The lifeways of present
and past peoples are embedded in landscape: their settlements, technology,
land tenure, social organization, and worldview have material expression in
the physical patterning and palimpsest of landscape features (field morphology,
house compounds, walls, networks of paths and roads, field boundary
markers, and rural shrines). Through the reading of landscapes, archaeologists
glean insights about “the people without history,” those who are
ignored by traditional archaeological research and historical analysis (Wolf
1982). The archaeology of landscapes is about peopling the landscapes of the
past and present