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Place on the Plains

Place on the Plains. Conceptualizing a Landscape Approach to Archaeology. Terry Beaulieu University of Calgary Plains Anthropological Conference Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 4-October-2012. Introduction. Landscape affects interpretations Changing definition Often vaguely or poorly defined

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Place on the Plains

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  1. Place on the Plains Conceptualizing a Landscape Approach to Archaeology Terry BeaulieuUniversity of CalgaryPlains Anthropological ConferenceSaskatoon, Saskatchewan, 4-October-2012

  2. Introduction • Landscape affects interpretations • Changing definition • Often vaguely or poorly defined • Leads to confusion and misunderstanding • Three key concepts • Space • Place • Environment

  3. Space • Newtonian space • Independent and unchanging • Space is location • Fixed and independent of human perception • Can be referenced either absolutely or relatively

  4. Place • Place • Mobile, not fixed • Has varying levels of significance • Among places, between individual/groups and over time • Place • Should not be used interchangeably with space • Conceptual occupation of space • Constantly being created and recreated • Cultural construction of the mind

  5. Environment • Environment • Intimately linked to space and place • “a piece of reality that is simply there” (Tuan 1979) • Exists independent of human conception • “a full sense of agency is never achieved” (Trifkovic 2006) • Affordances • What is offered by the environment (Gibson 1979) • Some claim they are simply environmental properties • Relational affordances (Chemero 2003) • The relations between organisms and the environment

  6. Landscape • Landscape • “is not ‘land’, is not ‘nature’, and it is not ‘space’” (Ingold 1993) • The web created by the collection of recognized places • Is a cultural creation, not a physical reality • Landscape • All places within a landscape are related to one another • Unique over time and between individuals/groups • Are continuously being created and recreated

  7. On The Northwestern Plains • Most archaeology has been ecological • Landscape approaches • Called into question assumptive biases • e.g. the archaeological ‘site’ is a modern construction • Proposed new interpretations of tipi ring significance • Recognized the importance of place names • Realized the complex culture/environment connection • Presented new interpretations of seasonal movement • Reconciled the archaeological record and environmental evidence with a non-Western world view

  8. Conclusion • Landscape Archaeology • The intersection of space, place, and environment • The recognition our world is but a perception of reality that is inherently biased – but it is within those biases that the most satisfying interpretations are found

  9. Thank you REFERENCES CITED Chemero, A. 2003 An Outline of a Theory of Affordances. Ecological Psychology. 15(2):181-195. Gibson, J.J. 1979 The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Ingold, T. 1993 The Temporality of the Landscape. World Archaeology 25(2):152-174. Trifkovic, V. 2006 Persons and Landscapes: Shifting Scales of Landscape Archaeology. In Confronting Scale in Archaeology: Issues of Theory and Practice, edited by G. Lock and B. L. Molyneaux, pp. 257-271. Springer, New York, NY. Tuan, Y.F. 1979 Thought and Landscape: The Eye and the Mind's Eye. In The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, edited by D. W. Meinig, pp. 89-102. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

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