Iron Age Saunas of Northern Portugal: State of the Art and Research Perspectives

Special buildings used as saunas have been found in certain large hillforts in the north of Portugal and in the Cantabrian coastal area of Asturias and Galicia in Spain. The principal aim of this study is to highlight the importance of these buildings in the archaeology and art of the European Iron Age, where they are very rarely mentioned. Two approaches are developed: in Parts 1 and 2, we explain the structure of the buildings, their function, and the current debate surrounding their dating. In Parts 3 and 4, further analyses are developed on their position in the landscape, associating the saunas with the public life of the hillforts, and on the decorative structure of the pedras formosas (‘beautiful stones’) found in some of them, and their relation to certain artistic trends in so‐called Celtic art.     

To see or to be seen… is that the question? An evaluation of palaeolithic sites’ visual presence and their role in social organization

Visibility is one of the most common features considered when analyzing site location; visual control of a territory is usually considered to be a desirable characteristic for a prehistoric settlement. However, the role that visibility could have played in the perception of sites, as a significant element of palaeolithic landscapes, has been rarely evaluated. Sites can act not only as settlements but as places for population aggregations, social interactions and symbolic activities; in this context, the relevance presence of a site within the landscape could have been an influencing factor in site location preferences. This paper focuses on the visual presence of a set of sites from Late palaeolithic Cantabria (Northern Iberian Peninsula), and evaluates how the way they were perceived could have been related to their role in the social organization of foraging communities.     

Seeing what you know: Changing constructions and perceptions of landscape in Epirus,Northwestern Greece, 1945 and 1990

This paper considers how current understandings of historical events, past practices and movements of the people of Pogoni in Epirus, Northwestern Greece, informs the way they currently visually perceive their physical and social landscape. Taking two periods, marked as prior to 1945 and up to 1990, the paper explores, with the use of maps showing different temporal versions of the visual perception of the area, the combination of social, historical and spatial elements which combined to generate Pogoni people's perception of their “place”;. It argues that the current experience of place emphasises both the visual and historical aspects of it (through notions such as “cultural heritage"). In this context, what people “see”; is the combined outcome of particular reconstructions of past relations and movements around the place, overlaid with current practices, experiences and movements through the place.     

Assessing the level of visibility of cultural objects in past landscapes

Visibility is often understood to play a significant role in the placement of cultural objects within past landscapes. In recent years, GIS-based visibility studies have become popular as a method for assessing the role of views to and from sites and features. A significant drawback to these analyses is that they do not take into account how far an object can be clearly seen and recognized. A number of factors influence the visibility of objects, including the limits of human visual acuity, environmental effects such as atmospheric extinction, and the physical properties of object and surroundings. Current approaches that attempt to account for these influences focus on defining visual zones, but are limited because they do not directly address object size. A fuzzy viewshed approach, modified to account for target size, is suggested as a solution for assessing the level of visibility of cultural objects in past landscapes.     

Reconstruction of Caprine Management and Landscape Use Through Dental Microwear Analysis: The Case of the Iron Age Site of El Turó de la Font de la Canya (Barcelona,Spain)

This paper presents the results of a pilot study using dental microwear analysis on 23 sheep and goat teeth dated to the 6th century BC from the Iron Age site of El Turó Font de la Canya (Barcelona, Spain). This study aimed to reconstruct livestock management practices and landscape use. The dental microwear pattern indicates that sheep and goats could have been grazing in the same area where vegetation was composed of shrubs, bushes and non-graminaceous plants on an eroded landscape, although additional supplies of fodder cannot be excluded. This scenario is compatible with the archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data which suggest a possibly increased territoriality, land degradation and an increase of woodland clearance during Iron Age in the North-east of the Iberian Peninsula. Furthermore, we applied two recent microwear approaches which provide more information about mortality events and the possibility of distinguishing between an intensive and extensive management. This paper demonstrates how this method can be used to better understand animal husbandry practices and landscape use in Late Prehistory.     

Where is Helvellyn? Fuzziness of multi-scale landscape morphometry

The landscape in which people live is made up of many features, which are named and have importance for cultural reasons. Prominent among these are the naming of upland features such as mountains, but mountains are an enigmatic phenomenon which do not bear precise and repeatable definition. They have a vague spatial extent, and recent research has modelled such classes as spatial fuzzy sets. We take a specifically multi-resolution approach to the definition of the fuzzy set membership of morphometric classes of landscape. We explore this idea with respect to the identification of culturally recognized landscape features of the English Lake District. Discussion focuses on peaks and passes, and the results show that the landscape elements identified in the analysis correspond to well-known landmarks included in a place name database for the area, although many more are found in the analysis than are named in the available database. Further analysis shows that a richer interrogation of the landscape can be achieved with Geographical Information Systems when using this method than using standard approaches.     

Islam and the rural landscape: discourses of absence in west Wales

This paper explores the relationship between the presence and absence of Islamic communities in western Wales. Commencing with a discussion of the literatures on the geographies of Islam and rural exclusion, I argue that both sets have neglected research on rural religious communities. Discussion is centred upon the visual absence of Islam in the area, as local mosques are predominantly housed in contingent or non-purpose-built buildings. Using interview data, I examine the implications of these absences for local Muslims' experiences of rural landscapes, and discuss the juxtaposition between the visual absence of cultural indicators of Islam and the contingent strategies these communities employ to meet their religious needs. Adopting Nancy Fraser's concept of a subaltern counterpublic, I argue that the contingent presence in the landscape brings organisational possibilities. However, the lack of visibility of these counterpublics also brings challenges, fragmenting the community and creating difficulties for individuals to access particular services. This subterranean ontology has implications not only for liberal ideas of publicity and privacy, but also for inclusive citizenship in an era when debates about multiculturalism centre on accommodating religious needs.     

Grieving home

Drawing on the growing areas of research on emotional embodiment, this paper develops an understanding of the spatiality of grief as central to the discussion of young people's experiences of homelessness. In the context of my engagement with young homeless people in inner-city Sydney, I explore grief as central in shaping young people's everyday body–place relations. I argue that grief over often brutal past homes continues to haunt young people and impact on the ways in which they relate to place, including the place of their own body. I explore young people's displacement and grief-stricken forms of inhabitation as well and their discovery of ‘therapeutic’ places which allow the re-formation of more positive relations to place and self. I argue that while it is understood that grief and trauma are key causes of homelessness amongst young people, grief is rarely explored as an embodied practice, or as a key factor which continues to underpin trajectories of homelessness after initial exits from home.     

Paradigms,Assumptions, Enclosure,and Violence: The Hillforts of Strathdon

Abstract

This paper examines the assumptions and intellectual models that lie behind the debate around the connections between violence, warfare, and hillfort construction. These underlining academic paradigms have been heavily influenced by current social and political mores, which have created a context in which prehistoric and Early Medieval hillforts are studied in isolation and where the theoretical models have been developed from and with sole reference to the prehistoric period. In turn the debate in Scotland is based on a very limited number of dated hillforts. New excavation by the author from Aberdeenshire has allowed an attempt at an integrated settlement sequence and this is presented in the assumed context of violence as a dominant influencing factor in hillfort design and construction at specific periods.     

Wearable cameras,in-visible breasts: intimate spatialities of feminist research with wearable camcorders in Istanbul

Abstract

Video-based wearable technology such as actioncams and optical head mount devices lead to various kinds of visualities and interrelations between camera vision, bodily visibility, immersive viewing and public visibility of the body-wearing-the-camera. These interrelations are not neutral and in order to claim wearable visual technology's potential for critical, feminist research, it is essential to problematise the contexts and frictions that precede and/or surface during and after the bodily experience of shooting with a wearable device in a research context. In this article, I problematise the common approaches to video-based wearable research technology by engaging participants' particular ethical, emotional, political positions and embodiment of camera's prosthetic vision during mobile visual research in Istanbul. This work was realised as part of the ongoing study on memories of violence and wellbeing in Istanbul and the specific questions that guide my discussion are: what wearable camcorders as mobile research tool do to bodies; how they co-constitute the norms of visibility, movement and gender of particular bodies and what practices and emotional responses emerge from these intersections. A major aim, therefore, is to situate the camera experience as in physical and social relations of moving, seeing and be seen as gendered bodies in specific (research) settings. Drawing on ‘the embodied nature of all vision’, the article provides a close-up, chest-specific analysis of the implications of doing wearable visual research and presents breast-space as an emergent research site in my Istanbul study.     

Working in landscape archaeology: the social and territorial significance of the agricultural revolution in al‐Andalus

The agrarian transformations which took place in the Iberian Peninsula between the eighth and the tenth century are essential for an understanding of how al‐Andalus came into being. These developments provided the basis of a social formation which developed into a tributary mode of production. This study is part of a research project that draws inspiration from the tenets of landscape archaeology. Studying historic landscapes as part of the material culture of past societies provides valuable information about cultures and the ways they express themselves in space.     

BEFORE HILLFORTS

Summary. The origins of four Hampshire hillforts are examined and their relationships to linear ditch systems are defined. Comparable sites are briefly considered. From this evidence a pattern of change covering the first half of the first millennium BC can be distinguished beginning with open settlement and ending with strongly defended hillforts set in a densely occupied landscape. Reasons for the transformation are considered, the most likely being a change from communally owned land to the individual control of defined territories.     

APPROACHING THE LANDSCAPE DIMENSION OF THE MEGALITHIC PHENOMENON IN SOUTHERN SPAIN

Although the megalithic phenomenon in southern Iberia has received attention since the mid‐nineteenth century, there has been very little attention paid to the role that megalithic structures played in the organization of prehistoric landscapes. Just as in other areas of Europe, however, southern Iberian megalithic structures must have played complex roles in the social organization of landscapes that go far beyond their use as funerary containers. Using examples from our work in southern Iberia, we employ GIS‐based spatial analysis to explore for the first time various aspects of the landscape dimension of these monuments. We discuss three case‐studies for which fresh field data have been recently made available. In the first (Almadén de la Plata) we find patterns of association between medieval transhumance routes and megaliths, and we use cost‐surface modelling to suggest that medieval routes may reflect earlier, prehistoric patterns of movement which in turn suggest that megalithic structures functioned in this area as waypoints within an emerging mobility system for people and livestock. In the second case (Aroche) we show correlations between the locations of megaliths and theoretical territories defined by isochrones and contrast this pattern with the distribution of non‐megalithic funerary sites of the Early Bronze Age, concluding that the spatial distribution of megaliths in this region may relate to their role as landmarks. Lastly we describe a far more specific relationship which we have encountered in the Antequera region, where we believe we have identified a relationship between the orientation of the megalithic structure of Menga, a prominent natural feature and several newly discovered prehistoric sites. Together, these three examples suggest that the current focus on typology, chronology and contents in the study of Iberian megaliths needs to be matched with efforts to identify and interpret the often highly complex structure of the prehistoric landscapes of which they form an integral part.     

Developing a Landscape History as Part of a Survey Strategy: A Critique of Current Settlement System Approaches based on Case Studies from Western New South Wales,Australia

In Australia, geomorphological change since the late nineteenth century ensures surface artifact visibility but the contribution of full coverage regional survey to an understanding of past landscape use is limited by the lack of easily datable artifacts. Here, we describe a multi-stage survey strategy based around intensive archaeological, geomorphological and chronological studies as an alternative to traditional site-based approaches. We view the formation of the archaeological record as a sedimentary process and use a geomorphological approach to understand the history of landscape use from surface artifact scatters. We pay particular attention to recording datasets with reference to the timescales over which they have accumulated, and we discuss the types of behavioral inferences that can be drawn from the results of intensive survey, illustrated using the results from our western New South Wales research.     

From Pre‐Roman Bailo To Roman Baelo: Long‐Term Landscape Dynamics In The Straits Of Gibraltar

The Straits of Gibraltar have been historically an important maritime axis of connection between the Mediterranean and Atlantic areas of the Iberian Peninsula. For this reason, most of the archaeological research has focused on the coastal settlements, but its broader archaeological landscape remains mostly unknown. In this paper, we present recent intensive surveys in which a wide range of sites was detected, dating from the eighth century BC to the fourteenth AD. The ancient landscape is thus reconstructed over a long‐term perspective. Prior to the Roman expansion, the earlier Bailo‐La Silla del Papa was an urban central place that supported a dense network of subordinate settlements. Later on, the central settlement was transported from inland to the coastal town of Baelo Claudia, but the territorial structure remained based on a similar pattern.     

ROCK ART AND RITUAL LANDSCAPE IN CENTRAL SPAIN: THE ROCK CARVINGS OF LA HINOJOSA (CUENCA)

Summary. In this article the rock art carvings of La Hinojosa in central Spain are examined. Their connection to a major transit route recorded at least from the medieval period is explored, as well as their location in a valley located at the confluence of two primary river basins in the Iberian Peninsula separated by less than five kilometres. It is argued that this singularity of the landscape seems to have been perceived by the people who marked the stones. From the 17 decorated rocks recorded in La Hinojosa valley, three were exceptionally elaborately decorated. They were situated at regular intervals in the valley. The site with the greatest number of motifs, the large rock of San Bernardino, occupies a central location. This site is also exceptional because of the transformations which the rock shows throughout the day, pointing to a narrative in which cups and anthropomorphs seem to have a primary role. It is suggested that gender may have constituted one of the main guidelines of the narrative, given the apparent replacement of feminine by masculine human representations throughout the day.     

The Sound of Silence: Valuing Acoustics in Heritage Conservation

This paper explores the reasons behind the omission of historic acoustic values from heritage assessments in Australia. Best practice dictates that all cultural heritage values associated with significant places should be assessed in order to make informed conservation and management decisions. However, the multi‐sensory nature of aesthetics has been reframed in guidance documentation in ways that run counter to the primary frame. Conventions that have developed around the way places are assessed also work against comprehensive identification of values. As a result, the consideration of aesthetics in cultural heritage is limited to contemporary visual qualities. Furthermore, because the assessment of historic value takes a diachronic rather than synchronic approach, we have little knowledge of the places past communities valued for the sounds they experienced there. Research into landscape preference and acoustic ecology highlights the importance of identifying the inherent acoustic dimension of places and the role sound plays in developing a sense of place. Two landscape areas in Western Australia's south‐west with historic acoustic values, the Boranup Sand Patch and the Lower Reaches of the Blackwood River, illustrate how historic soundscapes can provide insightful contrasts and resonances with contemporary values, and how vulnerable such places are when the sound of place is overlooked in land management policies.     

FEELING IS BELIEVING, OR LANDSCAPE AS A WAY OF BEING IN THE WORLD

This article is work‐in‐progress, an orientation of thought towards possibilities for individual human beings to diminish the distance between outer and inner landscapes imposed by cultural norms and happenstances such as exile. The dominance of visual landscapes and visual perceptions is seen as a pivotal problem, to be solved by the engagement of all the senses in landscape discourse and formation. All the senses are engaged in earliest childhood, as they have been in ‘primitive’ societies. While returning to either a state of childhood or primitivism is an impossible dream, it is possible to edge closer to human nature by engaging and honing all the senses, especially the ‘earth‐bound senses’ of feel, smell and taste. Cultivating those senses and developing discourse about them, and incorporating them into landscape formation and enjoyment, is much more difficult than having a discourse about sight and hearing, for which there is a rich and well‐developed symbolic language and which can be shared through various types of media. The way towards a deeper discourse about the earth‐bound senses, and the way out of the tyranny of the visual, is to be found in stories, as several thinkers suggest. The story told is autobiographical and literary – a mode of geographic writing that I developed in a 2004 book (Bunk?e 2004a), in which the complex dilemmas of home and road were explored. This article shows how in the early 1970s I defined the individual's landscape as ‘a unity in one's surroundings perceived through all the senses’, with imagination as the key human faculty. And I tell the story of how through complex circumstances, a visually and emotionally repugnant landscape became emotionally and intellectually attractive, with a scent, not a picture or image causing the initial attraction. The external and internal landscapes are thus unified, resulting in a sense of timelessness and placelessness of deep existential significance for the person.     

Assessing the later prehistoric environmental archaeology and landscape development of the Cetina Valley,Croatia

Abstract

This paper describes preliminary work on the environmental and archaeological potential of the Cetina River Valley, Croatia. Two seasons of fieldwork and assessment have suggested that the valley contains a preserved landscape, much of which is waterlogged. It is clear that there is the potential to address many local and regional questions concerning land use, subsistence and environmental change in an area where previously only limited environmental archaeology has been undertaken. One pressing issue is how to prospect for both cultural and environmental archaeological deposits within this regional landscape. This is especially true in cases where little 'base-line data' exists. This paper outlines the current practice and suggests a number of new approaches to prospecting for environmental 'hotspots'.     

Excavating Racial Capitalism in London's West India Docks

Focusing on the construction of London's West India Docks in 1802, I argue that this project established a feedback loop with conditions of production in the Caribbean. Through an analysis of committee minutes, letters, parliamentary papers and visual art, I move beyond economic accounts of slavery's impact to demonstrate how geographies of security and surveillance—first developed on the sugar plantation—were imported into the design and function of London's port. As such, I argue that London's docks produced a geography of segregation which offers a unique insight into the workings of racial capitalism and its exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities. Positioning my discussion alongside London's contemporary landscape, I excavate Britain's repressed memories of slavery to illustrate how they still scar the urban environment.