INDG 401 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Sensorium, Spacetime, Flattening
9 Jun 2018
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January 9th, 2018
Anth 450: Introduction
We can look at space and place in two ways:
1) socio-spatial concept
2) Analytical framing
- Culturally organized structure of landscapes is the built landscape
- Occupational histories of landscapes
o History: landscape as humans and environments and the relations between
them
o Socio-material relationships as well – we do not want to restrict
relationships to the environment
- Throughout history, there has been a privileging of time and causation and an
underestimation of landscape
o Material record is taken to be only spatial, and time is collapsed
o Flattening of space in time results in developmental stages (and gets
caught in paleoethology)
o Spatial form becomes ossified in time (culture/social/historical)
o Space/time grids: separation into cultures (spatial relations presented as
systematic slices
o Consequences?
▪ Space is collapses
▪ Socio-evolutionary forms arise between similar tings (we get ess
regional diversity, so things like settlement hierarchies, 4 tier
settlement hierarchy comes from this as well)
o Places are proxies for the socio-political forms: time-dependent and
spatially constituted
Space:
- means different things in different contexts: difference means different
engagements with the space being perceived
- ontology of space (what is it) and epistemology of space (how can we know it)
- Does space exist apriori to human experience? Or is space an object in and of
itself?
- Physicality would exist, but what is there? Just material relationships?
- Newton “sensorium of God” – gives a 3D space to understand things (and space
thus becomes independent of matter)
o But we need to ask, how is space a-priori?
- Absolute spaces become backgrounds for activity and containers for human
behaviour (we don’t want this)
o Environment to be adapted to; objectivity
o Space is given a temporality that is only synchronic
- Is it contingent on human presence?
o Kant said that individual imposes order on the world
▪ Space is a-priori, but not before a subject, only prior to experience
Implications for anthropology and archaeology
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
We can look at space and place in two ways: socio-spatial concept, analytical framing. Culturally organized structure of landscapes is the built landscape. Occupational histories of landscapes: history: landscape as humans and environments and the relations between them, socio-material relationships as well we do not want to restrict relationships to the environment. Means different things in different contexts: difference means different engagements with the space being perceived. Ontology of space (what is it) and epistemology of space (how can we know it) Absolute spaces become backgrounds for activity and containers for human behaviour (we don"t want this: environment to be adapted to; objectivity, space is given a temporality that is only synchronic. Is it contingent on human presence: kant said that individual imposes order on the world, space is a-priori, but not before a subject, only prior to experience. Subjective experience being projected from a subject (then how can we study space if it is wholly subjective?)
