Bridging the Gap: Understanding the empty Medieval landscape of post-Roman Aquitaine

Summary

The end of the Roman Empire is marked archaeologically by an impressive shift in material culture. Changes in land organization and the use of more ephemeral building materials created a largely invisible and difficult to detect post-Roman landscape. Archaeologists initially assumed such landscapes were abandoned as a result of the political and economic chaos resulting from Rome’s fall. Work in northwest Europe in the past two decades, however has shown that new techniques can help locate these post-Roman occupations, and the issue of abandonment is much more complex than originally assumed.

In the Dordogne area of France, the situation has been exacerbated by a lack of documentation both historically and archaeologically. Both Roman and post-Roman occupations are underrepresented; creating a map that is largely devoid of archaeological material. Using GIS analysis, I will address whether this "emptiness" represents cultural absence or simply new forms of cultural organization. In doing so, I will problematize the issue of site definition, particularly in regards to survey strategies and landscape analysis and posit ways archaeologists can include empty ‘scapes’ in their analysis.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Mind the Gap: Archaeological Approaches to Null Data Spaces   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage