This collection of fourteen papers, with an introduction by the editors and a concluding review, is derived from a Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) conference session at Bournemouth University in December 2013 (followed by a sequel session held at Nordic TAG in 2014 in Stockholm), marking twenty years since the publication of Tim Ingold's paper ‘The Temporality of the Landscape’ in Reference Ingold1993, and examining its continued influence within archaeology.
The introductory Chapter 1 by Ulla Rajala and Philip Mills (‘Introduction: From Taskscape to Ceramiscene and Beyond’) reviews authors who have discussed the term ‘taskscape’ within archaeology, and they also introduce the idea of the ‘ceramiscene’, explored further in Chapter 5 (see below). Chapter 2 by Tim Ingold (‘Taking Taskscape to Task’) looks back at the germination of his taskscape idea in the early 1990s, linking it to the broader interest in landscape and phenomenology within social geography, anthropology, and archaeology; and also illustrating how ideas often emerge gradually, not through sudden revelations. Ingold reiterates that the word ‘landscape’ did not originate in post-medieval scopophilial discourses of art and ownership, but instead reflects the Old English word ‘to shape’, a more embodied, active sense of engagement with the world. He feels that the recent proliferation of ‘scape’ terms is unhelpful, and that the term taskscape may be redundant (p. 23, 26), provided that ‘landscape’ is understood to be temporally dynamic.
Chapter 2, ‘Landscape Archaeology and the Re-Humanization Project’, by Andrew Fleming, mentions taskscape only once, and does not engage with Ingold's work at all. Instead, Fleming continues a series of earlier critiques (e.g. Fleming, Reference Fleming2006) of so-called ‘New Landscape Archaeology’ or postmodern landscape archaeology, in particular the work of Chris Tilley and Julian Thomas. He does make cogent critical points regarding historicity, and offers a stout defence of the work of Mick Aston (Reference Aston1995). In Chapter 3 (‘Approaching the Mesolithic through Taskscapes: A Case Study from Western Ireland’), Killian Driscoll examines the Mesolithic of western Ireland, after explicitly engaging with taskscape and subsequent critiques. He links cremation rites with long-term inhabitation of part of the River Shannon system, where people engaged in short-term and longer-term practices within a mosaic of woodland. The use of trees and other plants for shelter, materials, fuel, food, and medicine, along with relationships with animals, may have led to intimate and affecting engagements. For Driscoll, taskscape allows him to avoid considering the landscape merely as an ‘environment’ in which foraging ‘strategies’ take place, and instead to pursue a more nuanced approach involving different scales, temporalities, and tempos of dwelling.
Ulla Rajala and Philip Mills return to the ceramiscene in Chapter 5, ‘Interpreting a Ceramiscene: Characterizing Late Republican and Imperial Landscapes’, focusing on Roman assemblages in the Tiber valley, in Italy, recovered by surface collection. Heavily influenced by the spatial geographies of Lynch (Reference Lynch1960) and Hillier and Hanson (Reference Hillier and Hanson1984), they map site hierarchies, status, and possible estate boundaries through finds distributions, and GIS and statistical analyses. There is a correlation between proportions of high-status wares, distances from paved roads, and locations of villas, and changing patterns of supply and consumption over time. Although there is much of merit in this detailed study, there is relatively little by way of taskscapes. Rajala and Mills earlier argue that the ceramiscene incorporates all aspects of the landscape associated with the production, use, and discard of fired clay (p. 9). Although they may have discussed this in more detail in other publications, in this paper though there is little sense of such rhythms. Where did clay extraction take place, and what of sourcing clays of the right textural qualities? Where were stands of managed woodland to provide wood and charcoal for fuel? Was pottery and tile production a full-time occupation for specific individuals or communities, or did it take place within and around the daily or seasonal routines and cycles of the agricultural year? Through what specific cultural practices did pottery and tile end up scattered across the landscape? No photographs illustrate the material textures of their study landscape, and only GIS maps and tables are provided. Aspects of large-scale surface collection in the Mediterranean and economic approaches to Roman studies have been critiqued elsewhere (e.g. Taylor, Reference Taylor2013; Witcher, Reference Witcher2006). Although this is a more sophisticated treatment than most large-scale Mediterranean-style surveys, the landscape here is still rather a passive backdrop to human activity, not the active presence in the lives of people, animals, plants, and objects that Tim Ingold envisaged.
Pirjo Hamari examines Roman roof tiles from Petra in Jordan in Chapter 6 (‘The Roofscapes of Petra: The Use of Ceramic Roof Tiles’). From detailed contextual analyses of Nabataean domestic structures, Hamari argues that most or all of this material, ostensibly from roofs, was actually re-used as building materials such as wall infill. Instead, it was Hellenic and Roman-influenced ‘public’ buildings such as palaces, temples, and colonnaded shops that had tiled roofs, and which provided a source of recyclable materials. Though an interesting discussion on acculturation and changing consumption patterns, and the ‘roofscape’ proposed by Hamari provides some sense of lived experience, this fails to convey a full sense of taskscape. Chapter 7, ‘Taskscapes in a Cityscape: The Relocation of Secular and Religious Activities in Late Antique Athens’, by Arja Karivieri studies changes in secular and religious activities in Athens after the later third century ad. Following Gothic incursions a new city wall was built, many pagan temples and shrines were demolished, and some ritual practices moved to private dwellings and caves. Mapping changes in activity zones over time in the ‘cityscape’, however, does not equate with a taskscape-centred approach.
Mesolithic communities and landscapes of southern Norway are the focus of Chapter 8, ‘Materialized Landscapes? Mesolithic Lithic Procurement’, by Astrid Nyland. This is an insightful combination of landscape and chaîne opératoire approaches, demonstrating how lithic collecting and quarrying took place in separate locales where the landscape affected and was in turn affected by human social practices. Stone sources became ‘marked places of significance’ within increasingly territorially-prescribed paths of movement by gatherer-hunters, with re-use of particular outcrops often requiring additional effort and time. This was a feature of taskscapes in the western part of southern Norway, but not the east. In Chapter 9, ‘Stone and Stone Circles: Taskscape and Landscape Survey at Yadlee Stone Circle’, Tom Gardner and colleagues examine Yadlee stone circle in the Lammermuir Hills of Scotland, seeking to utilise archaeoastronomy and the interactions between sky, landscapes, and individual agents through a detailed 3D topographic analysis. Stone cairns in the wider landscape were incorporated within a predictive model of solar alignments based on specific ‘task-based prerequisites,’ part of seasonal movements of people and livestock to the uplands. The authors never spell out the nature of these perquisites, nor which time period their alignments coincided with. They shy away from firm interpretations, seeing the monuments as generalised centres of socialisation within a transiently occupied landscape. Arguments for a ‘cognitive skyscape’ are interesting, but they largely fail to demonstrate how their monuments were part of taskscapes.
The rest of the papers are also a mixed bag. Anne Dragesat examines ‘diachronic powerscapes’ of Odda in Norway in Chapter 10 (‘Diachronic Powerscapes: A Case Study from Odda, Norway’), focusing on burial and/or settlement locations in the later prehistoric and early modern periods, and the political significance of certain locales. In Chapter 11 (‘Temporality in a Māori Landscape’), Caroline Phillips attempts a broadly similar exercise for the Hauraki Plain, New Zealand, from c. ad 1450, linking long-term environmental and settlement changes to Māori oral traditions and archaeology. For Tiina Äikäs in Chapter 12 (‘Sámi Sacred Places in Ritual Taskscapes’), Sámi sacred sites are the focus of investigation, and, unlike the previous two papers, there is a real sense of lived taskscapes inherent in the subtle consideration of daily, seasonal, and annual connections between people and landscape. Chapter 13 by Bob Clarke (‘The Secret Landscape: Implications for the Study of Cold War Activities’) considers Cold War military sites, through an interesting discussion of boundaries, bunkers, and landscape contestation, and the skyscapes of aircraft monitoring. Both the main sections on the activities of the Royal Observer Corps (ROC), and demonstrations at RAF Greenham Common, however, could have been enhanced further with a more detailed examination of daily routines, rituals, and the choreographies and counter-choreographies of ROC members, police, and protestors.
Ceramiscenes appear once more in Chapter 14, ‘Excavating a Taskscape, Flowscape, and Ceramiscene in the Black Country’, by Matt Edgeworth, along with ‘flowscapes’, at the excavation of a post-medieval pottery production site in the West Midlands of England. It is an insight into the emergent nature of excavation, with past and present practices also involving flows of non-human agencies and materials. In the concluding Chapter 15 (‘Concluding Remarks: Landscape, Taskscape, Life’), Julian Thomas outlines why he thinks ‘taskscape’ has proved such a popular concept for archaeologists. The concern with time, mundane activities, and situated practices has particular resonances. Thomas takes issue with some aspects of Fleming's critique of his own work, and following several other contributors (Ingold, Driscoll, Äikäs, Edgeworth), Thomas emphasises the importance of non-human agents and agencies, and proposes that taskscapes be broadened out to include non-functional human activities.
The figures are mostly of good quality, and these include twenty-nine black-and-white photographs that are generally clear and sharp, though a few were old postcard images. Several papers (Chs 5, 7, and 11) did not feature any photographs, however, just site plans and/or GIS-based maps, with little of the lived experience of landscapes which ‘taskscape’ is surely meant to convey. The volume is generally well edited with few spelling or grammatical mistakes, though one paper's co-author (Colton Vogelaar) is missing from the list of contributors, and there is no index provided. Like many edited volumes, this one varies in quality and content—the ceramiscene papers and the taskscape papers are often quite different in approach, and several papers do not really fit with the theme of the volume as a whole. Some authors engage with the theme more than others, for whom ‘taskscape’ seems to be merely another synonym for occupation over time. A shorter and more focused collection would have been preferable, and perhaps cheaper than the £38 cover price. Nevertheless, this book contains useful additions to archaeological landscape studies.
