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Accepted Paper:

The dark matter of landscapes: manifesto for an archaeology of flow  
Matthew Edgeworth (University of Leicester)

Paper short abstract:

This manifesto presents eight reasons for bringing the flowing water of rivers and streams - the dark matter of landscapes, neglected in cultural analyses - into the main focus of archaeological study.

Paper long abstract:

Matter can be in any one of three main states: solid, liquid or gas. In the archaeological study of landscapes, solid matter takes priority. Land itself is a solid by definition. So too are the soils, stratigraphies, sites, earthworks, features, fields, hedgerows, buildings which are constituent parts of landscapes. Pick up almost any book on landscape archaeology and you will find solid materials highlighted, with flowing liquid and gaseous materials cast into shadow.

Rivers and streams are the dark matter of landscape archaeology. Running through the heart of landscapes, shape-shifting as they go, liquids are rarely subjected to the kind of cultural analysis applied to solid materials. Study of rivers and their flow is left to hydrologists, sedimentologists, geomorphologists and other natural scientists. Flowing water is regarded as part of the natural background against which past cultural activity shows up, next to which sites are located, onto which cultural meaning is applied or into which cultural items are placed, rather than having any cultural dimension in its own right. Yet human activity, in the form of modification of rivers, is inextricably bound up with the so-called 'natural' water cycle. As dynamic entanglements of natural and cultural forces, rivers have potential to re-shape (our understanding of) landscape.

This manifesto presents eight reasons for bringing the dark matter of landscapes into the main focus of archaeological study.

Panel S33
Manifestos for materials
  Session 1