11th EAA Annual Meeting, Cork, Ireland.

5–11 September 2005

DAVID FONTIJN, UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN

MERIEL MCCLATCHIE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
FAY STEVENS, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

NARRATING THE ENVIRONMENT: BOUNDING SOCIAL PRACTICE TO LANDSCAPE AND

ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES

FRIDAY AFTERNOON

Session abstract
Increased interest and improved methods in the analysis of archaeological landscapes and
environmental materials throughout Europe has led to a situation where, in some areas, we are
provided with high-quality spatial and temporal patterning. Despite these advances, the
integration of such data into theoretical archaeological approaches does not seem to have kept
pace with the accumulation of data. Indeed, the preponderance to re-use outmoded datasets is
representative of how archaeologists orientate their way around interpreting relationships
between palaeoenvironmental evidence and human activity, highlighting the conceptual
divide between archaeological practice and interpretation. We suggest that understanding of
the archaeological environment requires a comprehension of how different ways of inhabiting
the world became possible, whereby the values that people give to land, plants, animals and
food is fundamental to the construction of social practice.

This session will explore the application of landscape and environmental analyses in the
construction of social and cultural archaeological narratives. We would like to encourage
papers that demonstrate how environmental data is a method of enquiry into the ways that
humans bound their own biographies to that of the environmental resources around them.
From this perspective, social practice does not stand in opposition to nature, but is created in a
complex network of exchanges that bind different lifeforms together in various, what has been
referred to as, symbiotic relationships.

14:15-14:20 Introduction
Fay Stevens, University College London

14:20-14:40 Introduction - Environmental narratives: methodological and theoretical

perspectives
David Fontijn, University of Leiden; Meriel McClatchie, University College London; Fay
Stevens, University College London
In this paper we will explore the methodological, theoretical and anthropological
applications of landscape and environmental analyses in the construction of social and
cultural archaeological narratives. We suggest that an understanding of the archaeological
environment requires a comprehension of how different ways of inhabiting the world became
possible, whereby the values that people give to land, plants, animals and food is fundamental
to the construction of social practice. Thus, narrating the environment can be considered a
method of enquiry into the ways that humans bind their own biographies to that of
environmental resources around them.

14:40-15:00 Lakes, life and landscape - merging the archaeology of watery places
Christina Fredengren, Discovery Programme, Ireland
This paper explores different routes towards understanding the different watery
environments that the Lake Settlement Project of the Discovery Programme works with.

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There are challenges in merging environmental investigations with theories about social
agency and landscape, but also great gains to make. In particular this paper will draw on
analyses of fieldwork in Lough Kinale, Co. Longford and Lough Gara, Co. Sligo, Ireland in
order to develop ideas of how different types of waters may have been commented upon and
changed over time. It will also try to get to terms with issues of human and non-human
agency and variations in the perception of waters over time.

15:00-15:20 New approaches to Bronze Age landscapes in Northwestern Europe:

relating land use to field systems
Helen Lewis, University of Cambridge
This paper will explore new approaches in the investigation of field systems and land
management, using case studies from Northwestern Europe .

15:20-15:30Discussion

15:30-15:50CoffeeBreak

15:50-15:55 Introduction
Meriel McClatchie, University College London

15:55-16:15 Living in the Dutch river area during the Bronze Age
Peter Jongste, University of Leiden
In the last decade, numerous Bronze Age settlement-sites have been excavated in the
Dutch river area. The emphasis on the cultural landscape, using physical geography, botany
and zoology has yielded an abundance of new data on human occupation that is currently
being studied at Leiden University (see: www.bronstijd.nl). This not only has led to new
insights in the layout of the cultural Bronze Age landscape, but also in its long-term
developments. Phases of relative stable conditions favourable to occupation alternated with
periods of instability locally when rivers changed their courses or on a regional level when the
number of alvulsions grew significantly (e.g. during the Late Bronze Age). The main
objective of this study is to assess the human responses towards these profound changes in the
dynamics of the landscape and the environmental constraints. Despite these, the river area
remained populated throughout the whole of the 2nd millennium BC.

16:15-16:35 Working on the archaeology of a non-human animal: the wider implications

of research on Castor fiber, the European beaver
Bryony Coles, University of Exeter
Archaeological fieldwork in wetland contexts has produced evidence for the activities
of the European beaver, Castor fiber, and for human exploitation of the animal. This has
prompted further investigation of the species, first to improve the recognition of its presence
in the archaeological record and then to achieve a better understanding of the animal and its
values to humans. Fieldwork in present-day beaver territories in western Europe, reinforced
by the ecological literature, has demonstrated the significance of the beaver as a keystone
ecological species. Most authorities discuss this in terms of modern environmental
management, but for archaeologists it also has important implications for our understanding
of past environments, and these will emerge in the course of the paper.
However, it is the by-products of the fieldwork which will form the main focus of this paper,
the unexpected and sometimes disconcerting comparisons between the archaeology of beavers
and that of humans. They range from practical field matters which have offered some new
perceptions of the nature of archaeological sites, to a suite of similarities and differences

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between human and beaver activity, which include family life, teaching and specialisation, the
making of structures, artefacts and art, patterned deposition, and manipulation of the
environment. For a new perspective on human history, perhaps the most interesting question
relates to the extent of environmental impact: today, the `footprint` of humans is literally and
metaphorically bigger that that of beavers, whereas one could argue that back in the
Palaeolithic beavers had the greater effect - but when was it that humans overtook them?

16:35-16:55 Deciphering social practice in an estuarine landscape: proposing an

interpretive framework for excavations at Newrath, Co. Kilkenny
Brendon Wilkins, Headland Archaeology, Ireland
The archaeological mitigation of alluvial and estuarine landscapes in response to large
infrastructural development programmes is a relatively new direction for Irish archaeology,
albeit one of increasing importance. Site 34, in the townland of Newrath, Co. Kilkenny, was
excavated on behalf of Waterford City Council prior to the construction of the N25 Waterford
Bypass. The archaeological deposits were located on a probable shelving terrace, now
covered by an unbroken sequence of deep Holocene sediment, in an area where these deposits
were no more than 2-3 m deep. They can be grouped into three main phases of activity: later
Mesolithic flint scatters on a dry land surface predating the accumulation of organic peat
deposits; later prehistoric trackways and informal brushwood platforms forming hurdles
across tidal creeks or accessing the main river channel from the dryland margin; and later
prehistoric fulacht fiadh on what would have been the eastern shore of the contemporary
wetland area. Far from marginal or peripheral, the results indicate that the wetland area was a
highly important resource of cultural, social and economic significance. The excavation
strategy adopted a multi-scaler approach to the data relating specific cultural events, such as
the construction of a trackway, with natural changes in the deposit sequence, such as the onset
of peat formation or periods of inundation. Post-excavation assessment of species selection
processes, tool mark analysis and environmental reconstruction contribute to an interpretive
framework foregrounding human strategies in the exploitation of a rich wetland resource.

16:55-17:15 A life amongst trees: perceptions of the environment in the Neolithic of

Northwest Europe
Gordon Noble
Interaction with the natural environment forms the basis of people’s understandings
of the world around. It is difficult for most of us today to imagine what it would be like to live
in a wooded environment, but in Neolithic Scotland everyday life was surrounded by the
forest. Trees and woodland are rarely studied in any detail in prehistoric archaeology as they
often only leave fragmentary traces in the archaeological record. However, timber formed an
important medium for the construction of monuments in the Neolithic and it is crucial that we
consider the materiality of this substance in our considerations of past lives. In this paper it is
argued that Neolithic communities in Scotland drew on the symbolism of the forest when
constructing their built environment and that the architectures they constructed were a
synthesis of the natural and cultural environments. Timber seems to have been used as a
medium through which ideas about the fundamental processes of life and death were
symbolised and these ideas were incorporated into a number of different forms of
monumental structure, all of which were built from the architectural building blocks of the
forest environment.

17:15-18:00 Discussion and summing-up

Led by David Fontijn, University of Leiden

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