One thing I’ve been looking at as part of my research
recently is the concept of space - not the astronaut kind, sadly, but the gaps
between things. It is just the gaps though - is it just “empty space” or does
it have more meaning? I have decided there are three main ways to approach
space, although this is completely dependent on my own educational history.
1) Philosophically – the questions of the nature of space
began with philosophy – is space subjective or does it really exist? Kant[1]
would say that space is not ‘real’, but merely a scheme for locating things. In
philosophy the concept of space is often questioned in tandem with “time”, and
this is a theme that lends itself well to archaeological investigation.
2) Archaeologically – although archaeology encompasses all
three approaches, in terms of “simple” archaeological investigation, I mean the
location of archaeological sites and artefacts in space, as well as the spatial
organisation of past societies. Although sometimes there is very little of this
organisation left in the archaeological record, Pompeii is a great example of
how past people occupied and used space, and so are hillforts as many of them
are still present in the landscape today.
Some archaeologists try to blend these two together
(archaeologists are extremely keen on borrowing from philosophy, although some
more successfully than others), creating the sub-discipline of phenomenological
archaeology, which focuses on the sensory perception of the individual within
the archaeological landscape[3].
3) Mathematically – this involves deconstructing the space
of your landscape into data points or ‘events’. This is great for statistical
processing, as it allows (theoretically) for you to examine your data without
introducing the bias of what the points actually mean.
For example, the above map (depicting a chunk of southern
England), could depict anything – they are just points in space. The dots are
in fact hillforts of varying sizes (as per the legend), and is an image from my
own MSc dissertation. Of course, you then have to reintegrate your conclusions
into the context of your data – they can’t just be points for ever.
What I’m attempting to do is to approach space from all
three standpoints at once – to weave them together in a coherent and unique way
that will hopefully lead to a new understanding of Iron Age society (or that’s
the PhD dream, at least).
I can’t draw any conclusions about the nature of space in
this short post, but it’s a question worth thinking about whether you’re an
archaeologist, philosopher, mathematician or anything – “do space and time
really exist?” is one of the greatest philosophical questions, and may never be
answered, but it does not mean that asking it will lead us nowhere.
[1] Immanuel Kant 1724-1804
[2] Photo from http://www.ancient.eu.com/image/957/
[3] For a heads up try A Phenomenology of Landscape by C.
Tilley, and I will be writing a separate post on phenomenology at a later date.
One might think of time and space as components of the same co-ordinate system. I guess you could do that in the above diagram by showing the arrival of new hillforts by date but I have no idea whether it would prove informative. I have the thought of it looking like some kind of Game Of Life type simulation, but it would probably just be a random scatter.
ReplyDeleteTimelines are always important in archaeology, as two sites occupying the same space now may have been occupied thousands of years apart. This is true of hillforts just as much as anything else - hillfort-type structures were occupied from the Neolithic to Medieval times. I think in mapping time, the hope is that it would demonstrate a progression of society through space - how they occupied different spaces in different periods (but would probably be more of a random scatter unfortunately).
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