Places of Special Meaning: Westerdahl’s Comet, “Agency,” and the Concept of the “Maritime Cultural Landscape”

Abstract

Christer Westerdahl’s 1992 journal article “The maritime cultural landscape” initiated a rethinking of every aspect of maritime archaeology. Taking its lead from Westerdahl’s original work and subsequent contributions to the debate surrounding the maritime cultural landscape by Westerdahl and others, this chapter draws on a series of British case studies to consider four interrelated themes: first, how concepts such as “landscape learning” (how people in prehistory moved, both literally and cognitively, through environments) can contribute to the understanding of the maritime cultural landscape; second, how hard, often datable, evidence for coastal settlement can feed into ongoing debates about evidence for “agency” in the marine zone; third, how studies of different sites’ “fine-grained” assemblages can add to this debate about the nature of the maritime cultural landscape, and fourth how studies of ritual landscapes and the significance of “natural” landscapes can also contribute to this debate.KeywordsCultural LandscapeWorld Heritage SiteScallop ShellMaritime ArchaeologyWreck SiteThese 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.