Shadow Sites Photography, Archaeology, and the British Landscape 1927-1951

by Hauser, Kitty

• ISBN13: 9780199206322
• ISBN10: 0199206325
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-05-24
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

At certain times of the day - at sunrise, and sunset - the outlines of prehistoric fields, barrows and hill-forts in the British landscape may be thrown into relief. Such 'shadow sites', best seen from above, and captured by an airborne camera, are both examples of, and metaphors for, aparticular way of seeing the landscape. At a time of rapid modernisation and urbanisation in mid-twentieth-century Britain, an archaeological vision of the British landscape reassured and enchanted a number of writers, artists, photographers, and film-makers. From John Piper, Eric Ravilious andShell guide books, to photographs of bomb damage, aerial archaeology, and The Wizard of Oz, Kitty Hauser delves into evocative interpretations of the landscape and looks at the affinities between photography as a medium to capture traces of the past as well as their absence.

Author Biography

Kitty Hauser is a historian of visual and material culture who has written for publications including the New Left Review, the Burlington Magazine, and the London Review of Books. Previously a research fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, she has also taught at the London College of Fashion and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford. She is currently Research Fellow at the University of Sydney.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Archaeological Imagination

Tracing the Trace: Photography, the Index, and the Limits of Representation

Reading Antiquity, Mapping History

Revenants in the Landscape: The Discoveries of Aerial Archaeology

Recuperating Ruins

A Tale of Two Cities

Conclusion

Appendix: John Piper's 'Papers from Antiquity'

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