Landscapes of Clearance (Paperback)  | Released: 01 May 2010

This volume examines landscapes that have been cleared of inhabitants--for economic, environmental, or socio-political reasons, by choice or by force--and the social impacts of clearance on their populations. Using cases from five continents, and ranging from prehistoric, through colonial and post-colonial times, the contributors show landscapes as meaningful points of contestation when populations abandon them or are exiled from them. Acts of resistance and revitalization are also explored, demonstrating the social and political meaning of specific landscapes to individuals, groups, and nations, and how they help shape cultural identity and ideology.Sponsored by the World Archaeological CongressAbout the Author: Dr. Angle Smith is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. Her research focuses on landscapes, place, the construction and negotiation of cultural identities, and the politics of representation, and bridges many sub-disciplines including: cultural anthropology, ethnohistory and historical archaeology. Her current ongoing work in Ireland, funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, explores the articulation and negotiation of place and identity among communities of Nigerian asylum seekers.Amy Gazin-Schwartz is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Assumption College in Massachusetts and, with Olivia Lelong, co-director of the Strathnaver Province Archaeology Project in Scotland. She has interests in the archaeology of rural settlement and life and in the intersections between folklore and archaeology. She has done archaeological fieldwork on the island of Raasay, Scotland with the Association of Certificated Field Archaeologists, and in other parts of Great Britain and the northeastern US. She is co-editor (with Cornelius Holtorf) of Archaeology and Folklore (Routledge 1999).