Archaeological excavation and deep mapping in historic rural communities

This paper reviews the results of more than a hundred small archaeological “test pit” excavations carried out in 2013 within four rural communities in eastern England. Each excavation used standardized protocols in a different location within the host village, with the finds dated and mapped to create a series of maps spanning more than 3500 years, in order to advance understanding of the spatial development of settlements and landscapes over time. The excavations were all carried out by local volunteers working physically within their own communities, supported and advised by professional archaeologists, with most test pits sited in volunteers’ own gardens or those of their friends, family or neighbors. Site-by-site, the results provided glimpses of the use made by humans of each of the excavated sites spanning prehistory to the present day; while in aggregate the mapped data show how settlement and land-use developed and changed over time. Feedback from participants also demonstrates the diverse positive impacts the project had on individuals and communities. The results are presented and reviewed here in order to highlight the contribution archaeological test pit excavation can make to deep mapping, and the contribution that deep mapping can make to rural communities

Anticipating Deep Mapping: Tracing the Spatial Practice of Tim Robinson

There has been little academic research published on the work of Tim Robinson despite an illustrious career, first as an artist of the London avant-garde, then as a map-maker in the west of Ireland, and finally as an author of place. In part, this dearth is due to the difficulty of approaching these three diverse strands collectively. However, recent developments in the field of deep mapping encourage us to look back at the continuity of Robinson’s achievements in full and offer a suitable framework for doing so. Socially engaged with living communities and a depth of historical knowledge about place, but at the same time keen to contribute artistically to the ongoing contemporary culture of place, the parameters of deep mapping are broad enough to encompass the range of Robinson’s whole practice and suggest unique ways to illuminate his very unusual career. But Robinson’s achievements also encourage a reflection on the historical context of deep mapping itself, as well as on the nature of its spatial practice (especially where space comes to connote a medium to be worked rather than an area/volume). With this in mind the following article both explores Robinson’s work through deep mapping and deep mapping through the work of this unusual artist

Praxes of “The Human” and “The Digital”: Spatial Humanities and the Digitization of Place

The spatial humanities have evolved much in the last ten years or so, and much of this evolution has been driven by project and problem-based GIS applications. It is argued here that the field lacks a theoretical framework analogous to Critical GIS in human geography. I argue that, just as Critical GIS drew on the intellectual hinterlands of human and hybrid geography, so must the spatial humanities draw on the intellectual hinterlands of how humanities discourse have always formed and transmitted concepts of place. Rhetoric, and especially the rhetorical devices of ekphrasis are given as an example of this; a project co-led by the author, the Heritage Gazetteer of Cyprus, is given as an example of how the digitzation of (humanistic) place has been operationalized

Blue Highways- a Journey into America

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We Find the Fourth Missouri

The best-selling author of Blue Highways offers a tantalizing excerpt from his new book, River-Horse : Across America by Boat. Join the journey as William Least Heat-Moon searches for the one man who locals say could guide him through a 35-mile stretch of treacherous shallows on the upper Missouri River

Reading: William Least Heat Moon

In this audiovisual recording from April 6, 1989 as part of the 20th annual UND Writing Conference: “Circle of Many Colors,” William Least Heat-Moon reads from Blue Highways and discusses his experience with publishing and the writing of Blue Highways. Note: The beginning and ending of the reading is cut off

William Least Heat Moon, 6th Annual ODU Literary Festival

In 1978 William Least Heat Moon put a sleeping bag and blanket into the back of his Ford van and drove over fourteen thousand miles down the back roads of America. The result of his journey was Blue Highways, a marvelous book that has received not only popular success—since its publication eight months ago it\u27s been a natIonwide best seller—but also critical acclaim. Robert Penn Warren hailed it as a masterpiece, and added, Least Heat Moon has a genius for finding people who have not even found themselves, exploring their lives, capturing their language, recreating little (or big) lost worlds. In short, he makes America seem new, in a very special way. N. Scott Momaday wrote, If you would like to know who and what America is at the center, read Blue Highways. This is what we, as a people, are about. Anatole Broyard remarked, The book is wonderful. On finishing it, one can be forgiven a little flush of national pride. On Tuesday afternoon Least Heat Moon will talk informally, and that evening he will read from his nonfiction. On both occasions he will answer questions from the audience

Panel: Sacred Ground, Sacred Words

This audiovisual recording from April 6, 1989 as part of the 20th annual UND Writing Conference: “Circle of Many Colors” features William Least Heat-Moon, N. Scott Momaday, and Dave Solheim forming the panel “Sacred Ground, Sacred Words.” The panelists discuss sacred landscapes, desecration of sacred spaces, voice in writing, and returning land rights to indigenous peoples. Moderator: Robert Lewis. Note: A portion of this panel was not recorded