In answer to the question "Is Barbara Bender’s Theory of Contested Space Complemented by Christopher Tilley’s Phenomenological Perspective?"
Phenomenology -the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. -Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
In the late nineteen-nineties, Barbara Bender of University College London (UCL) introduced her theory of contested space within the pages of the publication Stonehenge, Making Space. This work, however, was not produced in a vacuum. Concurrently, her UCL colleague Christopher Tilley began a discourse on landscape which was framed in terms of a convergence of a new geography and a new archaeology, the latter often referred to as post-processual archaeology[1]. Michael Shanks, a pioneer of this new archaeology, reflects that in drawing upon cultural geography ‘a post-processual landscape archaeology has emerged which focuses on landscape as a cultural realm of experiences and meanings’.[2] Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn characterize post-processual as an umbrella term for a collection of theoretical approaches including (though not comprehensively): a hermeneutic, or interpretive, view of the past which rejects generalizations, a bent towards Marxism which contrasts ‘quite strikingly’ with the old archaeology’s aspirations towards objectivity, a praxis which emphasizes human agency, and a phenomonological approach which stresses‘personal experiences of the individual on the way in which encounters with the material world and the objects in it shape our understanding of the world’.[3] It is within the framework of these post-processual approaches that the landscape theories of these two scholars will be be compared and contrasted to determine whether Bender’s contested space is complemented by Tilley’s phenomenological perspective.
An Interpretive Approach
In developing her theory of contested space, Bender used Stonehenge as a case study to examine ‘different ways in which those with economic and political power and necessary cultural capital have attempted... to appropriate the landscape’, and how those ‘appropriations have been contested by those engaging with the land in quite different ways.’[4] There are means, she argues elsewhere, of applying these principles of contention to the interpretation of archaeological evidence to conceptualize past landscapes ‘which are not about neutral patterning… but are about tensioned and contradictory processes.’[5] Bender references the position of Ian Hodder- that the past is ‘constructed by the interpreter’- in order to argue that the interpretation of past landscapes cannot be objective when considering the ‘contours of gender, age, status, ethnicity, and so on’.[6] The freedom of this controversial interpretive approach is afforded through an adoption of the theoretical framework provided by post-processualism, though as Shanks points out post-processual archaeology is not ‘a coherent theory of the past or of archaeology’.[7] Hodder offers that this form of hermeneutic, or interpretive archaeology is in its simplest form ‘about constructing narratives, or telling stories’.[8] Tilley describes these narratives as a means of ‘understanding and describing the world in relation to agency’; he concurs that these narratives of past human activity are necessarily written from the standpoint of the present.[9] But Hodder, in turn, reminds of Renfrew’s warnings on the danger of this approach, in that
If we accept that the past is constructed partly in the present…and that we must listen to and incorporate other voices and historical meanings constructed by, for example, women and ethnic minorities, where can we draw the lines around legitimate archaeological research? Should we also welcome the voices of creationists, looters, metal detector users and other "fringe" archaeologists within a tower of babbling?[10]
Where these lines can be drawn is, in fact, the central focus of Bender’s questions concerning contested space.
The Politics of Space
Bender suggests that equal validity (and by extension equal access to the Stonehenge monument) be afforded to various factions ranging from the Order of the Druids, New Age adherents and other laudable ‘weirdoes’ she identifies as hippies, peace-activists, bikers, etc., to the National Trust, the Thatcher ‘establishment’ of the nineteen-eighties, tourists, capitalists, law enforcement, and the archaeological community in general- all the latter of which she speaks of disparagingly to varying degrees.[11] For example, Bender accuses the archaeological community- characterized as the conservation lobby’s monopolizing interpreters of the past- of ‘piecemeal, often slip-shod, and until recently, unpublished’ excavations while uncompromisingly repudiating the ‘alternative’ theories of the New Agers.[12] One of these archaeologists, Christopher Chippindale, author of Stonehenge Complete, illuminates that in support of her arguments
...Bender provides the cloned voices of herself- eight other tenured academics, of whom … three are from her own university [one of these being Christopher Tilley]. Finding these friends comfortably sympathetic to her own approach, Bender does not address the tough issue that follows from multivocality. Are all those diverse and contradictory views about ancient Stonehenge to be treated equally? Or do some provide expert accounts, whilst others are rightly marginalized because the story they relate about Stonehenge is a false one, not telling of prehistoric realities?[13]
Bender’s presentation of Stonehenge as contested and dynamic space, admittedly ‘spawned in anger’, is rooted in the political activism of a Marxist ideology.[14] Here Bender’s views may perhaps be considered a product of what Tilley refers to as the politics of space, where space ‘inevitably becomes value-laden rather than value-free and political rather than neutral’.[15] Because ‘spatial experience is not innocent and neutral’ Tilley explains, space itself is experienced differently by different groups, and therefore creates a ‘contradictory and conflict-ridden medium’ through which individuals ‘act and are acted upon’.[16] This, perhaps, of all Tilley’s perspectives, lends one the strongest complements to Bender’s Marxist-oriented theories of contested space.
A Phenomenology of Praxis-Scape
Randall McGuire informs that ‘Marxism is also a theory of praxis- theoretically informed practice (or agency)’, which he further defines as ’the human activity through which people transform the world and themselves’.[17] Together Tilley and Bender, along with archaeologist Sue Hamilton, have described landscape as a ‘cultural “sculptural” form [of art] marked and transformed through thousands of years of human activity.[18] This is similar in concept to the interlocked social and temporal patterns of ‘dwelling activities’ and ‘ensembles of task’ which Tim Ingold calls taskscapes.[19] For Tilley’s part he contends ‘landscape is both a medium for and outcome of action and previous histories of action…experienced in practice, in life activities’.[20] Proponents of Marxism use these principles of action as ‘a way to know the world, a critique of the world, and a means to change the world.’[21] It can be argued that Bender, in her treatment of the course of human agency, seeks change in the appropriation of Stonehenge, if not the world.
The theoretical approaches of Bender and Tilley can be viewed as puzzle pieces, similarly coloured and textured- particularly in comparison to others drawn from the same box – intended to complement a whole landscape panorama. And while contiguous in appearance, they do not neatly snap together as adjacent pieces. This is perhaps demonstrated best by Tilley’s core concept of phenomenology. His defines a phenomenological approach as the ‘manner in which people experience and understand the world’, and that this ‘understanding and description of things as they are experienced by a subject… is about the relationship between Being and Being-in-the-world.’[22] Outcomes of the application of his methodology to Bender’s case study of contested space could be considered at best an empathetic understanding of overlooked communities and at worst the addition of just one more voice to the cacophony of contention.
In conclusion, this essay has reviewed the theories of Bender and Tilley through the lens of a shared post-processual approach to the study of landscape, including the adoption of a hermeneutic/interpretive approach to the past, Marxist social ideas emphasising politically charged as opposed to neutral landscapes, the praxis of human agency, along with a phenomenological methodology- and found that they reflect similar themes in their work. As such it can be posited that Tilley’s phenomenological perspective complements Bender’s theory of contested space in that it provides a supportive theoretical framework on which she can base her arguments. That is not to imply, however, that Tilley’s methods, useful as they are, directly validate all of Bender’s claims.
Bibliography
Bender, Barbara, ‘Theorising Landscapes, and the Prehistoric Landscapes of Stonehenge’, Man, New Series, Vol. 27, No. 4 (1992), pp. 735-755
Bender, Barbara, Stonehenge, Making Space, (Oxford, Berg, 1998)
Bender, Barbara, ‘Time and Landscape’, Current Anthropology Vol. 43, No. S4, Special Issue Repertoires of Timekeeping in Anthropology (August/October 2002), pp. S103-112
Chippindale, Christopher, ‘review of Stonehenge, Making Space by Barbara Bender’, American Antiquity, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 387-388
Hodder, Ian, ‘Interpretive Archaeology and Its Role’, American Antiquity, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 7-18
Ingold, Tim, ‘The Temporality of the Landscape’, World Archaeology, Vol. 25, No. 2, Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society (1993), pp. 152-174
McGuire, Randall H., ‘Marxism’, in Handbook of Archaeological Theories, ed. by R. Alexander Bentley, Herbert D.G. Maschner, and Christopher Chippendale (Lanham: Altamira Press, 2008) pp.73-93
Renfrew, Colin, and Paul Bahn, Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice, 6th Edition, (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 2012)
Shanks, Michael, ‘Post-Processual Archaeology and After’, in Handbook of Archaeological Theories, ed. by R. Alexander Bentley, Herbert D.G. Maschner, and Christopher Chippendale (Lanham: Altamira Press, 2008) pp. 133-144
Tilley, Christopher, A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments, (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 1997)
Tilley, Christopher, Sue Hamilton and Barbara Bender, ‘Art and the Re-Presentation of the Past, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 35-62
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[1] Christopher Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments, (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 1997) pp. 7-10
[2] Michael Shanks, ‘Post-Processual Archaeology and After’, in Handbook of Archaeological Theories, ed. by R. Alexander Bentley, Herbert D.G. Maschner, and Christopher Chippendale (Lanham: Altamira Press, 2008) p.137
[3] Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice, 6th Edition, (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 2012) p. 44
[4] Barbara Bender, Stonehenge, Making Space, (Oxford, Berg, 1998) p.98
[5] Barbara Bender, ‘Theorising Landscapes, and the Prehistoric Landscapes of Stonehenge’, Man, New Series, Vol. 27, No. 4 (1992), p. 736
[6] Barbara Bender, ‘Time and Landscape’, Current Anthropology Vol. 43, No. S4, Special Issue Repertoires of Timekeeping in Anthropology (August/October 2002), pp. S103-107
[7] Shanks, ‘Post-Processual Archaeology’, p. 133
[8] Ian Hodder, ‘Interpretive Archaeology and Its Role’, American Antiquity, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), p. 13
[9] Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape, p.32
[10] Hodder, ‘Interpretive Archaeology’, p. 9
[11] Bender, Stonehenge, pp.116-126
[12] Bender, Stonehenge, pp. 120-121
[13] Christopher Chippindale, ‘review of Stonehenge, Making Space by Barbara Bender’, American Antiquity, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), p. 388
[14] Bender, Stonehenge, p.131
[15] Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape, p.20
[16] Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape, p.11
[17] Randall H. McGuire, ‘Marxism’, in Handbook of Archaeological Theories, ed. by R. Alexander Bentley, Herbert D.G. Maschner, and Christopher Chippendale (Lanham: Altamira Press, 2008) p.73-93
[18] Christopher Tilley, Sue Hamilton and Barbara Bender, ‘Art and the Re-Presentation of the Past, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), p. 36
[19] Tim Ingold, ‘The Temporality of the Landscape’, World Archaeology, Vol. 25, No. 2, Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society (1993), pp. 153,158
[20] Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape, p. 23
[21] McGuire, ‘Marxism’, p.73
[22] Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape, pp. 11-12