Archaeological Landscape Studies

  • LuAnn Wandsnider
Chapter
Part of the Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology book series (IDCA)

Abstract

The goal of most processual archaeological studies is to move from a description of regional archaeological variation to an understanding of some aspect of the organization of and change in past human systems, especially the subsistence component. Usually, the subsistence system is rendered in terms of the regional and annual arrangement of technology, consumers, and producers. As discussed in the introductory chapter, settlement pattern studies of the remains of both hunter-gatherer and more complex economies have accomplished this interpretative task through reconstruction of the settlement system. Over the past 20 years, however, formation process research and research on hunter-gatherer systems has made insupportable some of the critical assumptions of settlement system reconstruction. Thus, over this 20-year span, strategies have appeared that approach past subsistence by other avenues. The studies presented here illustrate one such strategy, which we have labeled the landscape approach.

Keywords

Settlement Pattern Archaeological Record Archaeological Data Settlement System Landscape Approach 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 1992

Authors and Affiliations

  • LuAnn Wandsnider
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of AnthropologyUniversity of Nebraska-LincolnLincolnUSA

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