eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

archaeology. Is archaeology without the methods developed to gather information about the
past, such as field survey and excavation any longer archaeology? Does it not become a
different discipline altogether if we take away the “spatial technologies which seek to lay bare
and penetrate the land” that trouble Thomas (2001, p.169). Although Thomas gives three
examples - GIS, satellite imagery and aerial photography - surely, excavation is the very
epitome of laying bare and penetrating the land, even if not strictly a technology, and it is
something I have seen Thomas do with his own bare hands.
In this manner, the way archaeology is practised must take responsibility for the way GIS has
been used. There seems to be a strong link between survey methodologies and the data it
produces and GIS that has made GIS a most suitable and almost natural progression in terms
of utilising modern technologies. However, rather than stating simply that GIS’s have strong
environmental tendencies, GIS’s perhaps have exacerbated the propensity for surveys to
collect environmental data. Specifically in terms of its use in archaeology this predilection
has continued not necessarily because of a inherently environmentally deterministic nature of
GIS but because of inherently environmentally tendencies of archaeological survey
methodologies (which themselves have their origins within the New Archaeology of the 60’s
and 70’s) and hence the data that they throw up. What must be made clear though is that no
one, to my knowledge, is suggesting or has suggested that data pertaining to the natural
environment should be ignored and not collected. To disregard a whole range of valuable and
possibly relevant material would be just as amiss as not taking into account ideas of the many
ways in which landscapes can be defined and might be perceived and lived within and
through. The point is, it cannot possibly be expected that the best explanations will come
from one type of evidence alone. Therefore, it is not so much the data that has to change or
the way it is collected or stored necessarily, but the way that it is looked at, used and
interpreted. Leaving aside issues of how the implicit or explicit theory of individual
306