eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

work of philosophers and social theorists such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Giddens,
some of which will be considered in due course.
In terms of archaeology, a material resistance exists to the number of ways archaeological
data can be interpreted. Although ‘facts’ or ‘data’ may exist, they only mean something
within a contextual scheme (Kluckjohn 1940, p.47 cited by Wylie 1993, p.21); they are
‘constituted in theory’ (Shanks & Tilley 1987, p.193). Indeed, an artefact can be measured
and weighed in various ways by different people who will then attain the same answers, but
these same people will have different understandings of the artefact in terms of both
preconscious and conscious apprehensions. Because of the materiality of archaeology (and
the world), there is a restriction as to what may be stated about the past, but it also means that
there are a myriad of ways in which the ‘data’ can be used to create different pasts. This
situation should not be seen as problematic but as liberating.
The underlying view, outlined here, has grounded the approach to landscape as set out in this
thesis. It is an acceptance of the physicality of the world, recognising that there is material
constraint to interpretation, both natural, in terms of ecofacts, and cultural in terms of
artefacts. It is a world that is already ‘known’, and of which there is a pre-understanding. It
is an investigation into how people interact and live within landscape, not only how it is used
as a resource (ecofacts) and not only how these are perceived (ecoconstructs), but how people
are thoroughly enmeshed within it. These points are fully considered below. Throughout the
following chapters, many different ideas have been brought to bear on the evidence in order to
explain its presence, but there are some fundamental concepts that have influenced the way in
which work and thought has progressed. These are associated with the Annales tradition (e.g.
Braudel 1969; Bintliff 1991a; Knapp 1992), Giddens’ Theory of Structuration (Giddens
1984), and the more phenomenologically based ideas of Heidegger (1962; Krell 1993) and
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