An Anthropology of Landscape

Abstract

PrefaceThe research for this book took place from 2008 to 2012. It ran in tandem with an archaeological project involving a fieldwork survey of the entire heathlands, and excavations of multiple sites during the same time period directed by Chris Tilley. It is important to acknowledge this in terms of the discussion of this being a contested landscape. After moving to the area and having decided to visit all the prehistoric cairns, Chris went walking on the heathlands with Tor, his dog. These became walks with a purpose. After seeing all the cairns he decided to walk between them in order to study their relationship to each other and the unique Pebblebed landscape in which they are situated. He quickly became fascinated with the pebbles and how these bright and rounded objects transform what otherwise might appear, to the casual observer, to be a quite monotonous landscape. Realizing that this was unlikely to be just a contemporary appreciation, he then initiated the project. From an archaeologist's perspective he is trying to create a story of the past in the present: a story involving the topography; a story involving the pebbles, the land, the sea, the sky, the sun; and integrate these things into some kind of sense of how it might have been, all the time trying to link past and present. And so the anthropological project investigating the meaning and significance of the contemporary heathland and its pebbles arose. All the research was carried out by Chris and Kate Cameron-Daum. It was very much a collaborative exercise in which both of us were engaged in participant observation and interviews with over one hundred informants. Chris and his family were living in the research area and Kate was staying with them: this had definite advantages in that the field site was quite literally entered when leaving the front door of the house. This permitted sustained engagement with both the heathland landscape and those working there or visiting it throughout the years and in all weathers and seasons. This facilitated, we believe, something of an intimate 'insider's' (the punctuation marks to be emphasized) knowledge of the landscape and the establishment of ongoing personal contacts and relationships. During the course of the archaeological research and the An AnThropology of lAnDsCApe viii viii viii anthropological research discussed here the landscape has become a powerful element in the formation of our own biographies and identities. We both wanted to study anthropology as students because we were interested in the lives of others and how an understanding of them might lead us to reflect on our own lives and experiences. Although the two cannot be separated, we did not choose to study anthropology to learn about the anthropologists conducting the research, their lives, trials and tribulations in the field. We take it as axiomatic that it is from the ethnographic self that accounts arise, that self-reflexivity in research is fundamental and that all our findings are subjective (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Clifford 1...

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