Stony landscape, petrified society? Relations between landscape and society
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2016-12-19

Relations between landscape and society are recursive -- we are born in landscape made by our ancestors, but we immediately begin rearranging it. I want to explore how permanent, stable landscapes emerge through the process of life in the landscape. My point of departure is Strum and Latour’s difference between complex and complicated societies. Complexity in this context mean that society is performed only through bodies, using social skills and social strategies. Society is performed ex nihilo at every social encounter, every face-to-face interaction. The society can disappear if not performed. Nothing fixes and stabilizes it. Stable society emerge only when additional, material, resources are mobilized. Material resources can be used to reinforce a particular form of society. They permit the shift of social life away from complexity to what Strum and Latour call “complication”, i.e. social life made out of succession of simple operations. Individuals continue to perform society, but on much more durable and less complex scale.
I want to explore how the landscape is used to simplify task of ascertaining and negotiating the nature of social order. Nature of social interaction is stabilized by the use of durable material resources. Based on a case study from prehistory of Karst, carstic stony landscape in in western Slovenia, I want to explore how the use of landscape features, use of stone, manipulation of landscape texture and building of landscape structures has “petrified”, stabilised and structured specific social relations. I will explore the relations between landscape and social order, focus on questions of inertia and long term stability, but also change, resistance and creative improvisation in such landscapes.

Author - Dr. Mlekuž, Dimitrij, University of Ljubljana, Institute for the protection of Cultural heritage of, Ljubljana, Slovenia (Presenting author)