Ideas of Landscape [Paperback]

Ideas of Landscape discusses the current theory and practice of landscape archaeology and offers an alternative agenda for landscape archaeology that maps more closely onto the established empirical strengths of landscape study and has more contemporary relevance.

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• The first historical assessment of a critical period in archaeology
  
• Takes as its focus the so-called English landscape tradition -- the ideological underpinnings of which come from English Romanticism, via the influence of the “father of landscape history”: W. G. Hoskins
  
• Argues that the strengths and weaknesses of landscape archaeology can be traced back to the underlying theoretical discontents of Romanticism
  
• Offers an alternative agenda for landscape archaeology that maps more closely onto the established empirical strengths of landscape study and has more contemporary relevance

List of Figures.

Acknowledgements.

The Argument.

Preface: Thinking about Swaledale.

1. Introduction.

2. Lonely as a Cloud.

3. A Good Pair of Boots.

4. The Loss of Innocence.

5. Landscape Archaeology Today.

6. The Politics of Landscape.

7. Conclusion.

Glossary.

References.

Index

I read Matthew Johnson's Ideas of Landscape (Blackwell) with intense interest. It discusses the theory and practice of landscape archaeology and the Romantic English landscape tradition, boldly taking on received opinion about figures such as Wordsworth and WG Hoskins, and making us think hard about what we can know about the past, why we want lcz