There can be no doubt that advances in the methods for archaeological remote sensing in the last few years have revolutionized what we can see of past landscapes. Technology now allows us to see buried landscapes more clearly, with greater resolution and over larger areas than had hitherto seemed conceivable. Furthermore, the complementary use of different techniques for survey and the improvement in computer software has generated excellent results both at individual sites and increasingly across broader landscape. We can and do learn more and more, but this raises a doubt in my mind, triggered by a discussion at a conference a couple of years ago about ‘ground truthing’. Have our technologies moved beyond the intellectual framework within which we are working? And do we not need to start to re-think the whole idea of landscape archaeology in the light of the new technology. This paper will explore this question, even if it cannot provide an answer.
Bio – Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. He developed interests in the Classical World and thence moved into Classics. His research is concerned with understanding how the lives of different indigenous peoples were altered through their encounters with the Roman Empire, and how their cultures in turn altered the nature of the Roman world itself. He currently undertakes fieldwork in two contrasting regions. In the first, in Northern England, near the margins of the Roman Empire we have been undertaking a long-term study of settlement and economy, focusing in particular on patterns of local variation. Currently this work focuses on the Roman town of Isurium Brigantium (Aldborough). In the other, at the centre of the Empire, he is a member of two research groups, one investigating the archaeology of Portus – the principal port of imperial Rome, the other looking at early Roman colonization in southern Lazio, focused on the town of Interamna Lirenas.
