Internet Archaeol. 16. Rajala. Landscape

3.3 Landscape

Zubrow (1990a) contrasted site and artefact as separate archaeological data categories. Alternatively, Crumley and Marquardt (1990) saw landscape as the key concept. The latter view has been adopted by Wheatley and Gillings (2002, 166-67) in their suggestion that landscape is the basic unit for which attributes are recorded. The emphasis on landscape as a concept reflects the general shift to landscape archaeology (e.g. Vita-Finzi 1978; Ashmore and Knapp 1999).

Since GIS allows the processing of large amounts of data it has been used as a logical tool for regional studies since the early days (cf. Gaffney and Stančić 1991). GIS allowed the integration of archaeological and geographical data. When the qualities of landscapes innovatively came under more qualitative scrutiny (cf. Barrett et al. 1991; Tilley 1994) GIS became a logical tool to realise such studies (e.g. Wheatley 1995). The emphasis on monuments (e.g. Tilley 1994; Bradley 1998) resulted in site-based GIS analyses (Llobera 1996). Ultimately, archaeological data categories on all scales are legitimate research entities. The dominant categories are dependent on research questions and prevailing tendencies in general archaeology.