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Landscape Archaeology

Introduction and Definition

An ever-present characteristic in any definition of Landscape Archaeology is that it refers to a varied and somewhat heterogeneous field of archaeological research. A number of approaches to the archaeological record may be included under this label, which in essence share one common interest: the analysis, through material culture, of the spatial dimension of human activity; in other words, exploring how human communities have related to a geographic space through time in terms of how they appropriated this space, and/or transformed its appearance through work and its significance through cultural practices.

There are two main reasons that explain why Landscape Archaeology is a wide-ranging concept today. Firstly, the general changes in the theoretical foundations of the archaeological discourse that have occurred through time, especially since the middle of the 20th century. Secondly, the different theoretical perspectives, both past