by B. L. Molyneaux (Author)
Ideology
dominates social research, encouraged by rejections of nature and the
past, and often ignores the direct experience of actual people. This
archaeological study takes a different approach, grounding concepts of
culture, landscape and art in ecological relations that embrace all of
life.
An ecological approach considers that life
exists in the interactions of people with the environment surrounding
them. This theoretical grounding therefore supports research at a local
scale and validates the analysis of individual effort. The case studies
explore individual perception, action and expression in a startlingly
diverse set of objects and features from the past: natural and
constructed monuments, ancient and recent rock paintings, petroglyphs,
fresco paintings and impressionist landscape art. While traditional
cultural approaches render ordinary people as proxies, these
individuals, as members of families and communities, do the actual work
of society, using their senses, bodies and minds. The analysis here
therefore turns away from traditional speculations about the meanings of
cultural things to look for evidence of the personal choices of
travelers, inhabitants, pilgrims and artists as they acted, and attempt
to gain insights from these decisions about the past as lived.
The
book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and advanced students
in culture and society who may be restless in theatres of discourse
dominated by self-affirming narratives, who wish to consider the fields
of possibility in an environmental perspective that integrates culture
with nature and humans with other beings in a singular, physical world.
