Talk About The Landscape History and modern day personal views.

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Claire article is talking about Ordnance Survey Maps and the landscape changes.

I tend to believe that OS maps are biased towards modern values.  I have also taken the opportunity to look at a modern OS map of my village and compare it with a map from 1870 of the village.  The modern OS map seemed to concentrate more on man-made features.  For example, the nearby motorway and 'A' roads were very obvious. As was 'everyday life' such as post offices, public houses, and schools.  The old map, however, also still showed the all important public houses (or 'inns') and the old village school, which demonstrates that some things remain constant in our modern lives. The 1870 map also showed the distribution of wells in the village.  This illustrates how water was a vital commodity that we are now able to take for granted.  Interestingly, the modern OS map also indicated leisure facilities, such as the golf course, and also, tourist attractions.  Neither of these were on the 1870 map because a) they weren't there!, and b) I suppose leisure time was not so available in the 1870s and is therefore a further indication of modern values.

Living in the densely-populated south-east, it is difficult not to partly agree with Hoskin's view!  The landscape, however, is constantly evolving.  The local landscape is a resource that has always been used by people.  In the 20th/21st centuries one of its main resources seems to be its size and therefore more and more of it is being utilised for construction projects. Hoskin's view, however, cannot be much different from how many people would have felt during the Industrial Revolution, for example, when vast areas all over the country were being built upon, railways were being carved through the countryside, and the whole landscape was changing.  Much of the architecture that was built then is now Grade II listed and admired by many people. Landscape to the archaeologist is all the natural and man-made features of a particular area that have contributed to its overall appearance, its resources and its use by humans, over a specified period of time.

Castles in The landscape by Mandy

My local castle is Totnes and today one of its greatest influences is still on the local skyline. Its existence contributes to the town's sense of identity as an historic town. This allows locals called TQ niners to behave in alternative ways and annoy proper locals! It is high in the town but not on the highest point above the river Dart.

Both Roman forts and castles have a stronger impact on the environment, perhaps because of their relatively sudden and alien impact. The Romans and the Normans were not worried about shaping the landscape to suit their needs and they were able to control a wider population to carry out their plans. However, the Iron Age forts were more a reflection of the wider society or culture and their creaton, although it involved some form of lordship seems to have been more about a shared sense of security or belonging.

The Romans built forts purely for military purposes: that they impressed the popultation was  useful side effect and once they no longer needed the fort as a military base it was decommissioned. Forts had no permanent administrative role. The later medieval castles served military functions, had legal and administrative roles and also had a cultural role in that they served to remind the local population who was in charge. The question of the preservation of the wider landscape context of castles is difficult. For a start, there are lots of castles in thriving towns and cities: it would be impossible to insist on a development moratorium in such areas. Also, what landscape should we preserve? In the cases of castles having a long period of occupation there may be centuries of landscaping which would have to be undone. Where would we stop?

I do think it is important that we can retain some (or any) examples of unchanged landscapes if and when they exist. A castle existed in a wider landscape and these "living documents" can stop castles being simply a meaningless fossil. Obviously all castles were built to impress. The adoption of foreign architectural styles in Wales tells us that they were about culture as well as defence. Also, the manpower and resource control implied in the construction and maintenance of a timber castle would have told contemporaries a lot about the power of its lord. I've just read a description of a timber castle in Durham in which wooden elements are described in awed terms (Higham & Barker 118). We forget how stunning and impressive newly erected timber structures can be if we think in terms of archaeological deposits, black and crumbly.

The Landscape and the environment by Jill

I do believe that landscape and environmental archaeology overlap, because initially they both are looking at past activity of a site.  For example a sites geographical location would be looked at.  If something of interest was discovered, non intrusive fieldwork would need to be undertaken, this may result in the topographical location being studied. This may show that a river has moved from its original position to a new location. To understand why this has happened samples would need to be gained from the sediments (past and present) to see if this was due to farming practices/change in landscape.  A soil sample, along with pollen samples would indicate if a change in vegetation had occurred, as would the discovery of varying beetle species. If I stand by my previous definition of a landscape then many different elements go into the making of it, environments and ecosystems being just two of those components. Environmental Archaeology covers many different types and sizes of environment from the microscopic environment surrounding a buried seed to a large ones involving several ecosystems.    Study any of these individual elements alone and you gain a profoundly detailed insight into the formation of that particular aspect.   It is only, however, after combining the study of many different environments and examining how they interact and inter-relate to each other that a perception of the whole landscape can be gained - a case perhaps of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

The landscape archaeologist who does not take into account environmental studies can do little more than assess the visible record, attempt to associate the various elements by observation alone and arrange them into a time frame of sorts. Include environmental sampling from aspects of that landscape into the assessment and it is possible to be much more precise about how each element was formed, the processes (human or otherwise) that were involved and even perhaps a precise timescale. With luck by combining both visual and analytic results, patterns of use can be mapped. Environmental archaeology therefore needs a landscape within which to work and landscape archaeology needs environmental analysis to show how it worked.  

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