2.4.1 Space itself
The use of space, as a social and physical construct, is fundamental to our understanding of, and how we relate to, the world around us. How we conceive and divide that space, be it the rural landscape, the urban street, or the place we live in and call home, is created by the things we are surrounded by and how we choose to use them. The objects, both ‘natural’ and man-made, are not in themselves creators of the meaning we associate with them, although their form has undeniable influence. The current theoretical focus on objects and materiality has an important role to play, but can be seen as a symptom of our limitations and inability to see beyond the materialistic world we live in, and to other ways of thinking. This becomes ever more complex in archaeology by the necessary assumption that the objects that have survived and end up in our hands, often the durable, high status objects, can in anyway provide us with a complete representation of past cultural perceptions. As an example, without becoming mired in the debate over the specific uses of them, early medieval texts such as the saga’s are source material for the Viking Age and Medieval period, and demonstrate that the ontology and belief system of the Viking Age was far more nuanced and complex than objects archaeologists happen to have obtained can represent (Price, 2002:44-47). In the same sense, western values are firmly grounded in our concept of time. Temporality ascribes impact and relevance on lives, which is typified in education by teaching the most recent events last, to the older child.
Neil Price, in his seminal thesis, The Viking Way, discussed the belief and customs of Viking Age society as revealed from written sources and archaeological evidence (Price, 2002). What is striking is the plurality of Viking Age beliefs, how embodied they were in everyday lives and practice, diverse in time and space, and incomparable to any modern western notion of religion.
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They encompassed every aspect of being, without any concept of subservient worship. In Severin M. Fowles Archaeology of Doings, a study of Pueblo customs and beliefs in the Hopi culture, he concludes that spatiality constructed and defined their world, composed of a customs, a way of being incomparable to modern western religion. Time is viewed as secondary to space, and in spatial terms. It is not when, but where something happened that connects it to the living world (Fowles, 2013). This is not a direct suggestion that Viking Age society was entirely composed on spatial planes, but that our obsession with temporality, with our typologies, radiocarbon dates, historical successions and manner of ordering and valuing, can distort our ability to see other ways of being. Indeed, Fowles suggests, much in the same manner Price infers, that because the written sources that we have for both the Viking Age and Pueblo societies were from Christian sources, they became religions, organised after Christian thinking, and we are still in the process of deconstructing that concept from the few sources we have (Fowles, 2013, Price, 2002). In the same sense, the notion of objective science, which is entirely a modern western construct, being able to define or infer meaning on societies structured around paradoxically different concepts, appears naive. A more holistic, reflective approach is needed, that allows for both our concepts of knowledge, and theirs. We need to consider how space was inhabited, as well as the objects placed within, through the constraints the paucity of physical remains of the past places on us.
When studying such a loose term as space, which in western society has differing and nuanced definitions, it is necessary to set constraints. In doing this, we are creating boundaries and definitions by convenience, and not in response to the material of study. Literature is often divided into the house and settlement (e.g. Giles and Kristiansen, 2014, Webley, 2008) and the landscape (e.g. Kluiving and Guttmann, 2012b). Theories and texts exist that breach this division (e.g. Ingold, 2000), however it is challenging to incorporate every dimension of internal and external space within a material based study. Therefore, although this research is primarily concerned with the settlement and house, many of the concepts of spatial construction and theory are not seen to start or end at the threshold.
Objects form part of this understanding – objects are in themselves a medium to focus cognitive responses in time and space – but they are not the sole means of interpreting the social and cultural constructs people divide the world by. Actions, as in learning by doing, are also fundamental to the way people mentally and physically divide space (Bourdieu, 1977:89). Seeing things in binary opposites, as Bourdieu does in his structuralist study of Kabyle houses, he himself saw lacked temporal depth, and any concept of agency. However repetition and reciprocal reinforcement cement how space is comprehended. The social rules embodied in the
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house were taught through repeated actions and associations from an early age (Bourdieu, 1977, Hem Eriksen, 2015).
Space is not just something we label, culturally specifically and elaborately, it is something that is created as it simultaneously creates social constructions (Lefebvre, 1991, Kühtreiber, 2014).
We are immersed in a world which we decipher as we experience it (Thomas, 2012). The creation, language and concept cannot be completely drawn from one another, however the perception of space is fluid and dynamic; dependent upon the perceiver, and infinitely changeable. Space also can accrue individual and collective meanings over time, it can become laden with evolving past identities and meaning, which can relate to one or many observers. The experience of space can differ from the perspective of the creator, the architect or builder, to the user. Where the builder, individually or collectively defines a space physically or through action, the user occupying the space can be seen as more passive to the form of the space, but not necessarily the symbolic meanings within it, where the user can create reciprocal and/or conflicting associations within a space compared to the creator, and indeed other users (Lefebvre, 1991:43).
2.4.2 Engaging in space
In this thesis, instead of seeing objects as steeping in meaning and architecture as static (Schmid, 2014), space will be viewed as a manifestation of socially constructed and accepted behaviours that are environmentally responsive (Løvschal and Holst, 2014). Drawing from Løvschal and Holst work on Iron Age landscape and settlement, how people engage and live within spatial divisions will be seen as the incremental accumulation of behavioural responses to cultural and environmental factors. Over time, certain behaviours and responses become more prominent as they, consciously or unconsciously, are seen as more acceptable responses. What Løvschal and Holst term a ‘spatial repertoire’, is a set of choices within a range of possibilities applied to socially communicate, coordinate and regulate. To this can be added the need to identify and define. Temporarily and the explanation of change is added by shared references and retrospect within the cultural and environmental context, which can be implemented, modified or ignored by a person or group. This creates a dynamic between past and present, the individual and society.
This allows study of the manifestations we have before us, such as postholes or ditches, to be both unique and comparable within similar or contrasting cultural and environmental constraints. For example, a ditch may be a boundary created to drain a plot of land for settlement, however it may evolve as a physical boundary into a political and social one. Thus comparable ditches may appear on land that requires no drainage, as the ditch becomes an
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economic and social division, a statement of cultural identity, or a symbol that colludes to another.