Der archäologische Landschaftsbegriff aus wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher Perspektive – ein Überblick

Abstract

Landscape archaeology as a specific field of research in European archaeology is a development of the last decades. Nowadays, a variety of concepts and research questions are summarised under the term ‘landscape archaeology’. This  development is due to a diverging interpretation of landscape conceptions in cultural sciences.
This paper gives an overview of the history of research related to landscape concepts in German and British archaeology. This is important for an  understanding of the current developments in both countries. While German landscape archaeology is related to German settlement archaeology  “Siedlungsarchäologie“), British landscape archaeology is based on environmental archaeology as well as the formation of post-processual concepts. In both countries, the concepts are closely connected with contemporary geographical models. Furthermore, an increasing acceptance of holistic interpretations of space as a product of collective knowledge and practice illustrates an important  improvement during the last few years.
The knowledge of the different concepts creates the possibility to generate a basic theory of landscape archaeology and a development of basic methods for an approach to understand the manifold relationship between man and prehistoric landscape in future studies.