Ruth Whitehouse

Phenomenology in Practice: Towards a Methodology for a 'Subjective' Approach

The article deals with the practice of phenomenological archaeological fieldwork, which is concerned with sensory experience of landscapes and locales. Phenomenological approaches in archaeology ha...

The last hunter‐gatherers in southern Italy

Abstract The paper discusses the impact made by the introduction of farming on the indigenous hunter‐gatherers of southern Italy. The indigenous communities were forced to adapt their traditional economy to the changing environment created by the farmers. The author studies the development of these communities after the arrival of the neolithic settlers and divides it into four phases. The first phase is characterized by specialized food‐collection; in the second phase some elements of the farming economy were adopted ; while during the third and fourth phases there was a steady development towards a mixed farming economy. In the final phase, which belongs to the very end of the neolithic, the economy was similar to that of the intrusive farming communities.

Say it with stone: constructing with stones on Easter Island

Abstract By considering the stones of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) on a landscape scale, their sources, properties and elemental use in architecture during the statue production period and beyond – from modest ovens to immense statues, a case is made that stone and stones were an essential connective substance of Rapa Nui society. It is posited that stone connected understandings of the land and sea both directly and inversely, that it expressed through colour the sacred status of the ancestors, and that it aligned human life-cycles with the natural lives of stone and stones. Work with stone on Rapa Nui was potentially sacred work and to harvest and move stone required that places and people were linked in face-to-face and hand-to-hand labour. This related to far more than the task of making and sometimes moving colossal statues. Whole beaches or at least their stones were transposed from sea to land and a wide range of land and sea stones were used conjointly to create webs of meaning on an island-wide scale.

Siticulosa Apulia revisited

In recognition of the significance of these sites, and those of the classical and medieval periods also revealed by aerial photography, the Apulia Committee was set up under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries to organize a systematic programme of research. Unhappily this enterprise, begun with great intentions, became an early victim of tragic illness and accident of the chief protagonists and latterly has fallen into the malaise characteristic of old archaeological projects that have lost their initial momentum. All that is available in print is three preliminary reports in ANTIQUITY (Bradford & Williams-Hunt, 1946; Bradford, 1949; Bradford, 1950), some further information in Bradfords book Ancient landscapes (1957) and a few articles by other authors that arose as a result of work sponsored by the Apulia Committee. Of the series of monographs initially envisaged by the Society of Antiquaries, none has yet appeared, though at the time of writing (June 1984) the first-on the neolithic sites-is now advertised (Jones in press). In the years since 1945 there has been considerable work on the Tavoliere, most of it by Italian scholars, Further aerial photography has greatly increased the number of known sites (Odetti, 1975), while excavation and some field survey have gathered information about the nature and chronology of the sites.