Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Convenors:
Adele Zubrzycka, University of Queensland, Australia, a.zubrzycka@uq.edu.au
Caitlin D’Gluyas, University of Queensland, Australia, c.dgluyas@uq.edu.au
Alanna Warner-Smith, American University, USA, awarnersmith@american.edu
Historical archaeological landscapes are multivocal, ranging from defined spaces like households and industrial buildings, peripheral places like paths and gardens, and expansive environments such as plantations and townships. With all their complexities, how do archaeologists navigate these often ambiguous boundaries in an analytical context? This session explores the intersection of historical archaeology and spatial methods, focussing on landscapes of labour, production or cultural change. It places an emphasis on how approaches towards excavation, theoretical frameworks, landscape analysis, novel mapping techniques (e.g. GIS and spatial data modelling) or digital infrastructure (e.g. remote sensing) can enhance our methodologies. We invite papers that incorporate any of these approaches to explore social, economic, environmental or power dynamics in the recent past.
Presentations should showcase research that integrates historical archaeology and landscapes. These could include the innovative ways in which mapping contributes to both the reconstruction of historical environments and the interpretation of material culture, or theoretical approaches to mapping and spatial analysis. We welcome interdisciplinary methods, particularly at the intersection of geography, history, community-led research and archaeology. This session invites participants to share experiences, ideas, methodologies, and results, fostering dialogue about the evolving role of spatial analysis in historical archaeology and the potential for future research collaborations.
Papers:
Historical Counterpart or Complement? Using LiDAR and GIS to Compile and Interpret the Material Record of a 19th Century Victorian Goldfield
Richard MacNeill, Dept of Archaeology and History, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
The use of non-invasive survey methods presents challenges to assessing the representativeness of a recovered material record, interpreting it, and theorising in ways that do not exceed its capability. The survey of the isolated Mount Misery diggings in central Victoria, a broad-area surface survey carried out as part of a PhD program during the COVID years, assisted by LiDAR-based data and GIS-based analysis, encountered these challenges.
This presentation sets out principles underlying the design of the ground survey, establishing an appropriate theoretic context and determining appropriate methods of analysis and interpretation.
The temporal proximity and mythic significance of Victoria’s gold era provides an opportunity for assessing the capability of the recovered material record to complement and balance this rich but arguably selective historical record. The results of this work contribute to this, shedding light on some of the odder images and accounts of the goldfields, illustrating the value of a specific archaeological evidentiary approach relevant to contemporary social and cultural dynamics.
A Landscape at the Crossroads of All Roads. The Extractivist Economy and the Change of Landscape of the North of Oaxaca, Mexico, in Colonial Times
Edith Ortiz-Diaz, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, National Autonomous University of Mexico
The state of Oaxaca, rich in cultural traditions, has one of the most rugged reliefs in the Mexican Republic. Within the different mountain massifs that run through the state, there are a multitude of towns and stories that have been connected from the local level with different economic and cultural zones since the pre-Hispanic period. The region currently known as Papaloapan, where we find mainly Chinanteca and Mazatec Indigenous populations, have established networks of exchange and communication with various areas to obtain basic products, as well as sumptuaries, since before the arrival of the Europeans. The extractive economy of the Spanish Crown sought to take not only metals out of its colonies, but also a wide variety of agricultural products. This dramatically changed the landscape, not only of this area but all of ancient Mesoamerica. The objective of this work is to show the change of the landscape and the indigenous transit for the export of vanilla to Spain during the 18th century in the north of the state of Oaxaca.
From Indigenous to Christian Landscape in Polynesia: Spatial Transformations and Interactions in the Mangareva Archipelago in the 19th Century (French Polynesia)
Emilie Perez, Université de Polynésie française, Tahiti
James Flexner, University of Sydney, Australia
Moanatea Claret, University of Sydney, Australia
In this paper, we present the transformations of the landscape in the South Pacific Islands in a context of Christian evangelisation in the 19th century, using excavation and survey, landscape analysis and GIS mapping. The French Catholic mission established in 1834 in Mangareva led to the evangelisation of the entire archipelago few years later and served as the starting point for the expansion of Catholicism throughout Polynesia. The work of missionaries focused as much on the salvation of souls as on the reshaping of the Indigenous landscape. They encouraged the Indigenous community to build churches, houses, towers, schools, and work facilities connected by paved roads. A total of over 120 colonial buildings in stone and coral are still preserved today in Mangareva. The interactions between religious, industrial, and domestic landscapes highlight the transposition of a French colonial landscape in small Polynesian islands and the spread of a 19th century Christian vision of work, gender, and material culture in a more global way.
Mapping Archaeological Landscapes at Scale and in Resolution: Critical Assessment and Lessons Learnt from the Central Asian Archaeological Landscapes (CAAL) Project
Gai (Gaygysyz) Jorayev, Macao University of Tourism (UTM), China; University College London (UCL), UK
A team of UCL researchers, in collaboration with research and heritage management institutions from Central Asia, and with generous support of Arcadia Fund have started an ambitious digitisation and mapping project for Central Asian region in 2018. Now in its sixth year, this 10-year endeavour works through archaeological archives to create unprecedented digital catalogue of data that is linked to more recent, high-resolution documentation of cultural landscapes in a complex geospatial database that is designed to be multilingual, of use to decision making, and open in nature. The approach and model integrate historical archaeology and cultural landscapes in a logically coherent manner and pushes the boundaries in terms of innovation in database design and computational approaches to landscapes. It also tests the limits of digitisation of diverse range of archaeology-related materials, and their sustainable and open use in the future. The project works in interdisciplinary manner and informs diverse areas from arts to climate crisis. Simultaneously, it also discovers new challenges with engagement, ambiguous site limits, modern administrative boundaries, digital divide and many other areas. This paper will highlight some of those issues and pose questions over long-term substantiality, decolonisation, formalisation, Indigenous agency and true co-creation of knowledge in archaeology.
Looking Beyond Boundaries: Mapping, Visualising and Exploring Historical Archaeology Through GIS and Gaming Engines
Brian Shanahan, Extent Heritage, Australia
GIS is now a key part of the archaeologist’s toolkit. It is used for marshalling, analysing and visualising diverse spatial datasets from discrete sites to complex cultural landscapes, and beyond. GIS outputs and mapping often underpin post excavation analysis and spatial modelling for landscape archaeology and historical geography. However, they are also increasingly used for communicating more dynamic interactive spatial and temporal narratives through web-based outputs such as Storymapping. In the past, GIS-mediated workflows were clearly segregated from both Computer Aided Design (CAD) and the process of more complex 3D reconstruction and visualisation. This paper will explore how the integration of GIS, 3D visualisation and interactive virtual environments has opened news ways of interrogating and interacting with the spatial data of archaeological sites through an iterative process of mapping, modelling, and gamification. This provides an opportunity to explore and to consider space and connections between places, and to re-embody historical cartography and site archives. Examples discussed will be based on surveys and excavations undertaken by Extent Heritage on historic sites in Australia.
Seeking Refuge from Colonial Frontier Violence: Theorising Cross-Cultural Contacts in Archaeological sites Southeast Cape York Peninsula, Australia
Cat Morgan, Griffith University, Australia
Southeast Cape York Peninsula (SE CYP) in far north Queensland was not subject to sustained incursion until the late 1800s when predominantly British and Chinese miners rushed to the Palmer River goldfields, and bêche de mer and pearl fishing fleets established camps along the Cape Melville coast. The Native Mounted Police quickly established multiple base camps through the region and Aboriginal people were violently pushed out of their homelands, some seeking refuge in the high sandstone escarpments in the Laura Sandstone Basin. This PhD research involves mapping and analysing the distribution of Aboriginal archaeological sites across the SE CYP with evidence for cross cultural contacts. To better understand this period, I propose utilising the theoretical approaches of researchers such as Lee Panich and Tsim Schneider, considering Aboriginal people as active agents rather than passive recipients, who made deliberate choices in this process of unprecedented change. Using this approach in the analysis of the spatial distribution of cross-cultural encounters, this research will demonstrate how Aboriginal people adapted to the enormous social changes that occurred as a result of colonisation, a period during which their use and movement across a landscape they had occupied for thousands of years was vastly altered.
Dying Twice: How Violence, Disease, and Capitalism Buried a Burial Ground
Katharine Grace McCartha and Kaitlyn Q. Rice, American University in Washington D.C., USA
In 125 years, a minimum of 63 individuals have been found ‘mysteriously’ buried under the 3300 block of Q street in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., United States. Various oral histories and historical periodicals describe those buried at Q street as cholera victims and of African American descent. Additionally, no formal record of a cemetery exists on surviving historical maps. Similar to countless examples across Washington D.C. (and beyond), the burials at Q St. were treated as a roadblock to urbanised ‘progress’ rather than as a site of memorialisation. Through a combination of archival, archaeological, and spatial analysis, this paper investigates the entanglement between the marginalised identities of those buried at Q street, the circumstances of their deaths, and how structures of violence created the conditions for the cemetery’s erasure. We make two critical interventions: firstly, we use GIS to explore how biological contagion conflated with social ‘contamination’ affected the treatment and legacy of labourers during the cholera epidemic of 1832. Secondly, we contextualise the erasure of Q Street within a broader evaluation of how socio-political and economic stratification affected ‘othered’ bodies in life and after death. This reinserts marginalised narratives into a broader understanding of Georgetown’s history.
Peopling and Depopulating the Archaeological Landscape of Colonial Parramatta, Australia During its First Decades (1788-1825) With a Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure
Nicholas M. Pitt, Laureate Centre for History & Population, School of Humanities & Languages, Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture, UNSW Sydney
This presentation presents ongoing work to create a historical spatial data infrastructure that covers the region surrounding colonial Parramatta, Australia. Established in November 1788, Parramatta is the second-oldest British colonial settlement in the former colony of New South Wales. The township frequently functioned as the seat of government, while the surrounding farms were the first locations of successful coloniser agriculture. Numerous commercially-funded archaeological projects over the last 40 years have created a large amount of grey literature and archives awaiting further synthesis. Through the construction of a historical spatial data infrastructure, this project has been able to begin to people this landscape by identifying colonisers who received leases and grants of land. These then can be used to spatialise other records such as population and stock musters. The movement of people and other-than-human animals emerges in new ways, including the emergence of the first large sheep and cattle farms on the Australian continent. However, the ongoing presence of Dharug, Bidjigal, Wangal and other First Nations peoples (well-known from other research and contemporary community action) remains obscured by this kind of data driven approach – highlighting the limitations of this kind of approach unless accompanied with other forms of counter mapping.
Memory in the Margins: Roadside Memorials and the Production of Space
Cassie J. Gordon, independent researcher, Australia
This paper examines roadside memorials as spontaneous material inscriptions in public space—emplaced commemorative acts that intersect with the physical, social, and symbolic dimensions of the roadscape. These memorials, often established at sites of traumatic loss, complicate and reconfigure the production of space within transport corridors. Drawing on Lefebvre’s spatial triad, this paper positions these memorials as existing at the intersection of spatial practice, conceived infrastructure, and lived memory, highlighting their role in shaping emotional and cultural landscapes.
Through archaeological theory and cross-disciplinary perspectives, the road corridor is conceptualised as a hodological landscape—one experienced through movement and shaped by connective encounters. In this context, roadside memorials are lieux de mémoire (Nora), where personal grief and collective memory converge. Their material presence, maintenance, and eventual decay raise important questions about temporality, authorship, and the dynamics of informal cultural expression in historical landscapes.
By situating roadside memorials within a broader discourse on landscape and spatial production, this paper contributes to ongoing discussions in historical archaeology about how lived experience, material culture, and memory can indeed shape and challenge the boundaries of place. The work underscores the value of theorising ephemeral, marginal, and emotionally-charged spaces within a landscape context.