Archaeology, landscape and aesthetics

Abstract

This paper examines the role, if any, of aesthetic reflections in the discipline of landscape archaeology. It begins by rejecting the charge that archaeologists should set aside their own aesthetic sensibility when studying landscapes. The bulk of the paper, however, is concerned with arguing that attention to the aesthetic sensibilities of the peoples who made the landscapes studied is essential to the kind of understanding and reconstruction of ways of life that landscape archaeology aims to provide. Two important themes that are developed during the course of this argument are: (1) a distinction (ignored by some archaeologists who are critical of appeals to aesthetic enjoyment) between aesthetic appreciation and a dilettante “aestheticism” and (2) the aesthetic satisfactions that must be taken in work, such as farming, if this is to flourish.