Environmental archaeology: theorising the ‘wild’ in contemporary archaeology
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 16/06/2016

This paper grows out of research I have been carrying out on the archaeology of nature reserves and wild spaces. The belief has grown, especially in conservation and archaeological circles, that the UK landscape we see is largely cultural in origin and that human activity is central to the maintenance of biodiversity, both in the past and the present.
I want to critically assess this perspective. In this paper I want to explore places that are unmanaged what we might call the ‘Wild’. The ‘Wild’ has been little considered in current archaeological theory, but I would argue it forms an important part of both contemporary and past environments. I think we need to broaden our approach to the ‘Wild’ and think about how societies and individuals would have interacted with environments away from their farms and fields. I would like to stimulate a discussion rooted in ecological philosophy taking readings from Thoreau and other philosophers of wilderness such as Woods to examine what a theory of the ‘Wild’ might be and how we might start to consider it in our archaeological reconstructions.

Andrew HOAEN (University of Worcester)