. Rather than merely describe a
spatial experience, a deep map should evoke it (Shanks and Pearson 2001: 162).

The GIS involved with deep mapping functions in a series of layers, yet any of the
layers may be added or retracted as is necessary. These become intertwined into a
narrative showing the spacio-temporal influences in socio-cultural activity, feeling and
interaction. Movement in this context is never restricted, and in the same way,
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interpretation is an open platform for discussion. In true Situationist fashion, the art of
psychogeography comes full circle through the realm of hard science and back again
when brought into the field of spatial humanities. With GIS applications, deep mapping
becomes a digital landscape and experience that creates real as well as imagined
renderings of places through time and space with each specific use resulting in a
unique spatial narrative that is part of a cumulative as well as interactive whole.

This is by no means a new concept when viewed in the context of the Babylonian Map
of the World above. By using places they had been, Mesopotamian cultures were
clearly able to render imagined places across the ‘Bitter River’ they called the sea. By
layering the known, the sensed, the felt and the imagined, the world becomes one
huge phenomenological palimpsest, indeed infinite palimpsests, that the archaeologist
need only choose from to start on the road of enquiry.

Until now, archaeology has predominantly been involved with trying to look over the
present’s head in order to get a better view of the past. With experimental walks such
as the dérive, and with techniques such as deep mapping, this no longer becomes
necessary. Privileged narratives no longer become necessary. Archaeology thus opens
up to become a more democratic field of research with no stone left unturned.
Psychogeography is not merely a lens in the present that we may look back to the past
through. It is in fact one more lens with which to see the past directly with. The past is
never really gone, as Shanks knew as far back as the 1980s when his work with Tilley
began. He reminds us that the past remains in the archaeological record, and this
certainly includes the spatial record (Shanks 1991: 1).
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Potential Applications

The potential of psychogeography in future archaeological endeavours is extensive.

Likewise, the potential for input from a wide spectrum of other fields, as well as public
involvement, is also open-ended. Much in the same way that field walks are easily
adapted to public and community participation, dérive can easily be employed to both
educate the community in the use and experientiality of experimental walks as well as
the concept of psychogeography as a whole. The more the merrier applies well to this
situation: more walks create more layers for the deep map, and the site or sites in
question will increase in their multivocality.

There is great potential for psychogeographic exploration outside of urban

environments as well. People do and did live outside the city and, due to the slower
process of change in nature compared to that of architecture, have more opportunities
to experience dérives that have the potential to put them in even closer contact to the
experiences that those in the distant past might have experienced.

Furthering the concept that space and place are three dimensional, the dérive
possesses high potential in maritime archaeology as well. Sea environments that were
once thriving land masses such as Doggerland in northwestern Europe (fig. 3), the Soya
Strait between Japan and Siberia (fig. 4) and Sundaland in Indonesia, just to name a
few, have their own stories to tell. These sea bed environments are not deep by any
means, and most are accessible within recreational scuba diving limits.

Figure 3 Doggerland (Coles 2000) Figure 4 Soya Land Bridge (Davison et al. 2005)
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Doggerland has yielded many artefacts from a variety of time frames and is already
open to new forms of interpretation (Coles 2000: 398). Even more practical (if not
quite enjoyable) are coastal ‘fieldwalks’ underwater. These dives can simply be normal
logged recreational dives with psychogeographical recordings entered into the log
books of everyday recreational divers, thereby giving new meaning to and opening the
way for new kinds of deep maps.

Conclusion

While Psychogeography has a reputation as an ambiguous form of interpretation, we

have seen that when applied to archaeological hermeneutics, it can elicit an
abundance of experiential information. Born in the amorphous world of art and
literature, psychogeography and its approaches like the dérive and other variants of
experimental walking have given way to a variety of phenomenological tools to
support and enhance this growing field of study.

Its malleability becomes its strength. While repeated activities, emotions or

experiences can build a platial character to a space, psychogeography also allows for a
multimodality of space and place to manifest itself as well. Deep mapping and the
multivocality of spatial experience have no limits to the amount of input available to
archaeologists who wish to use these forms of interpretation. Psychogeography, then,
is nothing conceptually new. As the Babylonians well knew and made evident on their
maps, psychogeographic interpretations of the unknown are transformative processes
that have implications on the past as well as the distant future.
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