by Jon Lackman | 2 April 2007 | Ancient, Theory
The March 2007 World Archaeology is devoted to ‘viewing space.’ In the preface, Mark Lake writes that archaeologists’ studies of this topic over the last 15 years “have been dominated by landscape studies, particularly the placement of monuments.” They have either focused on the phenomenology of “embodied experience” or “made substantial use of the visibility analysis tools provided by geographical information systems [GIS].” “Initially I anticipated that this issue would provide a vehicle for dialogue between these two strands. That this has not happened is in part due to the unwillingness (in a few honourable cases, inability) of potential authors to contribute to such a project. This is in itself interesting, although perhaps not surprising if, for example, Julian Thomas’ view that the use of GIS and virtual reality modelling ‘inhibits our understanding of the past in serious ways’ is more widely shared. In retrospect, this failure to engender such a dialogue may be a blessing in disguise. For one thing, the ‘embodied experience’ approach has an established internal critique, as does the GIS approach, and broadly sympathetic internal critique is often more productive than a noisy paradigm clash — unless of course one is seeking paradigm replacement.”
