Robert Johnston

Approaches to the perception of landscape: Philosophy, theory, methodology

This paper is a review of recent academic debate dealing with the relationship between perception and landscape. It is suggested that there are two ways in which the perception of landscape is considered : the explicit and the inherent approach. The explicit approach isolates perception within the landscape as something between the observed and the cognitised. While an inherent approach does not isolate perception because it is embedded within ways of living - or being. The discussion is illustrated with archaeological examples.

A social archaeology of garden plots in the Bronze Age of northern and western Britain

This article examines the evidence for gardens in the Bronze Age landscapes of northern and western Britain. It offers an alternative perspective on the small field plots and unbounded areas of cultivated land by treating them as spaces that people inhabited with plants and animals, where environmental knowledge was learnt and controlled, and where social roles and identities were defined, maintained and contested. The excavated evidence shows that the biographies of houses are closely associated with those of the adjacent field plots. It also highlights the need to consider the ‘in-between places’ around the edges of buildings, along boundaries and in unkempt corners of fields. The coexistence of both domesticated and other plants demonstrates that gardens were not spaces dedicated to economic production in the terms that we understand today; rather they were places where people engaged closely with the botanical world and so gave it cultural value. The occupations of gardens and settlements were long-lived, if not necessarily continuous, and so provided the conditions in which more intensive strategies could be adopted, developing towards a more permanent and long-lasting commitment to place and landscape. Relations between people were structured through the contribution of gardening to activities such as the preparation and consumption of food, the provision of plants for medicinal and ritual purposes and the use of plots for keeping animals and as disposal areas for household refuse. These activities were closely controlled and, because of their cultural value, gardens were defined and their link to houses expressed as a means of negotiating social roles and identities within co-resident groups.

Copper mining and the transformation of environmental knowledge in Bronze Age Britain

The argument presented in this article is that copper mining during the Bronze Age in north Wales transformed the cultural landscape, specifically peoples understandings of underground spaces — the mines themselves and nearby caves. The basis for the argument is a correlation between mining and a hiatus in the depositional history in the regions caves. The interpretation offered for this evidence is that through the creation and appropriation of underground spaces during mining people developed a different knowledge of how caves were formed. This new environmental knowledge denied the caves a status as mediatory or liminal places where rituals associated with other spheres of social life might be undertaken. Such knowledge was constituted by and served to structure the use and perception of the landscape by the communities who worked the mines.

Action heritage: research, communities, social justice

Abstract Societies are unequal and unjust to varying degrees and heritage practitioners unavoidably work with, perpetuate and have the potential to change these inequalities. This article proposes a new framework for undertaking heritage research that can be applied widely and purposefully to achieve social justice, and which we refer to as action heritage. Our primary sources are semi-structured conversations we held with some of the participants in three heritage projects in South Yorkshire, UK: members of a hostel for homeless young people, a primary school, and a local history group. We examine ‘disruptions’ in the projects to understand the repositioning of the participants as researchers. The disruptions include introducing a scrapbook for personal stories in the homeless youth project and giving the school children opportunities to excavate alongside professional archaeologists. These disruptions reveal material and social inequalities through perceptible changes in how the projects were oriented and how the participants thought about the research. We draw on this empirical research and theorisations of social justice to develop a new framework for undertaking co-produced research. Action heritage is ‘undisciplinary’ research that privileges process over outcomes, and which achieves parity of participation between academic and community-based researchers through sustained recognition and redistribution.