Social Archaeologies of Landscape

Landscape Archaeology and Sacred Space in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Glimpse from Cyprus

“…However, it was felt that the land remained a neutral and passive object, used by people, but otherwise relatively detached from them [8]. Considering all the different approaches to the study of past landscapes, it should constantly be kept in mind that places and landscapes have been formed by the very act of living.…”

“…Moreover, human activity and landscapes' structure and temporality are vital issues, directly associated with the concept and perception of landscape [9]. Already by the 1970s, 'post-processual' and 'post-positivistic' philosophies, humanistic concerns and calls for social relevance, built from existentialism, structuration, Marxist thought, feminism, idealism, phenomenology, and interactionism, were recast "as matched participants in [a] perpetual dialectic of mutual constitution" [8]. Today the most prominent notions of landscape archaeology emphasize its socio-symbolic dimensions: "landscape is an entity that exists by virtue of its being perceived, experienced, and contextualized by people" [5].…”

“…It is created by the repeated movement of the body throughout the landscape. Barbara Bender regards landscape as a process that is "intensely political, a way of perceiving, experiencing, and remembering the world" [10]; landscapes not only shape but are shaped by human experience [8]. Christopher Tilley's influential study is concerned explicitly with phenomenology of landscape as an experience [19].…”

“…Scientific or functional approaches, under the strand of 'processual' archaeology, have usually predominated, inferring social and economic dimensions of a range of spatial frames and statistical models [8]. However, it was felt that the land remained a neutral and passive object, used by people, but otherwise relatively detached from them [8].…”

The Historiography of Landscape Research on Crete

“…Overall, there has been a great diversity of landscape approaches indeed, fact that has attracted scholarly interest in itself (Stoddart 2000;Ashmore 2002;Gojda 2003). Post-modern literature now discusses the development of landscape studies looking through to the origins of the concept of the landscape in the western world, which relates to a geometric and rational perspective of the world as perceived through vision, and reflects a new political order, namely the emergence of capitalism (Cosgrove 1984(Cosgrove , 1985(Cosgrove , 1989thomas1993).…”