Post-processual Landscape Archaeology: a Critique

Abstract

Post-processual theorists have characterized landscape archaeology as practised in the second half of the twentieth century as over-empirical. They have asserted that the discipline is sterile, in that it deals inadequately with the people of the past, and is also too preoccupied with vision-privileging and Cartesian approaches. They have argued that it is therefore necessary to ‘go beyond the evidence’ and to develop more experiential approaches, ‘archaeologies of inhabitation’. This article argues that such a critique is misguided, notably in its rejection of long-accepted modes of fieldwork and argument and in its annexation of Cosgrove's rhetoric. ‘Post-processual’ landscape archaeology has involved the development of phenomenological approaches to past landscapes and the writing of hyper-interpretive texts (pioneered by Tilley and Edmonds respectively). It is argued that phenomenological fieldwork has produced highly questionable ‘results’. Some of the theoretical and practical consequences of adopting post-processual landscape archaeology are discussed; it is concluded that the new approaches are more problematic than their proponents have allowed. Although new thinking should always be welcomed, it would not be advisable to abandon the heuristic, argument-grounded strengths of conventional landscape archaeology.