Landscape, Memory And History: Anthropological Perspectives (Anthropology, Culture and Society)

251 Pages·2003·1.26 MB·English

by  Pamela J. Stewart

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LANDSCAPE, MEMORY
AND HISTORY
Anthropological Perspectives
EDITEDBY
PAMELAJ. STEWARTANDANDREWSTRATHERN
P
Pluto Press
LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA
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First published 2003
by PLUTO PRESS
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 22883 Quicksilver Drive,
Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern 2003
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of
this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
ISBN 0 7453 1967 X hardback
ISBN 0 7453 1966 1 paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth EX10 9QG, England
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Towcester, England
Printedand bound intheEuropeanUnionby
Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England
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CONTENTS
1. Introduction 1
Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern
2. Iconic Images: Landscape and History in the Local Poetry of
the Scottish Borders 16
John Gray
3. Céide Fields: Natural Histories of a Buried Landscape 47
Stuart McLean
4. Landscape Representation: Place and Identity in
Nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey Maps of Ireland 71
Angèle Smith
5. Memories of Ancestry in the Forests of Madagascar 89
Janice Harper
6. Moon Shadows: Aboriginal and European Heroes in an
Australian Landscape 108
Veronica Strang
7. History, Mobility and Land Use Interests of Aborigines and
Farmers in the East Kimberly in North-West Australia 136
Ruth Lane
8. Co-present Landscapes: Routes and Rootedness as Sources
of Identity in Highlands New Guinea 166
Michael O’Hanlon and Linda Frankland
9. ‘Island Builders’: Landscape and Historicity Among the
Langalanga, Solomon Islands 189
Pei-yi Guo
10. Biography, Ecology, Political Economy: Seascape and
Conflict in Jamaica 210
James G. Carrier
Epilogue 229
Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart
Notes on Contributors 237
Index 240
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LIST OF FIGURES
6.1a Distant view of Jimmy Inkerman’s memorial at
Trubanamen 109
6.1b Close-up view of memorial 109
6.2 The Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach,
North Queensland 121
7.1 Ord River Valley looking north from Kununurra 137
7.2 Proposed Ord Stage 2 Project Area showing
Conservation Area and Aboriginal land claims 138
7.3 The East Kimberley Region 141
7.4 John Mack, horticulturalist 154
7.5 Bush meeting of Miriuwung women convened by the
Northern Land Council to discuss the Ord Stage 2
proposal 157
8.1 Standing atop the bolyimhouse, men of Komblo Kulka clan
consume pork fat at the climax to their Pig Festival 171
8.2 Walking home with a netbag of sweet potato, a Wahgi
woman passes by the roadside the decaying hulk of a
truck, parked at its owner’s settlement, adjacent to a grave 184
vi
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1 INTRODUCTION
Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern
Thetopicoflandscapehasrecentlycomemoretotheforeinanthropo-
logicalinterests.Ethnographershaverealisedfromtheirfieldexperiences
howperceptionsofandvaluesattachedtolandscapeencodevaluesand
fix memories to places that become sites of historical identity. Such
perceptionsshift,eithergraduallyordramatically,overtime,sothat
landscapebecomesaformofcodificationofhistoryitself,seenfromthe
viewpointsofpersonalexpressionandexperience.Thisnotionhasproved
particularlyfruitfulasafocusforworkinpartsoftheworldwheresocial
andculturalanthropologyhavehadtomaketheirwayalongsidehistory,
sociologyandpolitics.Atthesametimetheconceptoflandscapehas
provedstrategicforinterpretingmaterialsfrommanypartsoftheworld.
In this collection of papers we highlight the significance of this topic for
studies of identity. Thus, the materials here look at particular individuals,
emplaced within a physical environment, who interact with others
within their social environment through their remembered and
imaginary experiences. These expressions of identity are not reified or
locked in time but are historically positioned in the dynamics of temporal
space. The generalised applicability of this approach is evident from the
range of geographical locations included in this volume: Scotland,
Ireland, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Australia, the Solomon Islands
and Jamaica. One of the common tropes of ethnographic enquiry has
always been that of ‘setting’. The beginning chapters of most ethno-
graphic treatises lay out the place in which the research was conducted
and the temporal location of the study. But one of the criticisms of some
ethnographic studies has been a lack of historicity in representation and
of details on the intersubjectivity of the peoples being discussed. The
authors here use history and memory to explore the economic, political
and social events that impact perceived visions of landscape and the
perceived placement of people within these settings.
1
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2 Landscape, Memory and History
In terms of identity, our view is that two crucial elements are at work:
notions of memory and notions of place. Together these occupy a
conceptual space analogous to that which communityonce held in the
social anthropology of some societies. Memory and place, via landscape
(including seascape), can be seen as crucial transducers whereby the
local, national and global are brought into mutual alignment; or as
providing sites where conflicts between these influences are played out.
Such a theoretical scheme can also be seen as providing an alternative
way of studying identity to the concentration on nationalism and
national senses of identity as phenomena per se.It can help to re-establish
a sphere of studies for social anthropology that would integrate aspects
of earlier community-based approaches with approaches that emphasise
political change, citizenship, national identity, historical influences, and
similar broad factors.
Landscapesarealsodramaticallychangedfromtimetotimenotonly
by urban planning, roads and factories but also by the wide-scale
epidemics that affect farming, such as the spread of foot and mouth
diseaseintheUKandelsewhere.Theseepidemiologicaldisastersposea
challengetounderstandingtheexperienceoffarmersandotherswho
valuethecountrysideindifferentways(e.g.touristswhooftencometo
ruralfarmingareasinplaceslikeScotlandsimplytoseethefarming
landscapewithitsvariedhues,odours,livestockandtopography).The
projectthatwepursuehereshouldhelptobringoutabetterunder-
standingoftheintertwiningaspectsoflandscape,memoryandhistory
inethnographicpresentationandmakereadersingeneralawareofits
significance.
The materials presented here explore the topic of landscape, memory
and history in greater depth and in a broader geographical range than
has previously been done. A strong emphasis on changing perceptions of
history as expressed in ideas about landscape is central to this project,
taking landscape in the broad senses laid out in the volumes edited by
Hirsch and O’Hanlon (1995), Bender (1993), and Bender and Winer
(2001). This involves the examination of landscape as seen initially by
the viewer and ‘a second landscape which is produced through local
practice and which we come to recognise and understand through
fieldwork and through ethnographic description and interpretation’
(Hirsch 1995: 2).
The word ‘landscape’ was introduced into English as a technical term
of painters (cf. Oxford English Dictionary). Thus, taken as a term to
describe the artistic presentation of a scene, it can well be applied to the
creative and imaginative ways in which people place themselves within
their environments. No two people will paint the same landscape since
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Introduction 3
no two people will mentally see the same images or be able to technically
reproduce the seen images at the same level of expertise. Cultural
knowledge gained from living within a social landscape determines the
pictures that people construct. Ethnographers struggle to interpret the
information given to them in terms of these verbal pictures.
One of the main ideas here is to incorporate history into these trends,
and so to endow them with temporal depth and subjectivity. This project
of incorporating history into our discussion gives strength to our
perspective, in part differentiating it from previous work done on the
topic. We see history as involved continuously in the making and
remaking of ideas about place, realigning or differentiating place in
relation to notions of community. Essentially, we argue that landscape
provides a wider context in which notions about place and community
can be situated. This context crucially includes historically defined power
relations and how these are both imposed and resisted at local levels (see
Head 2000 for examples from Australia).
The sense of place and embeddedness within local, mythical, and ritual
landscapes is important. These senses of place serve as pegs on which
people hang memories, construct meanings from events, and establish
ritual and religious arenas of action. Veronica Strang has described ‘cos-
mological landscapes’ in her prior writing on Australian Aboriginal
peoples and Australian White farmers in Northern Queensland (1997).
Simon Schama (1995) has explored what we might call an ‘environ-
mental landscape’ that connects human and spirit dwelling places,
including forests, mountains, rivers and streams. He looked at the topic
of landscape and memory as expressed in artistic representations in
paintings from certain parts of Western Europe and North America,
focusing on what these images might tell us about the societies in which
these individual artists were working. This is one way in which material
culture can be used to represent meanings of landscape.
Two regions in which we ourselves have been interested to explore
this topic are in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (Stewart and
Strathern 2000, 2002a) and in the Lowlands of Scotland (Strathern and
Stewart 2001). In both of these regions we have shown the ways in
which people manifest their local, and in some instances their national,
senses of self-recognition and social identity. Folktales, myths, oral
histories, ballads, ritual incantations and ordinary stories of daily life all
invoke in real or imagined detail the spatial positionings of a community
of people. Our research in Ayrshire, Scotland, has shown, among other
things, how places with historical significance can be appropriated
through their perceived cultural heritage status so as to strengthen
political identities. Likewise, our work among the Duna people of Papua
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4 Landscape, Memory and History
New Guinea has demonstrated how malu (genealogical narratives)
identify groups of people with specific parts of the local area and that this
knowledge of emplacement can be a strong tool in battles over compen-
sation claims when outside companies come into the region to extract
natural resources (e.g. oil).
While we see the concepts of place, community and landscape as inter-
secting or overlapping, we do not regard them as synonyms. The idea of
landscape gives us a meaningful context into which we can set notions
of place and community, but we need to give these concepts definitions
that at least partially separate them. In our view landscape refers to the
perceived settings that frame people’s senses of place and community. A
place is a socially meaningful and identifiable space to which a historical
dimension is attributed. Community refers to sets of people who may
identify themselves with a place or places in terms of notions of
commonality, shared values or solidarity in particular contexts.
Landscape is thus a contextual horizon of perceptions, providing both a
foreground and a background in which people feel themselves to be living
in their world. While we may tend to think of this in rural terms or as an
aspect of ‘nature’ it may apply equally to urban and rural sites because
they are all equally moulded by human actions and/or by human
perceptions. It is such acts of moulding that give to landscape its
character of being a processthat Hirsch refers to (Hirsch 1995: 5). It is a
process because its shape at any given time reflects change and is a part
of change. Nevertheless it often serves as a crucial marker of continuity
with the past as well as a reassurance of identity in the present and a
promise for the future. Ideas about landscape often turn time into space
or express time through space, as happens for example in New Guinea
origin stories that describe pathways of migration taken by group
ancestors to their historical locations (Stewart and Strathern 2001a).
The idea of landscape, then, both modifies ideas about place and
community and may be called on to support or enrich them. It also
grants a flexibility to concepts of identity and belonging as forged
through individual historical experience. This point may help to
reconciletwoseeminglycontradictoryapproachesoremphasesinthe
study of place seen as ‘home’. In one approach home and place are
consideredtobefixedpoints,whileintheotherthestressisonmovement
throughpoints,inwhichtravelitselfprovidesthefeelingofbeing‘at
home’(seeRapportandDawson1998).Whilewecanacceptthateither
notioncouldformthebasisofasenseofbelonging,sincebelongingis
essentiallyanideaandideasareplastic,wecanalsosuggestthatpersons
travelwiththeirowninnerlandscapes.Theyrememberparticularplaces
throughimagesofhowtheylookedandwhatitfeltliketobethere;or
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Introduction 5
theydevelopsuchimagesthroughphotographs,films,ornarrativesfrom
others.Whattheyarerememberingorcreatingherearelandscapes,to
whichtheyhaveaconnection;andsuchlandscapescantravelwith
people,givingthemasenseof‘home’whentheyarenot‘athome’.The
personwhostaysinoneplacemaynotseethatplaceas‘home’.The
person who travels may carry ‘home’ around as a tangible point in
fluidity.Homemayalsobemultiple:itneednotbejustoneplace,but
numbersofplacesthatshowcorrespondencesofassociation,landscapes
thathaverelationshipsattachedtothem.Whiletheremayliterallybe
somepeopleforwhomtravelitselfprovidesasenseofcontinuity,for
otherpeopletheexperienceoftravelcoexistswithsensesofidentitythat
areincounterpointwithit,andourargumenthereisthatthosesenses
ofidentityareoftenmostforciblytiedupwithsensesoflandscape,ofhow
aplaceappearsasanorderedformofenvironmentwithinwhichplace
andcommunityareperceived.
The sense of community that is established through emplacement
encompasses both the living and the dead as well as the spirit world. For
example, among the Duna people of the Aluni Valley in the Southern
Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea the non-corporeal part of a
human body (the ‘soul’, tini) is thought to reside in limestone shelters in
the forested areas around the settlements after a person dies. The non-
skeletal substance of the human body is said to be reabsorbed by the local
ground (rindi) and is thought to replenish the fertility of the place in
general. In the past the bones of the deceased were bundled and placed
into limestone ossuaries, providing a ‘home’ for the person’s tini.1The
tiniis encouraged to depart to these ossuaries at funerals and afterwards
at grave sites by mourning songs that women specialise in singing. These
laments invoke local place names and describe familiar landscape
features that serve to place the dead firmly within the environmental and
community framework of the group while serving the equally strong
function of embedding the singer within her social nexus. We refer to
this as the ‘embodiment of landscape’. This concept is one that is vital in
understanding the phenomenology of emplacement. In these Duna songs
thetiniis often evocatively animated through a parallelism with birds.
My daughter, like a ribbon-tail bird,
Wearing your little apron . . .
Go up . . . up there,
Where the rocks stand out.
(Sung by a Duna women whose daughter had died, 1998)