Diverse Landscape Archaeologies
Landscape archaeology is one of the most studied fields in archaeology and it employs many different approaches to enrich our knowledge of how humans lived in, changed, and were shaped by the landscapes they inhabited. For this NBC, I have collected publications that show some of the diversity of perspectives with which landscapes can be researched including: a comprehensive study on Neolithic settlement dynamics on a Swiss lakeside; a wide-ranging and long-term overview of the maritime landscapes of Taiwan; ancient urban landscapes in the dark of night; changes in the landscape under the occupation of the Sobaipuri people; and ending with a landscape history of English orchards.
The Alpine lakes are famous for their prehistoric pile dwelling settlements and their exceptional preserved archaeological material, due to being waterlogged, and are researched for over 150 years. More than a thousand sites are known, and their exploration took part in developing many areas of the archaeological sciences. The editors of Burgäschisee, Albert Hafner and Marco Hostettler brought together a large collection of scholarship to deliver a well-rounded and in-depth study on one of the smaller and lesser known lakes with Neolithic pile dwellings: the Burgäschisee, north of Bern, Switzerland.
The Introduction collects background information about the long excavation history from 1850–2017. Its main emphasis is on the new phase of investigation and the project ‘Beyond Lake Villages’ from 2013–2017, which included small sondages and drillings but no large excavations, to clarify several areas of interest and especially the chronology of the sites. The Palaeolithic and Mesolithic activities in the surrounding landscapes of the Burgäschisee are also highlighted.
A detailed chapter on dendrochronology illustrates the importance of this upcoming methodology in the 1960s and the exploration of the lake pile dwellings. Previous results are reinterpreted and combined with newer samples to deliver a comprehensive overview of the Burgäschisee finds.
By far the largest chapter is the thorough description of the six different sites and the finds material of the Neolithic settlements around the Burgäschisee. Special detail is given to stone blade artefacts and the ceramics. The latter material received an elaborate archaeometrical analysis. The extensive chapter on bioarchaeology combines research and results of the numerous faunal and floral remains from the recent investigations and the few human remains from the settlement sites and surrounding areas. All details are applied to the land-use simulation program LUTES (Land Use and Technological Evolution Simulator) to model the changes of the landscape and human activities. Supplementary materials to the scientific studies are available online.
The conclusion draws on the chapters’ extensive results and discussions, which comprehensively evaluate the archaeological record from all possible angles, to reveal an intricate and complex view of the history of the landscape and settlement dynamics of the Burgäschisee. The site's development from hunter-gatherer times to the Neolithic is outlined and places it into the larger picture of the Neolithic in Switzerland. The Neolithic settlements of the Burgäschisee show a dynamic way of life, in which dwellings were inhabited for only ten to twenty years before being moved further along the shore. The majority of meat consumption was still provided by hunting of large deer and especially aurochs. While there is also evidence for animal husbandry and arable agriculture, the amount varies through different periods and can mainly be linked to climate fluctuations. People and materials such as clay and flint came from local and surrounding areas and the research provides evidence of a mobile and dynamic society.
The book is well structured and packed with information but written in an accessible style, mainly in German. English and French summaries would have been useful to make it available for a wider audience. The excellent illustrations, the accompanying generous catalogue and an extensive bibliography help to overcome this minor criticism. It is an outstanding example of how to publish in full a difficult set of old and new excavations and their related results amidst an evolving discipline, while conveying the charm of the site and the involvement of the people during this long exploration of the settlement landscape of the Burgäschisee.
The maritime landscapes of Taiwan have been subject to extensive modern geopolitical analyses, but frequently in the absence of the long durée of their past. This lavishly illustrated and meticulously edited volume provides an accessible yet detailed text covering the Neolithic to the seventeenth century AD. The fourteen chapters in this edited volume trace the continuities and changes in relationships between communities on the islands and their movements, activities and connections across the seas. The origins of the volume lie in a conference in Paris organised by the École Française d'Extrême Orient involving scholars from Europe, Asia and North America back in 2015. Each chapter is a standalone contribution, either written or translated into English. The chronological organisation of the book together with the consistently tight focus on the maritime landscape theme—as adapted from a concept developed by the influential Swedish scholar Christer Westerdahl—means that the edited volume can be read as a coherent narrative.
The Introduction (Calanca & Muyard) is followed by a history and historiography of scholarship in Taiwan within the broader scholarly trends and narratives of East Asian studies (Muyard). The subsequent five chapters present different perspectives on the lively and important debates surrounding Neolithic migration and mobility from Taiwan to the broader East and Southeast Asian region (Siame & Leduc, Liu, Tsang, Chiang & Chen). The influence of the ‘Out of Taiwan’ Neolithic migration model to explain the origins and dispersal of the Austronesian language family throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and beyond can be seen throughout the scholarship.
The chapters present studies ranging from the potential role of long-term climatic impacts on the East Asian maritime environment to the typo-chronology and radiocarbon dating of ceramics and stone tools potentially demonstrating intra-island connectivity, through to the considerations of linguistics and ethnographic analogies. By comparison there are only two chapters covering the first millenniums BC and AD evaluating the archaeological connections between the Upper Thai-Malay peninsula and the Philippines (Favereau & Bellina) and the textual sources on contact across the Taiwan straits (Clark). These contributions are especially valuable as this period remains poorly understood in Taiwan. The focus of the volume then shifts towards the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries AD and the textual, rather than archaeological, records highlighting the knowledge in China of the waters around Taiwan (Chen) and the richness of the Spanish sources demonstrating contact between Manila and Taiwan (Ollé). The final two wide-ranging chapters provide new intellectual frameworks for the maritime environment around Taiwan (Calanca) and the Interaction Sphere of the South China Sea respectively (Blerch). After the chapters, an invaluable and lengthy bibliography is presented.
The interdisciplinary approaches contained within the volume demonstrate how archaeologists, environmental scientists, geographers, historians, anthropologists and linguists can bring new and nuanced perspectives to understanding how the maritime landscapes of Taiwan have shaped the communities on the island and in the surrounding region. As noted in the introductory chapter, the archaeology of the island of Taiwan and its maritime landscapes have been overlooked or marginalised in recent East Asian syntheses. This book is highly recommended and will hopefully ensure that both the past communities of Taiwan and its maritime landscapes are more widely studied.
This rather unusual take on landscape archaeology gives excellent examples on how to investigate facets of darkness in urban areas, the use of artificial light in ancient cities and how it affected the perception of the people populating these landscapes. The book is the outcome of a Society for American Archaeology conference session from 2019, which was organised by the editors and highlights this new field of research in ancient urban studies.
The Introduction gives an overview of other research that has touched on aspects of life at night or in the dark, such as in caves, and the changes that artificial lighting brought into this ‘natural order’. It demonstrates the many ways in which the nocturnal dimension can be incorporated into new approaches to research ancient cities and landscapes in order to retrieve a more holistic picture of past life. Monica Smith's A prehistory of ordinary people (2010) is named as the cardinal study to wake their interest in studying night and darkness. Smith authored the conclusion chapter in this book on ‘Nocturnal urban landscapes: from the first cities to the present’, which brings together the overarching themes and perspectives of the chapters and embeds them excellently in the wider sphere of how darkness and its effects people's lives.
The scope of the nine chapters extends from the Old World, with three contributions on Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, across to the New World with one chapter from Mesoamerica, two from North America and three from South America. Most studies in this book centre around religious and spiritual aspects of the ‘use’ of the night, such as the effects of the New Year's Eve ritual procession and artificial lighting in Ancient Egypt (Strong). The Aztec ‘New Fire ceremony’, which was extremely rare, is scrutinised as one of the very few rituals performed during the night in this culture. It was an impressive ritual performed only every fifty-two years; it was founded on religious beliefs but also renewed social bonds and served political agendas (Farah/Toby Evans). In investigating what happens after nightfall in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace, Greece, Maggie Popkin considers new ways to understand the phenomenological experiences of the ancient visitors and worshippers. The strong connection between the starry night sky and spatial organisation as well as religious life in the Wari empire, Peru (c. AD 600–1100) is researched and reveals, among other things, the ritual settings in special, D-shaped, buildings (Cabrera Romero & Ochatoma Cabrero). Cahokia is a settlement site next to the Mississippi River in modern Illinois (US), that grew into an urban site around AD 1050 (beginning around AD 600). Integrating the findings of the nearby site of Emerald suggests that this urbanisation occurred with the arrival of immigrants who brought with them a new religion, which held at its centre water, women, agriculture and the moon. The night then became part of the ritual landscape, which is evident in the structures of Cahokia (Alt). The use of the moon as dramatic influence in rituals, especially by the leading power figures among the Maya highlights another connection of religion, ruling elites and the night (Landau et al.).
John Wayne Janusek and Anna Guengerich discuss the remains of the city of Tiwanaku, Bolivia, during its main phase AD 500–1000 and demonstrate what activities were undertaken at night and who was involved and where it happened, thus providing a nocturnal landscape of the city. Chaco Canyon in north-western New Mexico (US) is a much studied, large archaeological area and famous for its dark sky and vast archeoastronomical research. Robert Weiner investigates the ancient nightlife in the Canyon and finds that the fireboxes, which were thought to be signalling stations, were more often part of rituals; in addition, gambling was a common nightlife activity. In ancient Mesopotamia, many people dreaded the night and associated this time with danger. It is presumed that fire beacon stations are also more than signalling stations, and they are interpreted as night watchers to provide a sense of protection and safety to the sleeping people (Earley-Spadoni).
Sadly, the production of the images does not match the quality of the papers with the small type and greyscale rendering most of them unreadable. Otherwise, this volume is an excellent introduction explaining how to incorporate the dimension of darkness into research questions in order to widen the scope of the results. All authors were able to shift the reader's view beyond the archaeological material and evoke impressions of the night at the places they studied. It should inspire many more scholars to venture down similar dimly lit paths.
The Sobaipuri O'odham people are one of the lesser-known Indigenous groups in the American Southwest who occupied the main river valleys in southern Arizona during the Terminal Prehistoric and Early Historic period (fifteenth to nineteenth century AD). Deni Seymour is one of the few scholars who has researched and published extensively on their culture and archaeology and this volume is an accumulation of decades of research. The book combines throughout: the archaeology of both new excavations and re-interpretations of old ones; insights and memories of the modern descendants of the Sobaipuri O'odham; and the written records from colonial times onwards. The latter is the main focus of the book with one of the prime sources being the accounts of a Jesuit missionary, Father Kino, from the late seventeenth century. The book seeks to bring the textual sources and archaeological research together; it evaluates the evidence to deliver a factual picture of the landscape during Sobaipuri occupation, thus revising former research perspectives.
The book argues for the importance of this specific group in settling the landscapes along the fertile green strips of the rivers in their unique way of life as irrigation farmers year-round, contrasting with some other groups who seasonally occupied the rivers. The first chapter concentrates on the history of research and available resources on which this work is built and places the mentioned sites in a geographical and historical framework.
Concepts of landscape use and management along the rivers are explored in the second chapter with an overview of how the landscape looked during the occupation of the Sobaipuri. The selection of areas for agriculture and settlement are discussed and the results can be used for future fieldwork in predicting the location of certain sites. The distribution of the sites shows evidence of the deep understanding that the Sobaipuri had of features in the landscape as well as the surface and below-surface flow of the river systems. This would have been essential to survive in the surrounding desert climate. The settlement type of the Sobaipuri can be distinguished from their predecessors, and the later O'odham people, and it developed over time owing to natural and political changes. The first chapter sets the stage for an in-depth discussion of this landscape, but what follows instead are seemingly disconnected chapters, as if all were written separately for different aspects of research concerning the Sobaipuri.
Some chapters give detailed accounts of recurring discussion points in the research of the Sobaipuri: their presence along the Gila River; the settlement site of Xavier del Bac; the localisation of Quiburi, another settlement, and its final days; and the presence of a Jesuit mission on the San Pedro River. Another chapter highlights open questions around the edges and borders of Sobaipuri occupied lands and rectifies the assumptions of old records with new results especially around the San Pedro headwaters and the Babocomari River.
A case study of the settlements along the Sonoita Creek gives the most detailed record of archaeological finds. The settlement structures are similar to those in other river valleys occupied by the Sobiapuri, but also show nuanced differences, possibly highlighting areas of the settlement that were influenced by people from elsewhere. Furthermore, fieldwork undertaken along the San Pedro River changes the interpretation of this area into a much more complex occupational history than was presented through the textual evidence.
The chapters would have benefited from an overarching narrative to connect them. Sadly, the chance to introduce a larger audience to this not widely studied people is missed. An accessible introduction for non-specialists to engage the reader with the world of the Sobaipuri would have been valuable, and colourful illustrations could have been used to provide a more vivid image of the Sobaipuri O'odham landscapes. For readers with more knowledge of the subject, the book combines in-depth scholarship and intricate knowledge about the Sobaipuri and delivers an up-to-date review of research and highlights possible areas for future studies.
The English countryside is written about in many a book and from as many perspectives. This study by the renowned landscape historians Gerry Barnes and Tom Williamson concentrates on “the different kinds of orchards and explain when and why they appeared in the landscape —and when and why many have now disappeared from it” (p. 2). The authors go beyond the often-nostalgic view of orchards and delve into the origin of fruit growing in England from medieval times to the present, where orchard landscapes seem ever more on the decline. A short introduction is given on the origins of fruit growing of mainly domesticated, imported species and the special techniques of management that they need (e.g. such as grafting and pruning).
In their search for a more scientific way to study orchards in the landscape, the authors have combined mentions in old maps and written records, which is often the only evidence left. Through this historiographical approach, the orchards are classified in different types, concentrating mainly on the eighteenth to twenty-first century. The first type are farmhouse and commercial orchards, which do not have a distinct division. Usually, farmhouse orchards are for domestic consumption, with maybe the surplus being sold on markets, and the commercial ones are the sole income of the orchard tenant/farmer. The latter orchards can become quite large in more recent times, though are known already from the Middle Ages. The other category is ‘gardens and institutions’ which includes garden orchards belonging to stately homes or manor houses. These are often designed to be aesthetically pleasing in addition to being practical. The other part of this category refers to gardens at institutions, such as colleges, hospitals or children's homes, though these are fewer in numbers. Examples of both categories are discussed and aspects of their developments, location, management, economics and aesthetics are highlighted. Further chapters introduce the three key fruit-growing regions of England: the Western countries; Kent; and East Anglia and the Fens. Cider production was the main driver in expanding the apple orchards in the west, but other fruit was also grown. The emergence of better transport from the mid-nineteenth century led to a more commercialised way of growing in many areas of the Southeast and East Anglia.
The recent history of orchards and the decline of commercial orchards from the 1950s onwards is sketched out; one chapter is a practical guide for future research enthusiasts and it explains how one could study old orchards in a meaningful way.
The last two chapters connect the historical events with their importance for modern society. These are the distinct biodiversities in an orchard habitat as well as the impact on culture and history that orchards have, especially regarding old varieties of fruit. The authors advocate strongly for the conservation of old orchards, but stress this is an active process of managing the orchard landscapes rather than the currently fashionable, if flawed, policy of the widespread ‘re-wilding’ of nature. The important biodiverse habitat of orchards was always a product of human intervention. The book is an enjoyable read, it combines a vast amount of information in an accessible narrative.
This list includes all books received between 1 March 2023 and 30 April 2023. Those featuring at the beginning of New Book Chronicle, however, have not been duplicated in this list. The listing of a book in this chronicle does not preclude its subsequent review in Antiquity.
