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Reviews in Anthropology
ISSN: 0093-8157 (Print) 1556-3014 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/grva20
Heritage landscapes compared/contrasted,

contested/interpreted, lost/won
Michael C. Wilson
To cite this article: Michael C. Wilson (2019): Heritage landscapes compared/contrasted,

contested/interpreted, lost/won, Reviews in Anthropology, DOI: 10.1080/00938157.2019.1631023
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REVIEWS IN ANTHROPOLOGY
https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2019.1631023
Heritage landscapes compared/contrasted, contested/

interpreted, lost/won
Michael C. Wilson
Baird, Melissa F., 2017. Critical Theory and the Anthropology of Heritage
Landscapes. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. xvi þ 151 p.
Davis, Leslie B. and John W. Fisher, Jr., eds. 2016. Pisskan: Interpreting First
Peoples Bison Kills at Heritage Parks. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.
xxiv þ 262 p.
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The landscape concept plays a growing role in anthropology heritage; landscape;
and archeology, especially for discussions of “heritage land- hegemony; critical theory;
scapes.” Landscape has long been a central theme in geog- bison kill sites; Uluru
raphy, but with democratized Geographic Information Systems
(GIS), that theoretical legacy can be overlooked. Critical theory
based on international examples shows that heritage land-
scape designation is socio-politically charged, with indigenous
voices often drowned out by those of experts representing
governments, international agencies, and industry. Study of
North American archeological bison-kill sites as landscapes
long predates “formally named landscape archeology”, but
their protection and interpretation remain challenging.
Involvement of indigenous people in heritage landscape pres-
ervation is inadequate and must be strengthened.
The books reviewed here consider case histories in the study and manage-
ment of heritage landscapes: one as anthropology and the other as arche-
ology. Critical Theory and the Anthropology of Heritage Landscapes (by
Melissa F. Baird) uses several case histories to inform development of crit-
ical heritage theory. Pisskan: Interpreting First Peoples Bison Kills at
Heritage Parks (edited by Leslie B. Davis and John W. Fisher, Jr.) focuses
upon North American mass bison-kill complexes and their interpretation
for the public. The disciplinary breadth of these books evokes a wider con-
text of heritage, landscape, and critical theory, drawing also from geography
and history. “Landscape” has long been a fundamental theme in geography,
much as the theoretical underpinnings are increasingly overlooked by tech-
nically Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-fluent scholars in other
CONTACT Michael C. Wilson WilsonM@emeriti.douglascollege.ca Faculty Emeritus, Department of Earth &

Environmental Sciences, Douglas College, New Westminster, BC V3L 5B2, Canada; Adjunct Professor of
Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada.
ß 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 M. C. WILSON
disciplines. In addressing these matters, my use of sources below is of

necessity highly selective.
Heritage is literally “that which is handed down,” so heritage landscapes
have been passed down by their authors to heirs, or have been superseded
by others but can be reconstructed and interpreted (or invented; see Lewis
1975). They can be sources of contention and conflict. Heritage landscapes
were created over time; so sequence, growth, and change are fundamental
issues even though a landscape seems like a “surface.” The “palimpsest”
metaphor cited widely in studies of sequent cultural landscapes now verges
upon formalized types (Klimanova and Kolbowsky 2017; Johnson and
Ouimet 2018). The metaphor, introduced for maps by Maitland (1897) and
then for landscapes by Crawford (1953; see Aldred and Lucas 2018), con-
veys the idea of partial erasure of earlier messages from a documentary
“surface.” This makes all the more poignant Schama’s (1996:7–8) statement
that North American indigenous peoples were “carefully and forcibly edited
out” of the landscape by European colonists.
UNESCO’s (1972) first definition of “cultural heritage” was a list of
examples. Efforts to find their underlying theme resulted in its definition
“as the entire corpus of material signs—either artistic or symbolic—handed
on by the past to each culture and, therefore, to the whole of humankind”
(Jokilehto 2005; UNESCO 1989:57). This was still incomplete, and intan-
gible heritage was introduced, adding heritable practice to the heritable
materials. Inclusion of intangible heritage acknowledges that natural land-
scape elements (e.g., distant mountains) can play important symbolic roles;
therefore, natural and cultural landscapes can be productively considered
together. From the start, World Heritage Sites allowed for “areas including
archaeological sites,” meaning that a WHS could rightly include a land-
scape of sites (UNESCO 1972) and that this landscape was a cultural elem-
ent. However, the original stipulation that a WHS must have “outstanding
universal value” potentially marginalized the endangered heritage of many
indigenous peoples; and its application has been tempered, as detailed in
many UNESCO regional heritage studies, the UNESCO World Heritage
Papers. Indigenous peoples are belatedly but increasingly included in heri-
tage preservation decision making amid growing acceptance also that their
living heritage will continue to change, even as they strive to maintain tra-
ditions: they cannot be “frozen in time.”
For geographers, landscape offers a unifying perspective, whether natural
(physical geography) or cultural (human geography); but landscape does
not define geography. Hartshorne (1961) examined the roots of “landscape”
in the German landschaft and found the term too nebulous and varied of
reference to be useful in defining the scope of geography. Nor was geog-
raphy simply “the study of distributions.” He defined geography as the
REVIEWS IN ANTHROPOLOGY 3
study of the earth’s surface and its areal differentiation. But the earth’s
“surface” is not a temporal snapshot: it is the residence of history over both
geological and cultural time. And differentiation must create regions
(whether inherently distinct or analytically imposed) that must vary in extent
and character, so they entail the very same drawbacks as Hartshorne found
in “landscape.” Regions might be viewed as comprising assemblages of land-
scapes, but this is precluded by statements in geography textbooks: for
example, “It is usual to describe the human world as a landscape” (Norton
1998:1). Norton defined “landscape” as “what is there,” to which was added
(for human geography) “symbolic content . . . meaning and identity.” Hirsch
(1995) reviewed anthropological usages of “landscape”—from a framing con-
vention for discussion, to a residence of meaning—and drew from landscape
representations in art to propose a cross-disciplinary view that (he thought)
diverged from the usage of geographers: landscape considered as a cultural
relationship or process. This, however, had been anticipated by geographer
Denis Cosgrove’s discussion of landscape as “a way of seeing” and “an ideo-
logical concept” (1984:1, 15). Landscape is not a passive residue of behavior:
meaning and identity impart a reflexive, semiotic role, elements of which
can embody mnemonic functions as residences of associated oral or other-
wise signified history (e.g., Schama, 1996; Wilson 2005). This, too, falls
within the broad scope of usages by geographers (e.g., Cosgrove and Daniels
1988; Tuan 1974, 1977). As a signifying system, landscape can reinforce val-
ues and behavior by being “read” as a form of text, but as with other forms
of communication it can be interpreted differently by different readers
(Bender et al. 2007; Duncan 1990; Jackson 1984).
Human activity is localized and has temporal (historical) and spatial
aspects, concepts fundamental to human geography; and within a landscape
one can define location (site) and situation. Cultural appropriation of space
produces places with symbolic and emotional correlates. Anthropologists
and archeologists inherited these perspectives, but the historical pathways
from geography differed between Europeans and Americans. Both site and
situation were enshrined in European archeology from a long tradition of
detailed mapping and map interpretation; but for North Americans the
focus for many decades was more on site than situation. The sheer sizes of
the United States and Canada and the pattern of colonization introduced
mapping challenges that had been overcome earlier in Europe. There was
also the colonialist legacy in the New World. My lumping of viewpoints
into “European” and “American” frames is an oversimplification, arguably
political; but Baird’s book makes political matters its central theme. While
“European” and “American” approaches to archeology have much in com-
mon, their differences open pathways for useful dialog (e.g., Johnson 2007).
Predictably, Canadian approaches are “somewhere between.”
4 M. C. WILSON
The routes of landscape archeology

While American scholars view archeology as a sub-discipline of anthropol-
ogy, European scholars tend to see them as distinct disciplines, with strong
linkages between archeology and geography. Landscape archeology has fol-
lowed correspondingly different trajectories in the two traditions.
Archeologist Matthew Johnson (2007) traced European archeology’s roots
to surveying and geography, with deep linkages to both the earth sciences
and social sciences. Ideas of landscape in the British Landscape Tradition
and the French Annales Tradition were tied to the Romantic Tradition,
with its glorification of past and nature. The Romantic view of
Wordsworth, that a landscape and its occupants could be comprehended
from the view “on high” of the educated observer, sitting on a hilltop and
surveying the land and its productively laboring people, had profound
effects upon archeological studies (Aston and Rowley 1974; Johnson 2007).
From 1801 onward, British archeologists eagerly studied the patterns
recorded in the iconic Ordnance Survey maps. The Annales School of his-
toriography (e.g., Braudel 1996), drawing heavily upon geography, has
sought the patterns of the common people, who would otherwise be
anonymous in histories. American archeologists were for decades occupied
more with establishment of local and regional chronologies, the question of
origins, and the reconstruction of cultural ways from material remains.
An important differentiating factor was the New World colonialist leg-
acy. Colonists saw indigenous nomadic peoples as inconsequential, without
location or landscapes, and trumpeted the newly settled nations as built
from “empty wilderness.” Indigenous settlements were trivialized as “only
seasonal” or “temporary.” Nash (1973) and Schama (1996) traced the west-
ern European “wilderness” idea (from wild-deor-ness, “wild beast place”) to
conceptual roots in the Greek construction of Arcadia, a forest-land occu-
pied by supposedly not-quite-human beings whose actions were governed
more by emotion than reason. “Wilderness” as empty of people did not
exist in Europe in those times; but by varied means, up to and including
extermination, a Terra Nullius model was actualized overseas as an instru-
ment of colonization (Daschuk 2013; Smith 1950; Wolf 1982). The assumed
inferiority of indigenous peoples was used to justify their being edited out
of their cultural landscapes in waves of colonization, westward expansion-
ism, and the Indian Wars, justified as manifest destiny. Threads of such
views persist, as in the relentless settler-oriented claims of historical “firsts”
and in the voices of community local histories (O’Brien 2010; Wilson and
Dijks 2012).
Accordingly, an element differentiating European from American archae-
ologies is that the former has been arguably “the archeology of us” whereas
the latter has been for much of its history “the archeology of them.”
Barnhart (2005) showed that the early decades of American anthropology

and archeology in the nineteenth century were strongly informed by the
exceptionalism, ethnocentrism, and racism more widely found in American
society and culture. American antiquarians and archeologists tended (to
their potentially great peril) to look down upon prehistoric sites and arti-
facts as the products of “primitive man” but, at the same time, to dream
that the “higher” cultures of Mesoamerica could or even must be evidence
of people from the Old World. Early American archeology was dominated
by the “vanishing Mound Builder” controversy (e.g., Silverberg 1968, 1969),
the idea that the mounds had been constructed by an extinct, “superior”
race unlike modern Native Americans. In the course of this idea’s rejection,
American archeology came to be viewed as a subdiscipline of anthropology,
crystallizing around the nascent Bureau of American Ethnology. Early
papers in The American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal concerned not
only mounds of the Midwest but also stone and even bone features of the
eastern Great Plains. The structures were parts of extensive, culturally
important landscapes, but this was for a long time of only minor interest
to scholars, who focused more upon the grave goods and human remains.
American exceptionalism lives on in politics, popular culture, and schol-
arship, such that many modern anti-American feelings are a reaction to it
(e.g., Ignatieff 2005). This is important in contextualizing American atti-
tudes toward issues of heritage in other lands, especially those involving
UN agencies.
By contrast, many of the landscapes regarded and idealized by European
archeologists (to their potentially great peril) were too easily “landscapes of
us,” equally faux-logical extensions backward from modern landscapes.
Ancient Englishmen or Frenchmen were expected to have had much the
same preferences for landscape features as do their modern counterparts
(Johnson 2007). Where American antiquarians and archeologists tried (and
ultimately failed) to deny sophistication to ancient Americans and their cul-
tural landscapes, English archeologists tried (and failed) to deny novelty to
ancient Englishmen and their cultural landscapes—a form of presentism. It
seems prescient that one of the later, oft-forgotten faked Piltdown finds
was a fossil elephant bone roughly carved to a shape resembling a cricket
bat (McKie 2012). The prankster had given simian-jawed “Piltdown Man”
a large braincase, as wishfully appropriate for a proto-Englishman, and this
putative ancestor was supplied with that most iconic artifact, a cricket bat!
What better critique could have been made of presentism in British arche-
ology? Sequent occupation of hilltop sites and veneration of landscape
objects such as large boulders conveniently fed this idea of English continu-
ity until evidence showed that such patterns were nearly global in extent
and also revealed the extent of past population replacements in the British
6 M. C. WILSON
Isles. Hoskins (1955 [1985]) therefore cautioned that in England

“everything in the landscape is older than we think,” and also that, “The
direct prehistoric contribution to the modern landscape is small.” To what
extent is presentism inherent in heritage studies?
Use of “landscape archaeology” as a term is relatively recent in the New
and Old Worlds, finding traction by the 1970s in Britain and the 1980s in
America, yet in both areas there are deeper roots. American archeologists
had long used maps and aerial photographs to help locate archeological
sites in modern landscapes, but attention was initially more to the dots on
the images than to the spaces between them. Scholars working in
Mesoamerica described landscapes as radiating out from key points, those
being temple-city sites. In America, the landscape perspective was at first
strongly associated with historical archeology and the preservation of his-
toric properties (e.g., Adams 1990; Yamin and Metheny 1996). Interest in
archeological landscapes redoubled in the era of Native American and
Canadian First Nations land claims and associated land-use studies. From
the 1990s, American and Canadian archeologists turned to geography and
especially to GIS to “create” a wider, technologically driven landscape
archeology, much of it in response to cultural resources management
(CRM) needs (e.g., Chapman 2006; Clark and Schieber 2008; Mehrer and
Wescott 2005; Rossignol and Wandsnider 1992). With the democratization
of GIS programs, the link to geographers became less explicit, but Gillings
et al. (2018) provide a valuable critical perspective.
Archeology in Europe was always in a sense “landscape archaeology”
because of its origins in geography, surveying, and the Romantic tradition.
British archeologists, already delighting in not only the minutiae but also
the broad patterns of the Ordnance Survey maps, saw new revelations with
the availability of aerial photographs and recognition of the “crop marks”
that led them to Bronze Age round-houses, Roman villas, medieval fur-
rowed fields, integrated assemblages of earthworks, and definable ancient
roads (Aston and Rowley 1974; Bowden 2001; Bowden and McOmish 2011;
Crawford 1953; Everson and Williamson 1998; Roberts 1987; Ucko and
Layton 1999; Wagstaff 1987). Modern popular regional guides (lineal
descendants of Wordsworth’s Lake Country guide) set archeological and
historical information in a landscape context, as in the “Landscapes of
Britain” series (e.g., Barnatt and Smith 2004). The UNESCO World
Heritage Program, including both World Heritage Sites and World
Heritage Landscapes, has placed archeological and historical landscapes
within a unifying global context (Fowler 2004); but issues hindering com-
munication are continued American exceptionalism and its distrust of the
United Nations as an attempt at external influence over U.S. policies, espe-
cially as concerns UNESCO.
No single view of landscape archeology (or of landscape anthropology)

has necessary preeminence over another. As a continuum, the varied
approaches illuminate the challenges, frailties, and yet the strengths of the
disciplines, with landscape playing a unifying role (Anschuetz et al. 2001;
David and Thomas 2010). Archeology, after all, is the only source we have
for information about truly long-term culture change. A strongly earth-
science-linked and yet culturally informative, comprehensive interpretation
of landscape archaeology is current in African Rift Valley studies, as exem-
plified by a multinational and interdisciplinary group of authors (Wright
et al. 2017) in reference to the Middle Stone Age.
Heritage and critical theory

In Critical Theory, Melissa Baird’s odyssey in landscape anthropology takes
us to Australia, Alaska, the Mongolian Altai, the Copper Country of
Michigan, and heritage conferences in other countries. This important
book, building from her doctoral dissertation, integrates archeological,
ethnographic, and archival research and comprises a preface, six chapters,
an epilog, an appendix, and eight pages of endnotes, plus bibliography and
index. The endnotes contain important information and clarifications that
in some cases would have directly enriched the text. Baird walks the diffi-
cult path of combining a personal growth narrative with an effort to
develop a logical basis for critical heritage theory. In the preface, she visits
a traditional landscape in Western Australia, now impacted by a “massive
onshore liquefied natural gas plant.” Experiencing the sights and sounds of
both, she is moved; and sets the book in a framework of land alienation
and dispossession, a form of structural violence. She is also careful even to
question the role she can or should play: “Admittedly, my location as a
white, Western scholar calls into question any real connection to the
Burrup Peninsula or Aboriginal Country. Yet, I still mourned its loss” (p.
2). Mourning is a profound emotional experience and, as she fears, could
influence subsequent discourse. She chooses to move boldly forward, to
examine “how the personal intersects with the political” (p. 3), though her
logic suggests that the two are inseparable, not intersecting. There is
important literature about emotional geography, for which Tuan’s (1974)
Topophilia and the edited volume, Emotion, Place and Culture (Smith et al.
2009) would provide good entry points; as would Tilley’s phenomenological
perspective applied to archeological landscapes (1994, 2010).
Chapter 1 considers landscape as heritage, with attempts to define both.
Heritage itself becomes a locus (she says “site”) of negotiations and is a
growing milieu for managerial experts, usually external to the original land-
scape stewards. As a “cloud” of mobile, offsite decision makers, they can
8 M. C. WILSON
(unwittingly or not) come to serve the needs and interests of developers,

industry, and nation-states. Critical heritage theory is defined (p. 9) as
investigation of “the sociopolitical contexts of heritage,” a workable start
that might have benefited from consideration of the roots of critical theory,
from the Frankfurt School of Marxist scholars to its more pragmatic and
diverse modern strands. An endnote comments that others before her have
used the term “critical heritage theory.” The idea that landscapes are inher-
ently ideological and sociopolitical in nature was well discussed by
Cosgrove (1984), Jackson (1984), Duncan (1990), and papers in Cosgrove
and Daniels (1998), so it is no surprise that designation of heritage land-
scapes operates within the same frameworks. Jackson’s discussion of the
imposed American settlement grid as “the last attempt to produce a
Classical political landscape” aptly illustrates the point (1984:153).
Baird is hesitant to define any terms clearly, even “heritage” and
“landscape,” and she is in very good company, for World Heritage Site
guidelines show the same reluctance. This could be conscious and sensitive,
an attempt to avoid hegemonic imposition of Western concepts upon indi-
genous examples, for Baird states that “hegemonic discourse mediates heri-
tage laws and practices” (p. 9). Here she proceeds to shakier ground, with
fatuous statements such as “in many instances scholars—even within the
same discipline—have widely different aims and goals” (p. 12). This leads
in turn to a complaint that studies “can lack theoretical and methodological
consistency, meaning that scholars refer to landscapes with little or no
‘theoretical grounding’ of the term.” Moreover, “the varied approaches [to
landscape] could have a negative impact on decisions related to cultural
landscapes as heritage” (pp. 12–13). But is she not trying to break that con-
sistency, too, by introducing critical theory? Is her own definition of
“landscape” mainstream? And is she not selective in her own “theoretical
grounding”? By her own logic, could her dissident stance have a negative
impact on decisions related to cultural landscapes as heritage? Critical ana-
lysis of her own position is rarely evident in the book.
Chapter 2 extends these concepts in discussing the politics of place.
Prominent and iconic is the Australian landscape of Uluru-Kata Tjuta
(including Uluru, “Ayers Rock”), both a National Park and a World
Heritage Site. Here, the hegemony of externally initiated state and national
laws forces the site’s traditional stewards (not “owners,” as she calls them,
in the materialistic Western sense) “to make claims within systems that are
largely incompatible with their custodial responsibilities” (p. 16). She pro-
vides a detailed history of Australian relations with indigenous peoples,
from the days of Terra Nullius to the present, to frame a narrative of the
long negotiations over “proper” stewardship of this landscape. We learn of
steps forward, such as the Native Title Act of 1993, but then of its non-
application to lands not owned by the Crown. As for the National Park,
Anangu groups occupied lands around it but were not consulted when it
was created; tourist operators at Uluru-Kata Tjuta lobbied with govern-
ments to minimize Anangu presence. Limited access was granted to visit
sacred sites, but Anangu became vocal about desecration of those sites by
tourists. With changes in park administrative oversight, Anangu became
weary of having to state their case repeatedly, with little progress. An abori-
ginal land claim was made for the site, but a counter-claim was made by
the Northern Territory that Anangu were not a “real aboriginal commu-
nity, but the creation of manipulative White activists” (p. 29). In 1985 the
National Park was returned to the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Aboriginal Land
Trust, provided that they would immediately lease it back to the National
Parks and Wildlife director for 99 years, and that climbing be permitted on
Uluru. Under joint management, Anangu can maintain their relationships
to sacred places and act to protect their landscape’s integrity. However,
strong divergences remain between Aboriginal stewards, Parks and Wildlife
managers, non-Aboriginals, and tourists about the symbolic values of the
landscape as well as traditional practices such as burning and gathering.
Climbing remains a highly contentious issue. In 1986 the Commonwealth
of Australia nominated Uluru-Kata Tjuta for World Heritage Site status
under both cultural and natural criteria. The IUCN (International Union
for Conservation of Nature) responded by recommending the site for its
natural values, omitting the cultural aspects, despite the clear inclusion of
cultural landscapes in World Heritage Operational Guidelines. Again,
Aboriginal groups were forced into a position of opposition, but the letters
of protest were not referenced in reports submitted to the World Heritage
Committee. In 1987 the site was accepted for its natural values, and in
1994 UNESCO also recognized the park’s cultural landscape. Serious differ-
ences remain in the definition of basic concepts of heritage and landscape
by traditional stewards, managers, governments, and others; joint manage-
ment will improve this, but meanings and values can neither be translated
literally nor “averaged” to achieve consensus.
Chapter 2 moves to Alaskan and Mongolian landscape examples. In
Alaska, Baird studied impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill upon indigen-
ous communities. The oil spill led to a “human spill” as disaster respond-
ers, cleanup workers, academics, scientists, contractors, industry
representatives, and media flooded local landscapes, swamping commun-
ities and disturbing cultural sites and the local biota. Recovery efforts tar-
geted environmental and ecological issues and there was debate as to
whether archeological heritage was a “resource” at all, in terms of the
cleanup efforts. Finally, a cultural resource program was established, bring-
ing archeological surveys and impact assessments. Still, it seems that such
10 M. C. WILSON
efforts must be reinvented, case by case, to resolve administrative differen-

ces as to the importance of heritage. In the Mongolian Altai, cultural land-
scapes include standing stones, stone figures and altars, burial and ritual
mounds, and petroglyphs, all tied to the meanings of their places. Some
sites, including burials, are in permafrost that protects their contents from
deterioration. Rising temperatures threaten this situation, so UNESCO
agencies are attempting to find ways to preserve features in situ. Again,
landscape protection focuses more on biodiversity and climate change, with
heritage issues taking a back seat and with indigenous groups minimally
consulted. Western experts and international heritage agencies had yet (by
the book’s writing) to address the extent to which World Heritage Site or
biosphere reserve designation would affect the livelihoods of the region’s
nomadic herders. It is not clear from the case history whether this was a
short-sighted omission by managers or, conversely, an entrepreneurial
effort by heritage advocacy groups to draw funding and logistical support
from a marginally relevant ecological agency that happened to be the only
thing available there at the time.
In Chapter 4, “Experts and Epistemologies,” the conferences begin and
“experts” work their varied political ways in evaluating heritage sites for
designation. Baird attended the ICOMOS (International Council on
Monuments and Sites) General Assembly in Quebec as part of her doctoral
research. Although a registrant at the conference, she was asked to leave a
session when a committee vote was to take place. She complains about
“roadblocks” that were encountered “at many points” in her research. Yet
it is not clear that her attendance as an observer taking notes about
“heritage experts at work” had been cleared with committee members
beforehand. Her goal of critical analysis does not seem to extend to evalu-
ating her own impact in this setting. If such meetings are, as she claims,
politically charged, how can her presence not be an influence on process?
Another “roadblock” she faced was “that in order to get access to nomin-
ation dossiers I had to first become an international expert recognized by
these organizations” (p. 59). And why not, given that dossiers could involve
third-party submissions with names and contact information, as well as
confidential correspondence? She came to see this and delays in getting
access to other documents as “institutional gatekeeping,” but this need not
be a sinister plot. Canadians are, for example, used to delays for translation
of federal government documents between the two official languages.
Translation must convey intended nuances to the approval of both author
and recipient. Challenges like this multiply in international discourse, and
premature public release of a document in one language could cause misin-
terpretation and recrimination. Baird would have benefited from Judith
Butler’s 1997 book, Excitable Speech, which directly addressed performative
speech politics and might have blunted some of Baird’s criticisms of the
document keepers.
As for self-assessment, there is a directly relevant work that Baird could
have consulted: Stone Worlds (Bender et al. 2007), a study of landscape
archeology among the sacred stones of Bodmin Moor, Cornwall. Not satis-
fied with traditional archeological approaches and seeking “to undermine
the closure that usually occurs when findings are reported and interpreted,”
and hence to challenge “the spurious fixedness of excavation reports or
archival material” (pp. 23–25), the authors intertwined a set of narratives
about the varied meanings of this work for local and non-local archeolo-
gists, Commoners (with rights to the moor attached to their houses), regu-
lators (English Heritage), and visitors. The book not only analyzed the
archeological sites; it also analyzed the archeologists and their motivations,
evolving impressions, misgivings, doubts, and triumphs; and did much the
same for others. Much of this was done in a political context, from group
dynamics to community and regulatory relations. As such, Bender et al.
dangerously courted presentism, but that is an issue of concern for Baird’s
arguments as well. One of their chapters addressed the interplay of archeo-
logical practice and authority, including “authority as expertise.” Barbara
Bender is a professor in Heritage Anthropology, and Stone Worlds drew
upon her earlier edited books, including Landscapes: Politics and
Perspectives (1993) and Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place
(2001). How could Baird not make even passing reference to Australian
anthropologist Howard Morphy’s chapter in the 1993 book—a paper about
landscape politics, indigenous peoples, and colonialism in
Northern Australia?
Baird does cite other studies that warn how “expertise is positioned in
ways that can restrict access” but her studies showed her that “in some
contexts the benefits outweigh the risks” (p. 62). Heritage experts handle
information from an extremely wide range of disciplines and must attempt
to represent the concerns of diverse stakeholders. In such a milieu, even
defining basic terminology becomes a quagmire, arbitrary decisions may be
needed to “push things forward,” and some voices will probably be
excluded. Given that defining terms is just the sort of thing that experts
like to do, their own representations of official or national discourses can
come to rule the day, making heritage discourse hegemonic. By what
means can it be ensured that indigenous groups can also be appropriately
recognized to have “experts,” too? Can stewardship by external experts pre-
vent indigenous groups from engaging in the performative aspects of their
own traditions? A Western view of rock art, for example, as depiction con-
flicts with an indigenous view that it is performance and can be reaffirmed.
Baird cites an example in which “Australian Aborigines repainted their
12 M. C. WILSON
ancestral pictographs, a documented practice, and were accused of desecrat-

ing the ‘heritage of all mankind’” (p. 63).
Baird writes of the “multiple theories and methods that are brought to
bear in interpreting cultural landscapes,” referring to these as
“epistemologies of landscapes” (p. 60–61). Again I wonder about definition
of terms, because an epistemology is a theory of knowledge including study
of its methods, which by her usage seems to fall outside of theory. From
her discussion it is unlikely that all stakeholders engage in systematic stud-
ies of their theories of knowledge. It appears that many are applying con-
ceptual models, fraught with the usual drawbacks of oversimplification of
complexity, in which case “paradigms” might better describe the disparate
viewpoints (Kuhn 1996). She states that a “closed feedback loop” exists in
“some heritage contexts” (paradigms, then?), in which members share defi-
nitions of heritage that are “placed beyond critique or review” (p. 75). This
sounds very Kuhnian. She claims that this prevents local communities from
evaluating research, recommendations, researcher expertise, or impacts of
decisions. Hence there is the concern that local communities probably have
different definitions of heritage and are likely to act upon them, without
understanding (or having access to) the officially used definition. There is
likely to be conflict between definitions standardized to promote institu-
tional efficiency and definitions open to continuing debate, so one can
wonder how an international institution could function at all to deliver pol-
icy, aid, and guidance. Baird notes that ICOMOS and IUCN (International
Union for Conservation of Nature) share common interests in heritage
resources, but that IUCN increasingly offloaded cultural heritage issues to
ICOMOS. She concludes, “I suspect that IUCN representatives downplayed
the relevance of cultural heritage because their mission is to promote nat-
ural heritage values” (p. 76). This is no surprise, nor is it unlikely that cul-
tural heritage advocates (including local communities) would petition all
possible agencies, even those only marginally relevant, in order to promote
initiatives. It seems axiomatic that IUCN would respond by citing its core
mission, to avoid duplication of effort and expenses. Is this really
a “roadblock”?
Baird assures us that she is not attacking heritage experts. After all, she
portrays herself as one, albeit without self-analysis (p. 59). Her aim is “to
call attention to how expert knowledge can mask power relations and/or
minimizes conflict” (p. 75). Selection of experts may not be transparent,
and their biases or allegiances may not be clear to stakeholders.
Paradoxically, experts may need to make cold, objective decisions about
landscapes dominated by emotion. A relevant aspect not discussed is the
linkage between “experts” and “expert witnesses,” who are sanctioned (on
the basis of evaluated credentials) to give legally relevant testimony in
courts of law. It is incomplete to discuss “experts” as arising from their dis-

ciplines or designated by organizations. Issues involving heritage end up in
courts of law and cooperation is growing between the International
Criminal Court and UNESCO in relation to cultural heritage protection.
Here, however, the United States has not ratified its signing of the Rome
Statute and remains an observer; and it has long been a critic of UNESCO,
which it co-founded. Discussion of the roles and effectiveness of UN agen-
cies in relation to heritage cannot ignore this political situation.
Chapter 5, “Landscapes of Extraction,” illustrates the devastating effects
of large-scale mining upon indigenous landscapes, removing or fragmenting
them, and burying them under tailings. The halo of impact spreads far
beyond the mines because their local and regional economic influences
come to dominate local decision making and planning. We learn about Rio
Tinto Alcan, a multinational formed by the purchase of the Canadian
Alcan by the Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto, and their iron mine at Pilbara in
Western Australia. The case history exemplifies how industrial develop-
ment, often by multinational corporations, increasingly impinges upon the
traditional territories and sacred lands of indigenous peoples. Yet it is clear
that this case is not simply one of “outsiders” coming to Australia to
extract its natural resources. Casting Rio Tinto Alcan as a “global mining
giant” glosses over the point that it has deep roots in Australia through its
1962 merger with the former Consolidated Zinc (founded in 1905). The
iron mines were then acquired through a takeover in 2000 of the
Australian company North Limited (founded in 1888). This does not
excuse misdeeds, but it does add to the tapestry of groups having not sim-
ply economic but also multi-generational emotional attachments to the
region. Baird notes that Rio Tinto developed the guide, Why Cultural
Heritage Matters (Bradshaw et al. 2011; incorrectly cited as “Bradshaw and
Rio Tinto”), and while the guide calls for engagement with indigenous peo-
ples in decision making, she warns that “industry actors also draw on dis-
course in ways that serve their interests” (p. 80). Is this not a fundamental
principle of intercultural communication and negotiation, a characteristic
of all stakeholders? It is also fundamental to intercultural negotiation that
one must first be absolutely clear on one’s own values, in order to remain
firmly rooted in an unfamiliar setting where people behave differently.
Failing this, a person (or group) runs the danger of unconsciously imitating
the “other side,” becoming a caricature and failing to achieve the desired
goal (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner 2012).
The Pilbara case and the fate of the Burrup Peninsula illustrate Baird’s
concerns about the conversion of Traditional lands to industrial estates,
here with considerable infrastructural development and state government
support. Extensive destruction of petroglyphs and other sacred sites has
14 M. C. WILSON
been the cost, and consideration of heritage matters was largely precipitated
by this loss rather than having been part of the original plan. A national
park was created but its size and form were subject to strong pro-develop-
ment pressures. An LNG development planned for placement atop sacred
and historic sites brought heated debates between industry and pro-
preservation groups, but the development went forward—with the national
park as a consolation prize. Rising from this wreckage, however, was a
strengthening of the Burra Charter as a “globally admired . . . innovative,
forward-thinking approach to heritage management” recognizing the tran-
scendent nature of heritage beyond materiality, monumentality, and esthet-
ics (p. 84). The charter honors Aboriginal knowledge and relationships to
land, and continues to evolve. Nevertheless, a stream of proposed amend-
ments to the Aboriginal Heritage Act align with the needs of industry,
strengthening the latter’s rights of appeal and lessening or removing the
role of heritage specialists. The definition of “sacred site” may be restricted
to those with physical evidence of religious activity. Baird calls this the
“remaking of heritage along the frontier” (p. 86) with an erosion of protec-
tions verging upon the earlier assimilation policies that gave outsiders the
power to own and speak for Aboriginal lands.
This leads to consideration of corporate discourse about heritage rights,
and Baird details how corporations (like politicians!) package information to
place themselves in the best public light. Newly found responsibilities may
be recast as claims of proud company traditions, becoming themes for cor-
porate campaigns and advertising, masking a different history and different
underlying intentions. Thus employed, “heritage” becomes the unwitting
vehicle for corporate development initiatives. Baird laments that in this way
“heritage—and by way of extension, Country—is being reframed as a
resource” feeding celebratory stories and hiding the social costs. She creates
an unintended irony here, in that heritage scholars and government regula-
tors also see themselves as engaged in “Cultural Resource Management,” so
she is lamenting that a resource is being reframed as a resource!
Nevertheless, she is on the mark in pointing out that “Corporate discourse
becomes a medium for presenting history” (p. 93). Perhaps the problem here
is that indigenous rights are seldom presented preemptively: they are more
often expressed in reaction to imposed initiatives. Indigenous communities
can become dependent upon corporate handouts, thereby blunting their
abilities to challenge regional development. In general, the communities
affected must respond to planning documents that are presented to them,
and often without the “fine print.” Responding to such proposals is a dra-
matically different dynamic from a meeting of equals, convened to raise and
discuss common concerns and goals, so corporate discourse can be used to
direct conversation toward company priorities.
In Pilbara, the familiar resource-frontier “boom time” has moved on and

heritage has been reshaped in its wake, now to be commemorated in towns
that grew and then waned as the development dollars passed through. The
choices are few and stark: attract new industries to revitalize communities,
encourage tourism based upon natural and cultural heritage repackaged as
performance, or return to traditional ways. The last is complicated by the
presence of people who arrived as part of the boom. In the end, “the past
is in service to development and geopolitical agendas” (p. 96) and a once
relatively self-contained landscape is now affected directly by economic and
policy decisions made on the other side of the earth.
Critical theory must acknowledge its foundations, and Chapter 6 is titled,
“Toward a Critical Theory of Heritage.” Baird begins with a personal narra-
tive in which, after hiking through Karijini National Park with Aboriginal
Rangers, she reaches a viewpoint overlooking Rio Tinto’s Marandoo iron
mine. As one expects, she “feels” this contrast and finds words elusive;
however, her words have a wistful eloquence. She wonders if these trad-
itional lands, with their places and attached stories, “may hold the antidote
to many of our societal and environmental problems.” She means this not
“in a romantic sense that imparts mystical or otherworldly properties to
the landscape, but one that recognizes that Law and protocol, and stories
of knowledge are trusted systems that are passed down through generations
to maintain the land, guide behavior, and ensure cultural and ecological
well-being” (p. 98). This is dangerous ground, because it comes close to the
trap of portraying indigenous people as timeless, unchanging, and ecologic-
ally inconsequential—an idealistic representation that could itself verge on
colonialism. There are faint but troubling echoes here of the “Golden Age.”
Stepping back to firmer ground, she argues more simply that “landscapes
matter,” explaining that “landscapes are mapped and sung, lived and con-
tested, walked on and turned over, cared for and held” (p. 99).
How does this build into theory, as a body of knowledge about how
things work? Baird states first that “it is essential to locate the sociopolitical
and historical contexts of our work” (p. 99). This includes acknowledging
dispossession and the enduring framework of colonial structures. Second,
“landscapes are central to the business of heritage,” now a global industry
for which experts are in turn central. Heritage expertise is increasingly
“taken up by private, corporate, and industry interests” (p. 100). Third,
“although scholars have clearly grappled with the varied political and social
contexts of heritage, how to address these contexts in our work is not as
clear” (p. 101). She sees a possible solution through “engagements with
landscapes” involving “emancipatory discourse” by collaborative teams of
heritage professionals and indigenous descendant and stakeholder com-
munities, to grapple with the political and historical contexts and derived
16 M. C. WILSON
issues. To succeed, “we must restructure how we report our work and the
laws and practices that guide our investigations” (p. 102). She warns that
even heritage scholars are being marginalized in discussions as concerns
increase about environmental issues such as ecosystem services and natural
capital. Here she repeats that her book “is not a critique of heritage schol-
ars or professionals,” but is rather a call to understand their roles in light
of “the logic that underlies negotiations” (p. 102). She seeks to throw light
on structures that create and maintain inequities, seeking to investigate
“how epistemologies of landscapes intersect with power, identity, and the
construction of knowledge.” That requires “understanding that our models,
theories, and practices of heritage work through systems of power and
exclusion . . . to understand the social and political implications of land-
scapes as heritage” (p. 102). As both “theory” and “solution” this sounds
optimistic but, after all the waiting, sadly insubstantial.
She also cautions that her book is not an attack on extractive industries,
either, but is “a discussion of how their activities intersect with heritage”
(p. 102). As multinational corporations grow in strength and construct a
new colonialism, these concerns increase. Yet heritage itself could become a
burden to communities. The Great Lakes Copper Country of Baird’s
Michigan home, with its industrial heritage of mining, “is steeped in senti-
mentality that works as a stranglehold for a real consideration of the health
and well-being of the community. We must work to remove the patina of
place and ‘romanticized ruin’ and to take on the histories of violence and
exclusion” (p. 103). Does she feel this way because these are not
“indigenous” landscapes? In the end, she sees critical heritage theory as
having “enormous potential to shift the conversation away from critiques
of shortcomings to instead provide recommendations—a new engagement
with heritage landscapes that makes room for multiple understandings and
brings in subjugated and stakeholder knowledge” (p. 104). I hope so.
I learned much in reading this book, but came away feeling half-fed.
Perhaps that was Baird’s intention: after all, knowledge is open-ended, so a
good study should generate more questions than it answers. I will therefore
echo Alfred N. Whitehead’s thanks to Bertrand Russell and applaud Baird
“for having made the darkness clearer,” with the same intended ambiguity
(Weiss and Ford 1980). Many questions do remain: must a protected
“heritage landscape” serve only its traditional role? Can it be allowed to
evolve, or serve those who come to visit? In doing so, does it become
inauthentic? Are indigenous groups allowed to change their landscapes,
too, or must they keep to the “old ways”? Is a designated heritage land-
scape a new form of colonialist imposition? And what about heritage land-
scapes that might be hundreds of millennia old, as in the Rift Valley? Who
should speak for them? Baird’s limited self-analysis is also a concern and
could hide biases. Does the long tradition of American exceptionalism (e.g.,
Ignatieff 2005) play a role in Baird’s evaluation of international heritage
agencies and initiatives, many of them UN-sponsored?
The powerful cover illustration by Belgian street artist and muralist ROA
is surely worth more than the price of the book. But its elements (a Pilbara
Iron railroad locomotive, a wrecked SUV adorned with paintings of bones,
and a foreground cluster of kangaroo bones) were in part staged. Could
critical analysis reveal the cover art also to be a signal that the book’s con-
tents were in part carefully posed, too, to make their important point?
Bison drives in Plains landscapes

In North America, Plains archeologists were arguably doing “landscape
archeology” for decades before its promulgation. If there were to be an
iconic example of landscape archeology on the Plains, my vote would go to
the study of bison-drive complexes. Half a century ago, Plains archeologists
were already placing “buffalo jumps” into integrated landscapes of gather-
ing basins, drive lanes and their bounding drive lines, the traps themselves,
and the associated processing sites and campsites.
In Pisskan: Interpreting First Peoples Bison Kills at Heritage Parks, the
late Leslie B. Davis and his former student and now successor, John W.
Fisher, Jr., have drawn together nine articles plus a reprinted prolog and a
closing panel discussion, considering bison kill sites over a wide region of
the Plains from Canada (Alberta and Saskatchewan) through Montana and
Nebraska to Texas. It must be noted that the authors do not belabor the
“landscape” concept per se. The comparatively matter-of-fact discussion of
landscapes reflects long practice, decades beyond debate; and the political
issues attending them are more often discussed as specific issues affecting
the planning process, rather than as symptoms of deeper, more pervasive
matters of contention. The venerable New World focus upon sites as the
basis for management has to varying degrees impeded recognition of the
remarkable character of these landscapes. As the authors in this volume
show, interpretation can be a major challenge because mass bison kills
were the outcomes of communal bison drives and those in turn were
designed to take advantage of subtleties in the surrounding landscape.
Bison drive sites, especially “buffalo jumps,” can be presented to the public
in the form of the localized and often breathtaking stratified bonebeds; or
they can be interpreted as living landscapes to which bison were enticed or
guided and within which they were conducted, channeled, and ultimately
stampeded to a killing field that was itself attended by nearby processing
areas and, not far away, seasonal campsites. The latter interpretive goal
would require the integration, designation, and protection of hundreds if
18 M. C. WILSON
not thousands of acres of land—a huge challenge if the land is a mosaic of

private holdings and of areas under differing governmental jurisdictions.
Excavation funds do not readily translate into long-term money for pub-
lic interpretation, and governments understandably flinch when it comes to
commitment of permanent operating funds. The same public who call for
preservation and interpretation may loudly dispute any suggestion that
taxes be raised: someone else is always expected to pay the bills. Tourism
as an industry and therefore as a source of revenue provides a way out, but
that requires infrastructure. This book is a richly detailed account of initia-
tives, challenges, failures, and successes in that direction.
The volume’s list is dominated by northern Plains examples and, oddly,
Wyoming bison kills are not represented by a dedicated paper; but the
panel discussion includes a retrospective account by George C. Frison, and
participants also respond specifically to a symposium presentation by
Charles (Chuck) Reher about the Vore Site. The book is based upon a 1995
symposium, but authors were encouraged to update their accounts, so ref-
erence lists include sources from as recently as 2012. The editors and the
publisher deserve credit for a well-illustrated and well-formatted book,
including attractive color plates. Chapters are divided by grey-shaded pages
with well-chosen quotes, including ethnographic and historical accounts
about bison hunting and ritual. Reference lists are located with the chap-
ters, meaning some repetition but more importantly revealing divergences
that suggest a lack of communication between north and south.
The book begins with a prologue by the late, celebrated Crow war chief
and historian, Joseph Medicine Crow, reprinted from a 1962 symposium
on buffalo jumps; followed by a richly textured historical introduction by
Davis. Jack W. Brink discusses the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump com-
plex, a World Heritage Site in Alberta with a 6,000-year record of use
extending to the Historic period and direct references in Piikani
(Blackfoot) oral traditions. Brink provides an overview of his research but
focuses on the site’s development for public interpretation, including its
striking interpretive center built into the sandstone scarp that served as the
buffalo jump. The extensive site complex comprises all elements of a bison-
drive landscape. Although it had received provincial and national recogni-
tion as a Historic Site, World Heritage Site (WHS) designation catalyzed
funding efforts and 10 million dollars were made available for research and
development. Consultation with Piikani elders was important in planning
and development, but even so, the government’s approach was naïve. Says
Brink, “I strongly recommend that contact and collaboration with relevant
Native groups start at the very outset of a project. To request assistance or
participation later on . . . smacks of an insincere search for a Native stamp
of approval, and will be seen for precisely what it is” (p. 34). Challenges
were presented by the site’s long distance from major cities and the
strongly seasonal (summer) visitation despite a need for year-round basic
staff, leading to initiatives in terms of school programs and special events.
Revenues have gradually risen but subsidies are still needed, so the site
remains vulnerable to privatization if government budgetary priorities
change. Fundamental to continued success, well-versed Piikani guides speak
to the public about their history and culture, playing a strong role in build-
ing a positive visitor experience. Given growing use of the Internet, Brink
points to an increasingly sophisticated, international audience and urges
that every interpretive center should accentuate (1) its contribution to the
common search for an understanding of the past, and (2) the unique com-
ponents of this search that it offers (p. 34).
For Montana, John H. Brumley and Emmett A. Stallcop offer an account
of the Wakhpa Chu’gn Bison Kill near Havre, a large bison jump complex
in the Milk River valley that was used from about 2000 to 500 14C yr BP.
Influenced strongly by the Milk River Archeological Society, the county
museum took a particular interest in Native American culture history and
managed the bison kill site on the county’s behalf. Vigorous fund-raising
efforts enabled the museum and on-site public interpretive programs to
expand; then a management agreement was reached with Brumley’s archeo-
logical consulting company. This led to expanded tour programs and con-
struction of the on-site Wakhpa Chu’gn interpretive center. The case
history is a testament to the work of a relatively small but dedicated group
of avocational and professional archeologists. Although the site name is
Assiniboine (miscast in text as “Assinniboine,” the spelling for Havre’s U.S.
Army Fort), the ethnic affiliation for those who conducted the bison drives
is not known. Leslie B. Davis and Joan L. Brownell discuss the Madison
Buffalo jump near Logan, the first bison kill in North America to have
been set aside as a dedicated state park and listed in the National Register
(in 1970). As with many heritage landscapes in the United States, the site
complex included private and public lands under several jurisdictions,
requiring land exchanges with legislative approval. Much of the site had
fallen prey to industrial bone mining by a fertilizer company. A parking
area, interpretive kiosk, and open-air shelter with signage were installed,
but vandalism continues, even by Boy Scouts in search of arrowheads for
merit badges. The article closes by acknowledging “the generic nature of
the current interpretation, since it incorporates insufficient science. . . . The
story relies heavily on folklore regarding Indians and their buffalo-depend-
ent lifeway” (p. 81). Significant state and private funding would be needed
to lift it to the next level. Ethnic affiliations of site users are speculative
and no Native American involvement is indicated in site development or
interpretation. John W. Fisher, Jr., and Tom E. Roll give an account of the
20 M. C. WILSON
First Peoples Buffalo Jump (formerly the Ulm Pishkun) west of Great Falls.
Given its proximity to an urban center, it also was a target for bone min-
ing, including by Native Americans. Preservation efforts were complicated
by the diversity of stakeholders and landowners, but a permanent visitor
center opened in 1999. The bonebeds, excavated with the presence of a
Native American observer, date within the last thousand years. Excavations
have revealed a wealth of information about bison processing, and this
valuable paper is the first comprehensive summary of those findings. In
addition, it provides an important and instructive chronicle of the land
exchanges, support-group and community volunteer efforts, and the roles
of professional archeologists, design consultants, and state agencies. At a
public opening ceremony for the visitor center, Blackfeet elders presented a
prayer and blessing, saying that, “This buffalo jump is bringing us together”
(p. 105).
Saskatchewan is represented by sites at Wanuskewin Heritage Park
(WHP), Saskatoon, as discussed by Ernest G. Walker. In just one square
mile this park comprises a rich variety of Precontact archeological sites,
including bison kills. Walker insightfully observes that bison-hunting, being
such a well-known Plains cultural way, is evocative for the public and that
kill sites can “involve a highly visible topographic feature or a combination
of features that substitute for the ‘built environment’ such as that seen in
elaborate burial mounds . . . or the cliff dwellings of the Southwest” (p.
111). Once attracted, the public can be given a broader tapestry of First
Nations history and culture. Already known from a medicine wheel and
test excavations of buried cultural deposits, the area was preserved as part
of the Meewasin Valley Authority’s plan for protection and preservation of
lands in Saskatoon along the South Saskatchewan River. The WHP became
a Provincial Heritage Property and in 1987, in the presence of H.R.H.
Queen Elizabeth II, was designated as a National Historic Site. Walker pro-
vides a detailed inventory and overview of the WHP sites, which span six
thousand years, then provides a history of WHP planning and management.
Being so close to Saskatoon and the University of Saskatchewan, the WHP
is able to offer year-round programming, allowing it to continue on only
partial government support. From the outset, First Nations involvement
was essential: “Questions regarding cultural sensitivity and authenticity are
paramount.” An Elders Advisory Council is directly involved, and issues of
authenticity and what should or should not be presented “are left to the
First Nations community to determine” (p. 122). Ritual use of the park
continues, so it and the interpretive center function strongly in the per-
formative aspects of maintaining cultural traditions. The displays and even
the structures have been revised or replaced, and land acquisitions now
allow the park to introduce a bison herd. These projects and the ongoing
First Nations partnership “show the vitality of the discipline of archeology

and its relevance to contemporary society” (p. 125).
For the southern Plains, Eileen Johnson discusses the Lubbock Lake
Landmark, Texas, a stratified site with an 11,000-year history including
bison kills. From initial excavations in 1936, the site grew in extent and
recognition to become a National Historic and State Archeological
Landmark. Johnson tells the history of its discovery and early preservation
efforts, from the outset tied to what are now Texas Tech University and its
Museum, in nearby Lubbock. A spring-fed lake and surrounding lands had
been purchased in 1903 by the city as a future water supply, leading to the
1930s excavations to create a deeper reservoir when the water table fell.
Years of advocacy led finally to signing of a lease in 1958 to protect the
site’s deposits, and plans soon grew for developments that might bring
tourist dollars to the local economy. Happily, this also brought an archeo-
logical program, initially as Johnson’s doctoral project. What was originally
a “Folsom site” grew into a multi-occupation sequence of great regional
importance, within a depositional setting of equal paleoenvironmental sig-
nificance. With added lands, the Landmark (declared in 1977) grew in size
as well as in reputation, as did a regional research program. Johnson’s
account shows the great complexity of political issues, negotiations, and
struggles for funding. The site has become a focus for extensive and varied
educational programs from tours to volunteer training, and an on-site
interpretive center is open year-round. Given that the site is a preserve,
there have been habitat-related issues, including a prairie dog population
explosion, a need for revegetation, and overgrowth of mesquite due to fire
control. There is a need to preserve the archeological site as best possible;
yet the public would also like to see open excavations, a need that is only
partially filled through museum displays. Perhaps for that reason, the
Landmark “remains one of the best-kept secrets in Lubbock” despite its
international renown (p. 160). No mention is made of Native American
participation, but Johnson’s comments about consensus building and team
efforts will nevertheless resonate widely.
The central Plains are represented by two papers about the 9,500-year-old
Hudson-Meng Bison Kill, Nebraska: one by Larry D. Agenbroad and the
other by Lawrence C. Todd and David J. Rapson. Together, they make up
one quarter of the volume’s case history pages. Importantly, the papers
engage in debate about both Agenbroad’s original and Todd and Rapson’s
newer interpretations concerning the site—including the recent view that the
bonebed is not a “pristine” archeological feature but was strongly affected by
post-depositional erosional, weathering, and mixing processes. However, the
debate as presented does deviate from the book’s overall theme, and
Agenbroad’s paper seems situated as a disclaimer to preempt some of the
22 M. C. WILSON
statements made by Todd and Rapson. Davis’s introduction cites this as “a

working example of the scientific process, itself meriting presentation to the
public” in a “healthy process” presented to “enable the reader to become
involved in that exchange” (p. xx). However, Agenbroad’s angry paper, pre-
sented as an incisive rebuttal of an earlier Todd and Rapson study, is larded
with words such as “touted,” “debunk,” “discrediting,” and “Binfordizing”;
and is not written in a way that the public would see as a “healthy process.”
Todd and Rapson in the ensuing article use more measured language that
does live up to Davis’s introductory remarks. They review past and recent
work that has revealed the remains of hundreds of bison, and the logic by
which interpretations have changed—and will likely continue to change.
Agenbroad’s first monograph, produced a scant year after the first excava-
tions, can hardly be expected to have had all of the answers, so it is interest-
ing to find that on-site presentations to the thousands of visitors each year
now focus upon the dynamics of scientific interpretation. Why, Todd and
Rapson ask, “do we persist in portraying our research as object-oriented and
discovery-driven, when in fact our goals are actually very different?” Is it
appropriate to focus upon displays of carefully selected artifacts to cater to
the public desire for “wonderful objects”? Ambiguities in interpretation tend
to be hidden, as “too complex” for the public. Todd and Rapson argue for a
second pathway, one in which there is “greater openness in sharing the real
excitement of undertaking research” (p. 196). They review past findings and
pose a series of questions for discussion and critical analysis. Why do we say
this is a bonebed rather than a kill site? Where are the bison skulls? Weren’t
nearly all of the animals butchered? What about the spear points? Why do
we spend so much time recording little bits and pieces? What did kill the
bison? This is clearly a catastrophic kill event, but it is indeed appropriate to
challenge the means by which we interpret the data. After all, Agenbroad’s
own paper calls for use of the method of multiple working hypothesis, citing
T. C. Chamberlin’s celebrated paper. Todd and Rapson argue that arche-
ology is a process and not a “discovery,” a sentiment they share closely with
Bender et al. (2007). My concern with this is that, for scientists, knowledge is
infinite, open-ended, so in that sense uncertainty is exciting in defining the
dynamic frontier of our understanding—a search for new questions. But for
many of the public, knowledge seems potentially finite and uncertainty is
troubling; therefore the desire is for answers, neatly packaged and tied with a
bow. The real challenge, then, extends well beyond the confines of arche-
ology (and anthropology), to the universe itself. The on-site programs at
Hudson-Meng are directed toward this challenge, potentially at great risk,
but with proper packaging they will be worth the try.
The papers are followed by a panel discussion, convened by Les Davis.
Importantly, new participants are introduced: Dennis Stanford, George
Frison, Richard Forbis, Carling Malouf, Richard Ellis, Beth Merrick, and
David Todd. Chuck Reher is also represented because other speakers refer
directly to his symposium presentation about the Vore Site. The presenta-
tions add historical depth in relation to other important bison kill sites,
again with details of the complex jurisdictional frameworks within which
work was accomplished. Beth Merrick and Dennis Stanford specifically dis-
cuss the incorporation of Native American perspectives in museum initia-
tives, involving Native American co-curators. David Todd, as Regional
Parks Manager having responsibility for Ulm Pishkun (First Peoples
Buffalo Jump), speaks of the desire to involve Native Americans in operat-
ing the facility. Beth Merrick asks a cogent question: “[W]ho speaks for
prehistoric peoples?” For the present, the archeologists seem to do so.
Sadly, only a brief tribute is made in the acknowledgments to co-editor
Les Davis, who passed away two years before the book’s publication. Davis
was “Mr. Montana Archeology” for decades and his influence not only per-
vaded the Montana literature but also extended well beyond as a result of
his role in organizing key symposia on Plains bison procurement and util-
ization, stone circle sites, and the event that led to the present volume.
There was enough room in the book for a photograph and another para-
graph or two—and also for a photograph and capsule biography of his not-
able protege, co-editor Jack Fisher. Further, the authorship and “voice” of
the included papers does not allow proper credit to be given to the pivotal
roles of the authors themselves in the successful preservation and interpret-
ation of these sites. These authors are in a sense selfless, writing mostly
about others when we all realize how few archeologists there were on the
Plains until the past few decades, and how much of the baseline work on
sites such as these was spearheaded by a small number of dedicated people
who knew that Plains bison hunting was a far richer, deeper story than just
the equestrian chase as an example of “regressive marginality,” as opined
by Willey and Phillips (1958:123). Davis, in his introduction, tries to give
appropriate credit; we realize how easily any of these opportunities could
have been lost without such leadership.
Concluding remarks
“Landscape,” as Richard Hartshorne, Denis Cosgrove, Barbara Bender,
Simon Schama, and Matthew Johnson have all pointed out, can mean
vastly different things to different people. It functions regularly as both a
noun and a verb, and “a landscape” could describe an oil painting or a
scenic vista—or even an imaginary image. When analysts were tied to the
land surface, it was adequate to say that a landscape was that which dic-
tionaries tell us could be taken in at a glance. But air travel made that
24 M. C. WILSON
glance much more comprehensive, to O.G.S. Crawford’s delight; and satel-

lite images now reveal grand landscapes that cannot be seen even from air-
planes. Small wonder, then, that GIS findings have brought new meanings
to “landscape” in many disciplines. Yet that transition is not evident in
either of the books reviewed here, only implicit. Baird and the authors in
Pisskan have their feet firmly on the ground, and it is still important to
walk through the landscape, thereby somehow giving it meaningful dimen-
sions. Baird’s landscapes are full of emotion, tied not only to fragile cultural
performative traditions but also to her own mourning for what has been
lost—and frustration if not anger about the still-looming threats, whether
from industry or bureaucracy. She tries to champion the causes of indigen-
ous peoples in a quest for a grand consensus. The authors in Pisskan pro-
vide equally sad stories about past losses and the seemingly endless
labyrinth of stakeholder negotiations in the milieu of multiple jurisdictions.
Somehow, the sites and landscapes they describe have made it through, but
at what cost and for whom? The Canadian examples describe direct First
Nations engagement from planning to delivery, but the American examples
show lesser involvement of Native Americans. The strongly held emotions
in the latter landscapes reside with non-indigenous people who have fought
to have the sites preserved, analyzed, and interpreted. Does the historical
overburden of colonialism, dispossession, and displacement—so central to
Baird’s critical theory—deter or even prevent indigenous engagement from
happening at some of these bison-kill sites? It would be illuminating to see
a study by Baird of the bison-kill heritage landscapes.
The future might still justify optimism. Theory could in time come to
engage more directly with practice, idealism and pragmatism may yet con-
verge, and people of disparate backgrounds could come together to walk in
these richly evocative heritage landscapes.
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MICHAEL C. WILSON is an English-born Canadian archaeologist, earth scientist, and con-

sultant with BA and PhD in Archaeology (University of Calgary) and MA in Anthropology
(University of Wyoming). He has published research in geoarchaeology, ethnoarchaeology,
stratigraphy, vertebrate paleontology, and geoheritage; based on fieldwork in North America,

Cameroon, and China. After four decades of university and college teaching, he is Faculty
Emeritus (and Past Chair) of the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at
Douglas College and Adjunct Professor of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University. In 2009
he co-received the Washington State Historic Preservation Officer’s Award for Special
Achievement.

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Heritage landscapes compared/contrasted,

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Heritage landscapes compared/contrasted, contested/

CONTACT Michael C. Wilson WilsonM@emeriti.douglascollege.ca Faculty Emeritus, Department of Earth &

disciplines. In addressing these matters, my use of sources below is of

The routes of landscape archeology

Barnhart (2005) showed that the early decades of American anthropology

Isles. Hoskins (1955 [1985]) therefore cautioned that in England

No single view of landscape archeology (or of landscape anthropology)

Heritage and critical theory

(unwittingly or not) come to serve the needs and interests of developers,

efforts must be reinvented, case by case, to resolve administrative differen-

ancestral pictographs, a documented practice, and were accused of desecrat-

courts of law. It is incomplete to discuss “experts” as arising from their dis-

In Pilbara, the familiar resource-frontier “boom time” has moved on and

Bison drives in Plains landscapes

not thousands of acres of land—a huge challenge if the land is a mosaic of

First Nations partnership “show the vitality of the discipline of archeology

statements made by Todd and Rapson. Davis’s introduction cites this as “a

glance much more comprehensive, to O.G.S. Crawford’s delight; and satel-

Barnatt, John, and Ken Smith

Everson, Paul and Tom Williamson, eds.

Maitland, Frederic William

MICHAEL C. WILSON is an English-born Canadian archaeologist, earth scientist, and con-

stratigraphy, vertebrate paleontology, and geoheritage; based on fieldwork in North America,

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