eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

e of little relevance or use at all, but if we did not employ them, we would never know this
data or have the opportunity to investigate different possibilities.
As argued in Chapter 7, the way forward in archaeology has to be a more explicit
acknowledgement that an interpretation is only one of many possible other ways of explaining
the same evidence, that there are no absolutes, even with the use of all the best high-tech
instruments in the world. Archaeology is all about possibilities and probabilities and the ideas
we have about these. Assumptions must be made if one is to get anywhere at all, but it is
necessary for these assumptions to be made explicit, and by becoming aware of them
ourselves, we are able to question their validity. It is in this light that a GIS should be used.
By and in itself, the use of one will not give the answers – it provides a framework in which
ideas such as those relating to perception, experience and dwelling within a landscape can be
explored in one way. The danger is that information technology, in this case, GIS or VR,
gives the illusion of being authoritative and right, when it should be recognised and used as a
tool and a platform in which ideas can be explored and illustrated.
In the end, in a study such as this that is concerned with the physical nature of the world in
which people lived in the past and how that acted upon them, their perceptions and the way
they lived, nothing can take the place of actually being there, visiting the sites in person and
very unscientifically soaking up the atmosphere. Exon et al (2000, p.105), describe how they
developed the concept of a “quality view” through their fieldwork, which referred to views
and vistas that were visually ‘more stunning’ than others, from which a gut reaction was felt
when the view was revealed. Quality views could not be picked up by computer-generated
viewsheds, but involved elements of the landscape that could only be recognised by a person,
being there. A GIS Digital Elevation Model in the present study, given the constraints of time
and money would have been little more than a very time consuming and expensive way of
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