Call for papers: Landscapes of Pleasure, Landscapes of Conscience:

Call for papers: Landscapes of Pleasure, Landscapes of Conscience: perceptions of environmental ethics in pre-modern societies

Call for Papers: Theoretical Archaeology Group, Liverpool 2012: ‘Landscapes of Pleasure, Landscapes of Conscience: perceptions of environmental ethics in pre-modern societies.’ Session proposed by Anne Sassin ( University of Nottingham ) and Kristopher Poole (Independent Researcher).


Abstracts wanted for:

The 34th Annual Conference of the Theoretical Archaeology Group, the University of Liverpool , 17 December to 19 December 2012.


Session title:

Landscapes of Pleasure, Landscapes of Conscience: perceptions of environmental ethics in pre-modern societies.


Throughout time, humankind has been adept at manipulating the environment, whether for their own personal homes, subsistence benefits, or spiritual gain. More often than not, such reasons were self-motivated in their instigation: some economical and some tied to social status. Occasionally, the created landscapes were purely aesthetic in inspiration, providing backdrops of pleasure to participants and quiet places of contemplation. Research into such interactions has tended to focus on the anthropocentric reasons behind such actions, yet the absence of separate concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘society’ in many past cultures (e.g. Descola and Pálsson 1996) means that we should also consider the potential existence of more ecocentric motivations. In particular, was management of the environment always self-motivated, or could it have at times been undertaken for the benefit of nature, and with environmental values in mind? Is one necessarily separate from the other? Are such distinctions detectable in the archaeological record, and more importantly, is it even possible to differentiate true motivations from masked aspirations?


This session aims to address these issues by drawing in a multifarious range of papers and evidence, from zooarchaeological and palaeoethnobotanical, to historical sources and landscape studies, incorporating all regions and periods from prehistoric to post-medieval. Its objective is to explore methodologies for evaluating such an enigmatic topic, identifying instances in the archaeological record where signs of ecocentrism might be present, or as the case may be, entirely lacking.


Abstracts should be no more than 250 words and should include the name of the author(s) and institutional affiliation(s). Please submit to either: asassinallen@gmail.com, or kris.poole@hotmail.co.uk , by 28th June 2012.



Additional Reading

Benson, J., 2000, Environmental Ethics. London : Routledge.

Descola, P. and Pálsson, G. 1996 ‘Introduction’, in P. Descola and G. Pálsson, eds. Nature and Society: Anthropological perspectives. London : Routledge, pp. 1-21.

Jones, O., 2000 ‘(Un)ethical geographies of human-non-human relations’, in C. Philo and C. Wilbert, eds. Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New geographies of human-animal relations. London : Routledge, pp. 268-291.

Kockelkoren, P., 1995 ‘Fundamental attitudes with regard to nature’ in ‘Ethical aspects of plant biotechnology’, in Agriculture and Spirituality: essays from the Crossroads Conference at Wageningen Agricultural University . Utrecht : International Books, pp. 99-105.

Lynn, W.S., 1998 ‘Animals, ethics, and geography’, in J. Wolch and J. Emel, eds. Animal Geographies: Place, policies, and identity in the nature-culture borderlands. London : Verso, pp. 280-297.