Do Landscapes Move?
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-08-11

Do landscapes simply trigger or attract migration and ‘absorb’ its effects? Or do landscapes – in one or another- move and “migrate” as well – together and in interaction with people and things? And if so, could the landscape perspective have added value for understanding migration?
This paper deals with these questions, criticizing the common conviction that landscapes are external to people - both physical and in terms of human experience, that landscapes are fixed and therefore provide and environmental and cultural frame of reference for movement, travel and exile, and that landscapes consist first and foremost of solid substance, making them immovable. Instead, starting from the observation that landscapes by definition include people who take landscapes with them in their minds, designs and practices, it is argued that landscapes migrate as well – like people, things and ideas. We furthermore suggest that this also asks for a reconceptualization of the life histories of ‘biographies’ of landscapes. Examples are taken from (pre)historic North-western Europe and from (early) colonial contexts in Asia and the Americas.

Jan Kolen (Leiden University)

TAG Deva 2018
Session: The Creation, Contestation and Transformation of Landscape