Description
While the concept 'landscape' enjoys considerable popularity in archaeological interpretation, it is somewhat ill-defined and inconsistently used. Some have suggested that this fluidity allows landscape to be a 'usefully ambiguous concept' but at times there is a danger that this very ambiguity affords imprecision in our narratives. This is particularly important where differing traditions of archaeological interpretation meet, as, for example, in the transition from hunting and gathering to farming. The transition has been understood as a major division in archaeological practice and attitudes to 'landscape' across the transition reflect this dichotomy. The results of these debates are illuminating, and raise questions beyond the immediate geographical scope of the volume. The contrast between the two regions provides valuable comparisons between traditions of archaeological theory and interpretation and the bodies of evidence.
Bill Finlayson is the Director of the Council for British Research in the Levant, Graeme Warren is a College Lecturer in the School of Archaeology, UCD, Ireland.
About the Author
Bill Finlayson is Director of the Council for British Research in the Levant and works on the early Neolithic of southwest Asia, primarily undertaking fieldwork in southern Jordan at a number of Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites. He has been working to promote southwest Asian Neolithic heritage as an asset for local communities and tourism. Graeme Warren is a professor in the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland, where he has worked since 2002. He is a specialist in the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, with a particular research interest in the Mesolithic of Europe. His major research projects have been in Ireland and Scotland.
Reviews
Landscapes in Transition provides a good overview of the state of the study of the Neolithic transition in both Britain/Ireland and in the Levant... For any scholar interested in the Neolithic transition in Eurasia, this book will be a welcome contribution. -- Bleda S. During The Holocene June 2011 The papers as a group typify the tensions and challenges in trying to explain major transformations in the archaeological record - shifts at a global scale in terms of the beginnings of farming - without falling back on simplistic linear models of causality ('this cause usually resulted in this effect'), whilst also acknowledging the importance of the local, of individual actors, of historically contingent decisionmaking. The collection does not provide the answers, but it underscores the importance of different scales of analysis.' -- Graeme Barker Landscape History Vol. 32, No. 1, 2011
Book Information
ISBN 9781842174166
Author Bill Finlayson
Format Paperback
Page Count 248
Imprint Oxbow Books
Publisher Oxbow Books