Emerging Boundaries

Abstract

This article proposes a processual ontology for the emergence of man-made, linear boundaries across northwestern Europe, particularly in the first millennium BC. Over a significant period of time, these boundaries became new ways of organizing the landscape and settlements—a phenomenon that has proved possible to trace in three different regions within this geographic area. As these new forms of boundaries were managed in comparable ways, applied in similar situations, and shown to have morphological similarities, they must be considered in some way interrelated. Consequently, a number of temporal and material variables have been applied as a means of exploring the processes leading to their socioconceptual anchorage. The outcome of this analysis is a series of interrelated, generative boundary principles, including boundaries as markers, articulations, process-related devices, and fixation and formalization. These principles are then used to argue the case for socioconceptual emergence and causality between the lines. This causality appears only in a long-term perspective and implies that, although the development of these boundaries was chronologically displaced across northwestern Europe, elements of this phenomenon emerged along equivalent trajectories. At the same time, variation in the regional incorporation of these linear phenomena points toward situation-specific applications and independent development.