More-than-representational archaeologies of leisure in the Dean Forest and Wye Valley National Forest Park

Thesis

The thesis that follows is interdisciplinary in nature, bringing together the fields of contemporary archaeology, cultural and historical Geography to explore the changing landscape of the Dean Forest and Wye Valley National Forest Park. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Forest of Dean was a significant industrial region, a landscape dominated by pitheads, tramroads and railways, coal mines, ironworks, and quarries. However, the twentieth century saw the radical transformation of this landscape, from industry to leisure. In the chapters that follow, it is aspects of this landscape transformation that are examined through the lens of non-representational theory, as each chapter explores the questions: what might a ‘more-than-representational’ approach to contemporary archaeology look like? And, what can archaeological perspectives offer in terms of the development of non-representational theory?

Starting from the premise that contemporary archaeology is not just about the recent past, but about how we engage with the past from the perspective of the present, this thesis focuses upon those barely perceptible echoes from the past that have the power to move us in unexpected ways. As such, it examines not just the legacy of the past in the landscape, but its capacity to generate affective registers, to evoke and to unsettle. It develops a distinctly archaeological approach to considerations of materiality and time within non-representational theories, placing an emphasis on matter, memory and haunting, absence and presence. It focuses on new temporalities arising from the time of the ‘event’, new materialisms that are ‘more-than-representational’, and new ways of performing and practicing the archaeological.

Authors: Hill, LJ

• Publication date: 2011
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-agkqxx61d
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: cultural geography; contemporary archaeology
• Subjects: Archaeology; Geography