Hidden Landscapes Research Articles

Our Hidden Landscapes: Indigenous Stone Ceremonial Sites in Eastern North America

Our Hidden Landscapes: Indigenous Stone Ceremonial Sites in Eastern North America

UNHIDING FORESTED LANDSCAPES. THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL INDEX OF SOUTH-EASTERN CARPATHIANS

Starting with late 2018, a new archaeological research project has been unfolding in the framework funded by the Romanian Governmental Unit for Research and Development (UEFISCDI) dedicated to top fundamental research, as one of the few winners of 2016 edition (the single to date) of ‘Complex Projects for Frontier Research’ competition. The Project, whose aims and methods will be shortly presented further, is entitled ‘Hidden Landscapes: Exploratory Remote-sensing for the Archaeology of the Lost Roads, Borders and Battlefields of South-Eastern Carpathians’ (HiLands). It implements a systematic and diachronic investigation of the historic strategic circulation corridors crossing the South-Eastern part of the Carpathian Mountains – the main gate used along ages by people transiting between Transylvania and the Danube or the Black Sea. In order to achieve such aims we have been exploring, starting from large scale LiDAR surveys, the circulation corridors’ diachronic archaeological fingerprint, preserved in the shape of repeatedly fortified landscapes. LiDAR surveys have been carried on continuously since 2018, by airplane, but also with portable sensors based on SLAM technology. The results of the LiDAR explorations were enhanced by field surveys, geophysical prospections and pin-pointed excavations, in order to elucidate the nature of anomalies or better contextualize the significance and layout of the roads’ routes. The results of these activities are resumed in a constantly updated, open access, online data base of archaeological sites - The archaeological index of South-Eastern Carpathians (AISEC). The current contribution details the essentials of HiLands research (aims, concepts, methods), in order to introduce in the scientific circuit the AISEC’s functions and instruments, ready to be used as citable work.

“There's more than meets the eye”: Developing an integrated archaeological approach to reconstruct human–environment dynamics in the Pontine marshes (Lazio, Central Italy)

AbstractIn this article, we present the results of a pilot study that adopts an interdisciplinary off‐site approach combining detailed surface survey, remote sensing analyses, geophysical prospections, geoarchaeological investigations and palaeoenvironmental analyses to investigate long‐term human‐environment interactions in the Pontine plain (Lazio, Central Italy). Focusing on a small study area just north of the ancient Roman way station ofAd Medias, in the middle of this former wetland, the developed integrated approach turned out to be very much successful, providing additional information on (a) the interpretation of the surface record in light of landscape and environmental dynamics, (b) the exposure of “hidden landscapes” that date from before the Roman phase of exploitation that is well‐attested in the surface archaeological record, and (c) the texture of this Roman landscape, allowing for a more accurate interpretation of both mapped surface materials and the wider context in which these surface sites were set.

Pherographs and other hidden landscapes

Due to some of their traits (non-linearity, emergent behaviour, self-organisation), complex systems raised the interest of artists and theorists and went beyond a scientific framework, entering the realm of visual arts. Art with complex systems is usually referred to as artificial (or generative) art. This paper discusses pherographia, a term that describes the creative use of an artificial intelligence model based on the concepts of stigmergy and cooperation amongst social insects. The system is dynamic, interacts with different types of environment, and reflects properties of insects' societies such as self-organisation, memory and adaptability to changes. Pherographia is addressed from its genesis as a swarm model to its use as an artificial art tool and metaphor for creating a figurative and abstract body-of-work that has been presented to a heterogeneous audience. Motivation and details of the artworks are discussed, as well as their links to artificial art, digital art and photography.

Reading Ella: Using Literary Patients to Enhance Nursing Students’ Reflective Thinking in the Classroom

This action research study was designed to explore, in-depth, how 70 senior nursing students experienced an assignment that involved reading and reflecting on a short story, Ella, and the educator's experience during the process. Four sources of data were collected: student reflections, field notes, a classroom process recording by an expert educator/observer, and a focus group interview. Four themes emerged: (1) student reflections revealed their inner, often hidden landscapes; (2) Ella prompted clarification of the past and/or triggered future projective thinking; (3) Ella clarified difficult-to-teach concepts; and (4) the interface between students' thoughts and teacher responses provided a platform of connectivity. I propose that reading well-written stories may enhance students' clinical reasoning skills and ethical comportment within the confines of a classroom. In addition, when students are introduced to literary patients like Ella, they can dwell with the characters at a more peaceful pace which, in itself, may encourage reflectivity.

Review: African Identity in Post-Apartheid Public Architecture: White Skin, Black Masks, by Jonathan Alfred Noble and At Home with Apartheid: The Hidden Landscapes of Domestic Service in Johannesburg, by Rebecca Ginsburg

Jonathan Alfred Noble African Identity in Post-Apartheid Public Architecture: White Skin, Black Masks Farnham, UK, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2011, 314 pp., 135 b/w illus. Cloth, $124.95, ISBN 9780754677659 Rebecca Ginsburg At Home with Apartheid: The Hidden Landscapes of Domestic Service in Johannesburg Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011, 248 pp., 37 b/w illus. Cloth, $35.00, ISBN 9780813928883 It can be argued that nowhere during the twentieth century were the spatial dimensions of politics more nakedly visible than in South Africa. Even before the official adoption in 1948 of apartheid and its detailed laws governing racial classification and segregation, the South African state enforced policies of forcible resettlement and restricted movement aimed at ensuring strict separation of its population. The built environment played a key role in establishing racial identities and maintaining segregated spheres, and the legacy of this social rupture remains clearly visible in the architecture, cities, and landscapes of South Africa. Two important new books by Jonathan Alfred Noble and Rebecca Ginsburg add significantly to our understanding of the design disciplines’ relationships to apartheid. Noble and Ginsburg explore the spatial dimensions of South African politics from very different perspectives. The former analyzes specific examples of state-sponsored architecture designed to represent a fully integrated, post-apartheid society, while the latter examines domestic spaces in middle-class Johannesburg during the 1960s and 1970s in order to study closely apartheid’s concerns with gender, labor, movement, and visibility. Both books are rooted in the extensive research of their authors’ doctoral dissertations and make significant contributions to the growing body of literature on the built environment in modern South Africa. Noble examines five projects built since the end of apartheid in great depth in African Identity in Post-Apartheid Public Architecture . The diversity of architectural expression he discusses reflects the broad range of concerns driving South African architecture and landscape architecture. Most important among these is the question of how to represent a pluralistic, post-apartheid democracy and its multitude of regional cultures, geographies, and climates. Noble highlights the importance of design competitions in South Africa, which he portrays as a democratization of the design process analogous to the country’s political reforms. The author, …

At Home with Apartheid: The hidden landscapes of domestic service in Johannesburg

At Home with Apartheid: The hidden landscapes of domestic service in Johannesburg

The Holocene of the Agro Pontino graben: Recent advances in its palaeogeography, palaeoecology, and tephrostratigraphy

In the past decade (2000–2010), research within the scope of the 'Hidden Landscapes' project by RUG archaeologists provided important information on the Holocene history of the Agro Pontino graben. This information complemented earlier studies by Dutch Universities (UvA, RUG and UL). The graben was found to hold important tephrochronological, palaeoecological and archaeological archives, which deserve to be studied in more detail. This is demonstrated by the recent robust dating of the Avellino pumice layer at 3945 ± 10 cal BP obtained from this archive (Sevink et al., 2011) and by the complex denudation record resulting from early land use in its hinterland. An overview is given of the recent knowledge on the Bronze Age to recent landscape that existed in the graben and of the major Early Bronze Age sites, of which most were associated with a large lake. Doubts have grown about the reliability of the existing chronological framework derived from earlier pollen cores by conventional radiocarbon dating. These doubts are discussed in the context of results from recent research, with emphasis on the 'hard water effect' that has been largely neglected in the earlier studies. The main current research topics are indicated.

Medicine and Place: An Inquiry

This essay explores the various places inhabited by doctors and patients, in order to lead doctors to a more complex understanding of their patients' experiences of illness. Using Adam Haslett's "The Good Doctor" (2002), we examine what happens when doctors enter the worlds of their patients, both the literal landscapes of their patients' homes and the hidden landscapes of their minds. We illustrate the impact place has on doctors' understanding of their patients and on the patients' attitudes toward their illness. In addition, we examine how place informs readers' perceptions of both the coherence and the divide between the worlds of doctor and patient.

John Clare in Context

Preface Notes on contributors Introduction: relocating John Clare Hugh Haughton and Adam Phillips Clare and the critics Mark Storey Progress and rhyme: 'The Nightingale's Nest' and Romantic poetry Hugh Haughton John Clare: the trespasser John Goodridge and Kelsey Thornton John Clare: precursor? Seamus Heaney Clare's politics John Lucas The exposure of John Clare Adam Phillips 'The Riddle Nature Could Not Prove': hidden landscapes in Clare's poetry Nicholas Birns Beyond the visionary company: John Clare's resistance to Romanticism James McKusick 'A Love for Every Simple Weed': Clare, botany and the poetic language of lost Eden Douglas Chambers All madness for writing: John Clare and the asylum Roy Porter Clare and 'the dark system' Marilyn Gaull Selected further reading Index.