PREHISTORIC TERRITORIES: WHAT ARE WE STILL SAYING?
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-11-10

“Territories, Displacement, Movement and, Exchange During Prehistory”, the statement we made then regarding the semantics of “the territory” still stands. The term “territory” in prehistoric sciences has almost as many definitions as there are authors. Disregarding the number of occurrences of this widely used term and focussing instead on the question “What is a territory?” we find prehistorians often floundering for a comprehensive definition.

Using comparisons with other social science disciplines, in this presentation we aim:
i) to clarify and develop the notions of place, space and territory;
ii) to establish if and how the degree of mobility of individuals and groups influences the structuring of spatial thinking; and
iii) to explore ways to approach these different concepts in prehistory.
Recurrences in the function of prehistoric sites and in the use of certain materials found at those sites are expressions of structure in prehistoric behaviour. They make it possible for us to hierarchize spaces like areas of acquisition, zones of exchange, non-places,
voids etc. and by extension to model paleolithic territories.: Territorial definitions of nomadic people drawn from physical evidence derived from just one site are questionable to say the least.
Therefore, the results of work by geographers showing that consideration of all possible interconnections in a wider landscape can produce territorial descriptions should be applied to the prehistoric situation. Thus, it is necessary to adopt a new understanding of the scale of prehistoric occupation, departing from the viewpoint of a single site into a more global realisation of a network of resource localities and habitation places.


Author(s): Delvigne, Vincent (Service de Préhistoire, University of Liege; UMR 5199 PACEA, University of Bordeaux) - Bindon, Peter (Australian Ethnographic Institute P/L) - Bracco, Jean-Pierre (UMR 7269 LAMPEA, Aix-Marseille University) - Fernandes, Paul (SARL Paleotime, Villard-de-Lans; UMR 5199 PACEA, University of Bordeaux) - Lafarge, Audrey (UMR 5140 – Archéologie des sociétés médi-terranéennes, Université of Montpellier 3) - Raynal, Jean-Paul (Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; UMR 5199 PACEA, University of Bordeaux)