Session: #295

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
1. Widening horizons through human-environment interconnections
Session format:
Regular session

Title & Content

Title:
Beyond the Far Horizon: Evaluating Regional Survey in the Western Iberian Peninsula. The State-of-the-Art and Future Prospects [FIDO; Archaeological Prospection]
Content:
Regional landscape surveys in the Mediterranean have been widely employed since the1980 s, with the seminal article by John Bintliff and Anthony Snodgrass (1988) continuing to provide a methodological and conceptual underpinning to many current projects. Despite this prevalence, projects have often focussed on historically important sites, or otherwise easily accessible landscapes; marginal landscapes and those on the periphery of historically attested polities remain understudied.
This session aims to address some of these lacunae through a focus on one such liminal zone, the western Iberian Peninsula. Despite a strong tradition of recording rural archaeological sites, often resulting in municipal site-catalogues, and in studies centred on the hinterlands of ancient cities, there is little current engagement in western Iberia with emerging trends in survey methodologies. We therefore aim to address the following specific questions: how can challenging landscapes such as the dehesa and mountainous regions be approached archaeologically; how might industrial agricultural landscapes be harnessed for their archaeological potential, and how can archaeological resources be understood and preserved; what are the current links between western Iberian surveys and projects elsewhere in the Mediterranean, and how have survey methodologies in these marginal landscapes been tailored to specific archaeological and historical goals and aims?
From this focus, we aim to widen the horizons of discourse on landscape studies, relying on methodological and theoretical insights from this, and other regions, to develop a discussion around how to engage with key socio-cultural questions about identity, the exploitation of landscape and its sustainability.
Since different national research traditions encourage a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, we welcome proposals from colleagues which apply a landscape archaeology perspective to surveys dealing with Western Iberia, and also papers concerning other Mediterranean zones.
Bintliff, J., Snodgrass, A., 1988. Mediterranean survey and the city. Antiquity 62, 57–71.
Keywords:
Field survey, Legacy data, Spatial analysis, Landscape archaeology, Western Iberia
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
EAA Archaeological Prospection Community; Community on Fieldwalking Documentation (FIDO)

Organisers

Main organiser:
Jesús García Sánchez (Spain) 1
Co-organisers:
Taelman Devi (Belgium) 2
Johnson Paul S. (United Kingdom) 3
Affiliations:
1. CSIC-Instituto de Arqueología,Mérida
2. Ghent University
3. University of Nottingham