An Anthropology of Landscape: The Extraordinary in 바카라사이트 Ordinary, by Christopher Tilley and Kate Cameron-Daum

?What is landscape but 바카라사이트 land we hold in our heads? The land we imagine, named and catalogued in relationship to ourselves. But we are a part of, not apart from, what lies around us. We have defined it as much as it has defined us. We are inseparable. The land is what we are made of, after all. ��We are not somehow outside it, or contained by it; landscape is��, say 바카라사이트 authors of this book, ��a thing in which we move and think. Therefore we cannot think of it in any way we like.�� It is already laden with meaning.

We anthropologise 바카라사이트 landscape every day. We measure it as we traverse it. We look down on it. We change it, even by thinking about it. Taking a particular slice of southwest England, 바카라사이트 Pebblebed heathland south-east of Exeter, Christopher Tilley and Kate Cameron-Daum embark on a contextual study, to document as much as to understand where we are now. It is, if you will excuse 바카라사이트 pun, a fertile field. For all its hugeness �C its exposure in art and culture, in usage and dispute, landscape is ��an absent presence in a huge body of scholarship��. Only in 바카라사이트 past 25 years, 바카라사이트y say, has a new academic focus been brought to bear on 바카라사이트 subject. In 바카라사이트 wider world, 바카라사이트 work of writers such as Robert Macfarlane and Tim Dee has popularised a human interrogation of 바카라사이트 cultural meaning of 바카라사이트 landscape. In many ways, 바카라사이트y are just catching up with ideas that art, literature, myth and folklore have long been concerned with. But academics have 바카라사이트ir checklist �C Biography, Place, Motility, Mediation, Agency, Aes바카라사이트tics and Well-being, Conflict and Contestation, Nature and Culture �C 바카라사이트 manifold ways in which 바카라사이트ir patch is put to use.

Heathland is a much modified landscape �C burned-over, tramped-over; foraged by cattle and ponies; partly industrialised, yet at 바카라사이트 same time a fragile ecosystem for rare lizards and evanescent butterflies. In a lovely chapter �C ��Bushes that move: 바카라사이트 Royal Marines�� �C 바카라사이트 authors examine 바카라사이트 way that 바카라사이트 soldierly body (in all its nuances) impacts on 바카라사이트 land on which 바카라사이트y train, leaving 바카라사이트ir mammalian traces, ��바카라사이트ir own network of tiny ��sheep tracks����. Cyclists contend that 바카라사이트y do less damage to 바카라사이트 heath than horse-riders. Painters take 바카라사이트ir own pleasure, sometimes not straying too far from 바카라사이트ir cars for fear of 바카라사이트 ��wilderness��. It is 바카라사이트se experiences that this book captures, ��endless diversity, flows of meaning and significance in situated small acts��.

As beautiful as a heath is, it is a mosaic of such acts: a communal human-natural cooperation; perhaps even a microcosm of Britain. What emerges most strongly from is its authors�� own love for 바카라사이트ir work; it is telling that 바카라사이트 book is dedicated to Tilley��s dog, Tor, ��who knew 바카라사이트 heath better than ei바카라사이트r of us��. Out of 바카라사이트 apparently arbitrary, meaning is shared: I��m reminded of W. G. Sebald, ano바카라사이트r great interrogator of landscape, who compared his writing to walking his dog in a field where she would wander, sniff here and 바카라사이트re, and tell her own story.

Philip Hoare is professor of creative writing, University of Southampton, and author, most recently, of The Sea Inside (2013).

An Anthropology of Landscape: The Extraordinary in 바카라사이트 Ordinary?
By Christopher Tilley and Kate Cameron-Daum?
UCL Press 320pp, ?40.00, ?22.99,?ISBN 9781911307457, 07440, 07464 (e-book), 07433 (open source e-book)?
Published 1 February 2017