This article seeks to provide a framework under which a cultural landscape can be used to identify and document the aims of archaeology in a way that allows for the use of empirical data. The use of artifacts to interpret the archaeological record is prevalent in modern archaeological discourse but is also a secondary source on information since the interpretation and understanding of those materials must be done through the lens of a modern observer not familiar with the subject culture or at the very least is an outsider that must overcome instituted cultural understandings in order to accurately interpret those archaeological remains.
Purpose of archaeology
The purpose of archaeology is to attempt to reconstruct prehistoric life ways. That is, to understand how humans lived in the past, including the food they ate, the places they lived, the clothes they wore and tools they used, as well as their art, religion, and family life.
Brian Fagan (1994) defines archaeology as “a specific form of anthropology studying extinct human societies using material remains.” He goes on to state that “the objectives of archaeology are to construct culture history, reconstruct past life ways, and study culture process.”
Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn (1996) provide a much simpler definition in their text Archaeology: Theories, Method, and Practice. They define archaeology simply as “the past tense of anthropology.” They do elaborate a bit in their glossary, which reads, “a sub discipline of anthropology involving the study of the human past through its material remains.” Like Fagan, Renfrew and Bahn agree that archaeology is a part of anthropology. Another point of agreement in both definitions is the study of material remains.
Vince Gaffney (1995) provides another definition of archaeology: “the study of past societies in their entirety, from the analysis of their cultural and environmental remains, and through the inferences which may be legitimately deduced from such remains” (371-2). The key words in Gaffney’s definition are that archaeologists “study past societies in their entirety” and that the inferences drawn must be “legitimate.” To study a society in its entirety suggests to me that all approaches are acceptable. Gaffney is saying that there is room for processualists and post-processualists, and both add value. But whatever approach is selected, it must demonstrate careful and judicious practice; it must be legitimate. By this I think Gaffney means that proper scientific method must be applied, and that each proposition must be carefully evaluated and critically reviewed both by the researcher and by his or her colleagues. This is most important to archaeologists in our ability to prove and support theories and methods used in archaeological discourse.
Definition of a Cultural Landscape
Cultural Landscapes have been defined by the World Heritage Committee as distinct geographical areas or properties uniquely representing the combined work of nature and of man.”
In referring to a cultural landscape this paper aims to transcend the typical definition of landscape to include the interactions that a human component will contribute to that landscape. Conversely, that same landscape has a definite if not predictable influence on human cultures that can help to explain its continuities and its changes. Weather you prefer to think that humans are added to the landscape or that the landscape is added to human culture does not matter, what matters is the acknowledgement of the recursive relationship between the two.
Much evidence has been produced which acknowledges that impact that human populations have on the landscape but it has only been recently where the impact of a changes landscape has been a part of culture change discourse.
Why is this important?
The gathering of information and its subsequent dissemination to all people allows us to participate in a recursive process of social trend identification. This identification allows us to understand the human condition and anticipate social and physiological identifiers that would allow us to foresee problems created due to those inevitable changes that cultures must undergo. These inevitable changes are rooted in internal and external forces which affect the way in which humans interact with the landscape in which they live.
Purpose of a cultural landscape study
Rather than identifying and describing people and cultures through artifacts we can study people and culture through the landscape in which they spent their lives. The two methods can and should be used in concert to allow for the most well developed of any theory regarding human history, the argument here is the use of landscape as an anchor to humanity rather than the record of artifacts. The study of a cultural landscape is in some respect the deductive conclusions reached through the identification of landscape characteristics that would lead a culture and people to follow a particular lifestyle. Just as changes in the archaeological record are identified through technological changes in the physical residues left behind, known changes in the physical landscape and environment can signal changes in the human/environment dynamic. This dynamic is a result of the inherent need for a culture to adapt due to external and internal forces. For our purposes here the landscape can be looked upon as an anchor to which we can tie our theoretical ideas to past cultures.
Internal Forces
Human psychology today does not allow for a static set of mind constraints that would allow a group of human beings to remain in a state of stasis thereby creating the internal motivations to alter our interaction with the environment which through archaeological methods can be documented and given speculation for those changes. Human beings have obviously changed during whatever period of time you wish to use, clothing fashion is an easy visual example of contemporary American change.
Debate over the nature of motivations for change within the human psyche has been part of psychology discourse (Maslow 1943, Wahba and Bridgewell 1976, Manfred Max-Neef 1991) but the idea that those motivations do exist has not been questioned. Be they unanswered questions, external forces or perceived needs humans live in a condition which requires change on some level to occur which will ultimately impact their culture and the physical landscape.
External Forces
Simply living within an environment causes all people to undergo a variety of checks where technologies, biology, sociology and psychology are all tested, within the context that all are also integrated. Any change in one produces changes throughout the spectrum in a ripple effect that can have total or near zero effect on the existing culture. As new technological breakthroughs are discovered (see internal forces) they affect all other aspects of culture through their association with technology. More effective tools produce people who are not required to work as hard to sustain themselves thereby creating a void in socio-economic pursuits that will be filled by something else. Why that void must be filled could be taken as a serious debate of psychology, examples of that situation are abundant in the archaeological record in the form of a culture’s expansion into what are today mainstream and even vital parts of our contemporary cultural identity. Examples include the use of art for expression, utilization of specialized abilities/talents in individuals and the group allowance to form political systems that can provide leadership in trade for group cooperation.
The duality of internal and external forces is punctuated by the changes which are created through seemingly insignificant alterations in our behavior or biological make-up which are both kept in check by evolutionary process that allow or deny the changes through the ability to survive. The structure of this argument is drawn from the duality of social structure and human agency as defined by Giddens (1976). Both require it’s counterpart in order to exist while at the same time both participate in forming the human perception of their true existence.
With internal and external forces directly affecting each other it only makes sense that when studying past people that we observe and identify those forces which helped to shape the people of study. This shaping process does not refer to any deterministic view of humanity but rather a recursive process based on mere existence which must allow for change regardless of its internal or external source. One of those forces is the landscape in which people live.
The majority of artifacts that we find today were created based on a system of knowledge that drew from past experience regarding the best way in which to accomplish a tools creation. The tools do not create the person or culture but quite the opposite, therefore the tools could in reality be looked at as secondary sources of information regarding the formation and survival of a culture whereas the landscape is a force which directly impacts the culture making it a primary resource for understanding change and maintenance of a culture.
This is of course not to say that the study of artifacts is a wasted pursuit but rather the emphasis placed on those objects by archaeologists seems disproportionate in regards to the collection of empirical data. Ethnology and artifact study must pass through the understanding of the creating culture and the receiving culture whereas landscape offers us a glimpse at one of the factors which directly influences human culture and does not require us to understand the culture in order to understand the object.
How can this idea be tested?
How can we know that this is a better path towards understanding our ancestors? Through the gathering of empirical data we should at some point gather enough for us to understand a culture, right? We continue to gather artifacts, explore social theories that shed light on past human motivations and search for origins of human change and continuity.
Gaffney (1995) requires that archaeology transcend theoretical divides to provide a scientific foundation on which to support claims made about past peoples. As with most theoretical arguments a middle range theory should be considered if not embraced when discussing two opposing forces. In this case the forces are identified as human culture and the landscape in which that culture exists. Neither can exist without the other while at the same time both are created by the other.
Fagan, Brian M.
1994 Archaeology: A Brief Introduction. HarperCollins College Publishers, New York.
Renfrew, Colin and Paul Bahn
1996 Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice, 2nd Ed.. Thame and Hudson, London.
Gaffney, V. and M. van Leusen
1995 Postscript—GIS, environmental determinism and archaeology: a parallel text. In Archaeology and Geographical Information Systems, edited by G. Lock and Zoran Stančič, pp. 367-82. Taylor and Francis, London.
Giddens, Anthony
1976 New Rules of Sociological Method
