Ianin
You are welcome to disagree. I know there is some very good GIS and
locational-statistical work going  e.g analysing finds distributions and
terrain change or land values but I still find most distance based
modelling far from helpful in landscape analysis because it is devoid of
politics- something we actually have massive amounts of data for in many
historical periods. Actually Braudel (not the rest of the Annales
school) was widely taken up  by the Cambridge palaeo-economy school
amongst others - especially in the Mediterranean - they were initially
influenced by Higgs and his penchant for site catchment analysis.
However useful that site catchment might or might not be in studying
hunter-gathereers, for example, in Europe we know the actual boundaries
local , regional and national for much of the last 1000 years and they
only in part reflect access to natural resources.  We also know that
movement might be affected by say rights of way, tolls etc - even
tradition all things we can document if only partially. Well you could
argue that these are all things we can theoretically model but most
historical applications of modeling that I have come across still seem
bogged down in analysing very simplistic  terraina and distance factors.
As for Braudel I think he has also been hugely influential in European
landscape studies in general including archaeology as well as in
material culture studies (very big in Europe). And I would argue a much
greater historian than Ladurie.As for his concepts of time that has been
hugely influential in theory but barely reflected in actual
archaeological study though I suppose the Mediterranean-type surveys are
the best examples. History has moved on, however, sometimes too much as
far as I am concerned. because cultural determism is now from my point
of  a view a bigger problem than environmental determinism. Was there an
Annales school- I would argue there was centring on the melding of
French regional geography, history and sociology. I think that it is
still hugely influentiual without existing any longer as a coherent
school. As for Annales heroes mine is Marc Bloch. His French Rural
History is the greatest landscape analysis of the last century -

paul - just back from IPMG in Limerick and too many pints of Guiness




Iain Stuart wrote:

>Paul,
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>I respectfully disagree in some ways to your characterisation. I actually don't care whether the modelling approach is "cutting edge" it is however, to me a useful tool for looking at patterns and considering how a landscape might be used.
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>I mentioned Chisholm on purpose when I could have mentioned Peter Hagget et al, because Chisholm wasn't so much of a modeller and avoided much of the high end mathematic and geometric modelling that was pretty much of a sound and light show. The basic reason for these models was to try and explain uneven development and land use patterns. I am well aware that the locational geography school and their technique of modelling was uncritically and breathlessly taken up by (St) David Clarke and Lord Renfrew. Site location though, drew on Chisholm's interpretation of von Thunen and other classic geographers rather than directly on Hagget. I rather though it gradually died as its exponents retired.
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>I don't think that all that many archaeologists converted to Braudel (at least not as many as converted to Foucault or Derrida) and of those most seemed to realise that there wasn't really an Annales School to adopt. For me at least the breadth of Braudel's writing wasn't a surprise but the richness and depth of the writings of authors like Le Roy Ladurie showed what historians could achieve in helping us understand the past.
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>The notion of different types of historical processes as discussed by Braudel is also quite important as a technique for trying to meld historical and environmental data and probably deserves more thought than it has been given by archaeologists.
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>I actually once tried a site catchment analysis and I must admit it was a bugger to do properly, GIS with its ability to do distance decay models would make it much easier. I had to fudge it and was less than happy with the results. More recently though, I have found in documentary accounts of rural life considerable evidence of movement patterns and travelling time from which you can almost construct a geography of a place or person at a set period of time in the past. This then helps develop an understanding of a landscape or seascape and how people lived in it. This has all helped me understand why some sites are created where they were, why some land was occupied first and other blocks left vacant and why things changed.
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>Another book that might have some relevant information in it is Mather, A.S. 1986 Land use which again is a summary text that leads into the literature.
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>Iain Stuart
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