Solving Problems in Landscape Archaeology: Midland Villages & Mick Aston's Ideas

Overview

Solving problems in landscape archaeology:  some midland villages in the light of Mick Aston’s ideas

In this lecture Chris Dyer outlines some of the key themes and ideas that emerge from Mick Aston’s work on landscape archaeology.  Mick Aston provided an entertaining and popular introduction to archaeology, but he was also a fertile source of ideas about the landscape. For example he explored the relationship between the medieval countryside and its antecedents, and he thought about ‘status’ in the landscape and the influence of those in authority. He saw the landscape as working for the benefit of its inhabitants, and as a dynamic and evolving system.  In the practical way that Mick Aston advocated, the lecture will apply these general ideas to a group of  places in south Warwickshire which Dyer has been investigating. He received help and encouragement from Mick Aston, who he first met in 1967, and with whom he collaborated on a number of projects, notably the editing of a landmark book on medieval settlement.  Mick Aston began his research career with studies of west midland earthworks, so it is appropriate to focus on Warwickshire in a lecture inspired by his example.