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‘Settlement patterns’ or ‘landscape studies’?

Reconciling Reason and Romance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Andrew Sherratt
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Extract

In considering the history of regional archaeological projects, I propose to use a long-term perspective. Rather than surveying relatively recent examples and inductively working out the differences between them, I should like instead to venture some historical generalisations about the mental and practical traditions in which such projects are set. I want to suggest that two contrasting attitudes and approaches have presented themselves, largely as alternatives, throughout the history of archaeology; and that these choices are still offering themselves today. While this is perhaps a rather long perspective to take, the alternative is a very short one. If we take the description ‘regional projects’ to mean the integrated investigation of sites in landscapes, then the concept is effectively post-1945 and really post-1965. The reason is very simple: money. Archaeologists at earlier periods just did not have the size of budget which now seems essential for what we call ‘regional projects’. Of course there were earlier examples of landscape studies in Europe, and excavations of two or more complementary sites; but it would be hard before the 1960s to find the degree of integrated investigation which is today the defining characteristic of a regional project. (Perhaps archaeologists in the Near East, by using very cheap labour, had the equivalent of a modern regional budget; but they had whole abandoned cities to investigate, so the regional label scarcely applies.)

Type
Special Section
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , December 1996 , pp. 140 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 1996

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