Friends,

I am reading Matthew Johnson's Idea of the Landscape and Christopher Tilley's A Phenomenology of the landscape. From whence this idea that landscapes have anything, if at all, to do with archaeology.

As with most things, in Indian Archaeology, in these books, we learn, after-all, that, again, it all started in Britain. No, it was not enough that OGS Crawford discovered Aerial Photography, which we today, use widely over here, alongwith INSAT, LAAR and other techniques of aerial survey, but that, it was the British Historian, W.G. Hoskins, who first got his teeth into Ideas of the landscape....as being important in archaeology.

In my opinion Matthew's fluidity, with his text, that is, his ease of expression, which wins him points over Christopher. Not necessarily, in terms of content. Christopher, like Matthew, has argued, that, from the palaeolithic, mesolithic, neolithic, chalcolithic, bronze age, iron age; upto the titanium age, each age, has had, its own perception of landscape, and that these are recoverable, and that this is good for archaeology; since, if we learn, how hunter-fisher-gatherer's, saw a landscape; then, we would, immediately see, how differently, that same landscape, was viewed by the subsistence farmers. In this way, we may work our way backwards from the nature and distribution of sites, pertaining to each technological age, on the same landscape, to recover a sense of which parts of a landscape, were of importance, and to what sort of economic group. Matthew, with his greatly clear, lucid, and enjoyable narrative, says, the same things, about historic Britain, in which he suggests, that contemporary historians and archaeologists have all but forgotten how multicultural the British countryside/landcape is.

Applying this notion, of the recoverability of past ideas regarding differring perceptions of the landscape, to the indian context, it seems that we have pondered this question only minimally, even in areas, such as the Ganga Valley, where we, very proudly claim, that almost every site, when excavated, looks like a multi-layered chocolate-cake. At the bottom-strata, it starts with palaeolithic, then mesolithic, then neolithic, then chalcolithic, and then, it is folllowed by, Mauryan, Sunga, Kanva, Satavahana, Kushana, Gupta, and the following 600-1200 A.D. cultural layers. It is still hypothetical, if all these cultures, were cohabiting a site, then have we paused to wonder, what or which, parts of the same landscape, appealed to them? and why?

In India, Bishnupriya Basak may be the first one to have addressed more directly this issue of recovering perceived landscapes of the past. I am not here speaking of the landscapes that geomorphologists see, read, and also recover, pertaining to the past, using their own scientific methods like takeing lake-sediments, soil sediments, and taking note of geomorphological features of an area that was in prehistory inhabited by prehistoric peoples. the issue here is that while geomorphologists consider that the landscapes they perceive is/was the landscape as perceived by prehistoric groups is the very idea here that is being questioned.

Thus we, again, return, to the emic/etic perceptions problem. and this is where rock paintings of the prehistoric period enter the scene as a very important resource for understanding emic perceptions of prehistoric landscapes. at the very least, and as neither Matthew, nor, indeed, Chris, have deemed it relevant to mention, to any significant degree, prehistoric art gives us more explicit visual cognitive parameters to eke-out prehistoric perceptions of the landscape.

Here I shall upload a relevant video.

I am, still, reading, these both, golden, books...you would get further answers, as I do.

Ap, 2009.