Seeing the unseen. Geophysics and landscape archaeology / Видеть невидимое. Геофизика и ландшафтная археология

In history and prehistory artefacts and structures are often concealed beneath the surface of the earth as a result of geological processes and perhaps more frequently as a result of human activity. A key aspect of landscape archaeology lies in the identification and interpretation of this hidden evidence or in the broader sense of the buried landscape.

Recent decades have seen landscape archaeologists concentrating mainly on the collection of vast numbers of sites, for the most part in isolation from one another. We might call this a site-based approach. But neither present-day nor past landscapes consist only of houses, settlements, cemeteries, industrial areas and the like. More recently archaeologists have become aware that there is a great range of evidence (on-site as well off-site or non-site), from scatters of artefacts to road systems, plough-marks and field boundaries, that can provide important information, not only about human exploitation of the environment but also about cultural, social and economic developments. This has created a ‘new’ challenge. We are called to face the inherent complexity of landscapes and their internal relationships—often hidden beneath or between ‘sites’ and for the most part represented by relatively ‘weak’ evidence. We might call this a landscape-based approach. <...>