Persistent Place-Making in Prehistory: the Creation, Maintenance, and Transformation of an Epipalaeolithic Landscape

Most archaeological projects today integrate, at least to some degree, how past people engaged with their surroundings, including both how they strategized resource use, organized technological production, or scheduled movements within a physical environment, as well as how they constructed cosmologies around or created symbolic connections to places in the landscape. However, there are a multitude of ways in which archaeologists approach the creation, maintenance, and transformation of human-landscape interrelationships. This paper explores some of these approaches for reconstructing the Epipalaeolithic (ca. 23,000–11,500 years BP) landscape of Southwest Asia, using macro- and microscale geoarchaeological approaches to examine how everyday practices leave traces of human-landscape interactions in northern and eastern Jordan. The case studies presented here demonstrate that these Epipalaeolithic groups engaged in complex and far-reaching social landscapes. Examination of the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic (EP) highlights that the notion of “Neolithization” is somewhat misleading as many of the features we use to define this transition were already well-established patterns of behavior by the Neolithic. Instead, these features and practices were enacted within a hunter-gatherer world and worldview

High Resolution space and ground-based remote sensing and implications for landscape archaeology: the case from Portus, Italy

Ground-based archaeological survey methods, together with aerial photography and satellite remote sensing data, provide archaeologists with techniques for analysing archaeological sites and landscapes. These techniques allow different properties to be detected dependent on the nature of archaeological deposits, although clear restrictions exist, either with their physical limitations, or in the extent and nuances of their application. With recent developments in landscape archaeology technologies, it is increasingly necessary to adopt an integrated strategy of prospection, incorporating both ground-based non-destructive methods and remotely sensed data, to understand fully the character and development of archaeological landscapes. This paper outlines the results of a pilot project to test this approach on the archaeological landscape of Portus, the port of Imperial Rome. Its results confirm the potential that exists in enhancing the mapping of this major port complex and its hinterland by means of an integration of satellite remote-sensing data, geophysical survey and aerial photography. They have made it possible for new questions to be raised about Portus and its environs and, by implication, suggest that integrated fieldwork strategies of this kind have much more to tell us about major Classical sites and other large and complex sites across the globe than by addressing them by means of single methods alone

Reconstructing a painful past: A non-invasive approach to reconstructing Lager Norderney in Alderney, the Channel Islands.

This chapter outlines the results of the investigations on the site of the former labour camp of Lager Norderney in the Channel Islands. In the past, opinions concerning the site have revolved around the perception that the site was destroyed; archaeological survey has demonstrated that this is not the case and the presentation of these findings through digital means has offered new insights into their form, function and surviving extent without ground disturbance. By employing a methodology that addresses all of the physical and cultural layers associated with this painful period of history, it has been possible to generate resources that mitigate against some of the issues surrounding its investigation