CALL FOR PAPERS
Created Spaces: Exploring Designed Landscapes
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY CONGRESS, WASHINGTON DC, 21-26 JUNE 2003
Papers are invited for this session at WAC 5, within the "Landscapes, Gardens and Dreamscapes" theme.
Landscape perspectives in archaeology have received increasing attention in the past two decades. Around the world, a diversity of landscape archaeologies proliferates.
The development of landscape archaeology has been characterised by a diversity of methodologies and theoretical perspectives, leading to the generation of at least three broad types. Two of these, associated generally with North America and the UK respectively, comprise
- studies focussing upon documentary, especially cartographic, evidence, providing structuralist analyses of 'space'
- empirical studies based upon field survey
A third type, constituting a post-processual critique, has criticised such studies as providing only 'histories of what happened to the landscape', and has been especially associated with phenomenological perspectives and the re-interpretation of previous archaeological studies.
A limitation common to all these approaches, particularly in historical archaeology, is a failure to acknowledge situations where landscapes were actively created. Although the term has generally been restricted to the historical period, such prehistoric and historical landscapes may be defined as “designed landscapes.”
This session is intended to encourage participants to consider alternate theoretical approaches that allow us to look more closely at how landscapes are designed and created. The session will bring together archaeological studies of designed landscapes from prehistoric and historical contexts around the world, with particular emphasis upon the following questions:
- how do we define designed landscapes?
- how do current approaches to landscape studies limit archaeological perspectives on the creation, manipulation, and appropriation of landscapes over time?
- how do we interpret and record designed landscapes archaeologically?
- what is the relationship between regional schools of landscape archaeology and the archaeological material studied in those regions?
- what is the role of human perception in the creation of a living environment? how is the perception of space and environment related to and intertwined with the physical manipulation of the landscape?
- what are the advantages of treating landscapes as artifacts that may be actively created and manipulated?
The session will offer participants the opportunity to review and reassess the value of theoretical perspectives applied over the previous two decades in a variety of geographical locations and archaeological contexts. The organizers thereby hope to stimulate a discussion of theoretical approaches to and current directions in landscape studies and, in particular, studies of designed landscapes and created spaces.
Paper abstracts of around 150 words for 20-minute papers should be sent to the session convenors well in advance of 15 December 2002:
Dan Hicks, University of Bristol.
email: [log in to unmask]
Karen Metheny, University of Boston.
email: [log in to unmask]
Further details on the Landscapes theme from WAC: <a Target='_new' Href='http://talk21.btopenworld.com/redirect.html?http://wwwehlt.flinders.edu.au/wac5/themes/landscapes.htm'>http://wwwehlt.flinders.edu.au/wac5/themes/landscapes.htm</a>
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Dan Hicks MA (Oxon) AIFA
Teaching Fellow
Department of Archaeology
University of Bristol
43 Woodland Road
Clifton, Bristol. BS8 1UU. UK
tel 44 (0)117 331 1188
fax 44 (0)117 954 6001
email [log in to unmask]
web <a Target='_new' Href='http://talk21.btopenworld.com/redirect.html?http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Archaeology/staff/danhicks.html'>http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Archaeology/staff/danhicks.html</a>
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