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This chapter examines the current state of first millennium BC research, focusing on the ways archaeological traditions have converged and diverged between and within the major Western European countries. It discusses the impact of such differences on the creation of different archaeologies throughout the region, focusing on key developments in social modelling, landscape archaeology, and studies of identity. It examines the reasons why topics such as ethnicity, identity, and agency have preoccupied many British scholars; why such themes have had less resonance in Continental approaches; and to what extent does recent work, illustrated by the chapters in this volume, represent the emergence of a paradigm shift, or continued divergence of perspectives. The chapter aims to provide a view of the state of late Bronze Age and Iron Age studies from contrasting European perspectives. It concludes with an outline of how a European approach may be conceived and reflect on the benefits of European-wide dialogue.

This chapter presents a critical review of the settlement patterns recognized to date in relation to the occupation of Pre-Hispanic groups in the central–west region of the modern state of Durango in northwestern Mexico. It also proposes visualizing settlement patterns in the region through the perspective of landscape archaeology, in which distribution over a given landscape may be viewed as part of a society’s power strategies. To that end, it employs spatial analysis to critically examine a series of settlements that pertain to the Chalchihuites culture between AD 550–1250 in the Santiago Bayacora River Basin. Results suggest that Chalchihuites groups may have shared a system of knowledge–power with the rest of Mesoamerica, but that their physical landscape was distinct, and therefore the ways in which these groups appropriated the landscape differed. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the logic that dominates our interpretations of Mesoamerican settlements needs rethinking in northwestern Mexico.

This chapter begins with a general analysis of archaeological traditions in Europe, distinguishing between archaeological mainstreams and minorities. It then looks at the European Iron Age as a period of late prehistory and makes some observations about the nature of its archaeological research. This is followed by discussions of the archaeological traditions of the British and Spanish Iron Ages, focusing on three aspects: theoretical approaches, organization of the discipline, and archaeological practice; and approaches to Iron Age settlement and landscapes. It argues that settlement and landscape are traditional issues in European Iron Age archaeology, with different approaches in each archaeological tradition as well as language barriers to sharing results and knowledge. Iron Age studies must be contextualized in a more European context for creating common agendas in research and teaching and looking at the same questions from different backgrounds.

The introductory chapter situates the volume vis-à-vis existing literature concerned with household and landscape archaeology within the study of historic Caribbean slave societies. Whereas past work in the field has emphasized the macro point of view, choosing to examine landscapes from a plantationwide or even islandwide perspective, this volume uses a more diversified approach. The chapter also defines the authors’ understanding of the term “built environment,” which is used by all authors throughout the volume. It provides an overview of the few scholars who have considered domestic landscapes of the enslaved, highlighting the need for this volume to bring together more recent work in this direction. Finally, the chapter introduces and synthesizes the contributions of the book as a whole.

As tobacco cultivation swept across Virginia in the eighteenth century, the art of gardening took root among Virginia's elite. Thomas Jefferson drew on elements of gardens that he read about and visited in France and England in shaping the Poplar Forest retreat grounds to express his intellectual and aesthetic preferences. He designed the north core landscape around features of English picturesque garden design. The south core drew upon the more formal rules of geometry and symmetry used in neoclassical gardens and reflected the influence of Palladio on the architecture of the house and dependencies. Drawing on documents and decades of landscape archaeology, this chapter considers ornamental landscapes as expressions of personal identity writ large. Jefferson's private retreat and grounds reinforced his notion of himself that he had developed through study, observation, and action.

Chapter 6 takes up the changing spatial landscape explored first in chapter 4 in a much-altered political and economic environment, the decline of the anthracite coal industry in mid-century. This is also a period of emancipation for the company town accompanied by the development of new forms of identification and immigration of a different sort than that covered in previous chapters. Attention to the material record suggests that this emancipation from industrial control signalled the development of new forms of collectively organized communal improvements through direct democracy. Landscape archaeology also suggests that the intersection of contemporary subjectivity and space such as aspects of privacy, ownership, and differentiation also begin to take hold in this period.

This paper examines how each of the contributors to the volume explores the Woodland social landscape of the Southeast. The discussion examines the many different theoretical and methodological perspectives, as well as the many different kinds of archaeological evidence, that the individual chapter authors brought to bear on the topic. The papers demonstrate, each in their own way, that landscape history matters in southeastern archaeology. Domestic and ceremonial features like houses and work areas, mounds, earthworks, and plazas, as well as intervening fields, forests, and waterways, should not be thought of as finished creations but as socially constructed and cognized, continually changing settings. Southeastern prehistoric landscapes reflect the history and traditions of the peoples who lived in and shaped them. Landscape can be examined in many ways, and the archaeological case studies offered provide a means to examine how people over large areas were connected, and interacted, during the Woodland period.

This chapter sets out the aims of the book and examines the three main themes of landscape, time and memory and how they relate to Norse assembly sites. The importance of the recent developments in landscape archaeology as well as earlier thing site research for the results of this study is explained. Based on this work, a new interdisciplinary research methodology, drawingon archaeological evidence, written sources and place-names, has been developed.Through this approach, the meaning and use of thingsites across the Norse world is explored. This book therefore moves beyond assembly site descriptions and analyses and also investigates the activities enacted at the assemblies, and how these were experienced by the people gathered. Other significant themes includeexplanations of chronology and the terminology used.

This chapter investigates the archaeological landscapes of the frontiers of the Sasanian Empire. Drawing on evidence from current and archived archaeological surveys, in combination with high-resolution remote sensing datasets such as CORONA spy photography, we compare the organisation of settlements and defensive structures of the Sasanian frontier zones in response to a variety of external pressures. These varied from the Roman Empire in the west to less centralised entities, including nomadic groups, in the south-west and north-east. Following a general discussion of the multiple manifestations of Sasanian frontiers drawn from southern Mesopotamia (Iraq), northern Syria and north-eastern Iran, the main focus of the chapter is on the complex frontier landscape of the southern Caucasus, particularly the area of modern Azerbaijan, Georgia and Daghestan. We discuss the role of linear barriers, including the Gorgan Wall in north-eastern Iran and the Ghilghilchay and Derbent Walls in the Caucasus, irrigation systems, and alignments of fortifications and settlements in shaping their local landscapes. By placing the archaeological remains of the Sasanian Empire in a wider context we are able to examine the relationships between military installations, settlement patterns, infrastructure and geographical features such as mountain ranges and rivers. Comparing the different case studies allows us to conclude with some general statements on the nature of Sasanian power in the frontier territories of the empire.

Using examples from several different regions of the Sasanian Empire, this chapter will look at the archaeological evidence for connectivity in frontier zones. Though a number of geographically diverse cases will be considered, I will focus on the evidence for local, regional and interregional networks in the Gorgan Plain of northeast Iran. We currently know very little about Sasanian period routes through this landscape. Itineraries exist in antique through Islamic period textual sources, but the routes that they describe are often difficult to identify in the archaeological record. European travellers of the nineteenth century provide more detailed accounts, but the routes they describe reflect the political and economic landscape of a much later period. However, this information, combined with archaeological evidence for both earlier and later period routes, can be compared to archaeological settlement data for the Sasanian period to suggest potential pathways of movement. This approach will highlight how cultural, political and economic networks in this region (including both routes and boundaries) have changed through time.

This chapter focuses on the built environment and its articulation with a natural and supernatural landscape. It includes discussion of ideational themes such as temples made as simulacra of mountains: both the active volcanoes that impacted early urbanization and as life-giving sources of water. It also examines how ceremonial architecture including open plazas and towering pyramids could serve inclusive and divisive functions, and the high degree of standardization in how ceremonial precincts were oriented, likely linked to calendric and ritual considerations. Finally, the chapter examines how domestic architecture represented and generated the social distinctions associated with urbanism through variability in the size, elaboration, and symbolism of houses in early urban settings.