A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments

Offers a new approach to landscape perception.This book is an extended photographic essay about topographic features of the landscape. It integrates philosophical approaches to landscape perception with anthropological studies of the significance of the landscape in small-scale societies. This perspective is used to examine the relationship between prehistoric sites and their topographic settings. The author argues that the architecture of Neolithic stone tombs acts as a kind of camera lens focussing attention on landscape features such as rock outcrops, river valleys, mountain spurs in their immediate surroundings. These monuments played an active role in socializing the landscape and creating meaning in it.A Phenomenology of Landscape is unusual in that it links two types of publishing which have remained distinct in archaeology: books with atmospheric photographs of monuments with a minimum of text and no interpretation; and the academic text in which words provide a substitute for visual imagery. Attractively illustrated with many photographs and diagrams, it will appeal to anyone interested in prehistoric monuments and landscape as well as students and specialists in archaeology, anthropology and human geography.

ISBN-13: 9781859730768

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Berg Publishers

Publication Date: 01-01-1997

Pages: 224

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.54(d)

Series: Explorations in Anthropology

Christopher Tilley is Professor of Anthropology, University College London

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction - Place, Landscape and Perception: Phenomenological Perspectives - The Social Construction of Landscape in Small-Scale Societies: Structures of Meaning, Structures of Power - An Affinity with the Coast: Places and Monuments in South