Vince Gaffney (University of Birmingham, UK)

The title of this paper refers obliquely to Robin Osborne's (1987) influential book on the Greek city and its countryside. This and other publications of the time responded, in some manner, to the novel landscape databases generated by field survey during the preceding decade. An emergent archaeological awareness of landscape, in a myriad of contexts, can be identified as a pivotal theoretical concept for archaeologists throughout this period and archaeological computing, primarily GIS, held a parallel but equivocal role in the process. Great claims were made for technology and equally strong rebuttals were delivered at various times - usually in reference to the relatively naive theoretical context of the available technologies and the detrimental result of implementing correspondingly simplistic analyses.

Much ink has been spilt on these topics and whilst few today would deny computing a role in the archaeological process it remains notable that practitioners and computer-based archaeology frequently retain a subaltern role within theoretical debate. Over this period, however, there have been numerous step changes in the facility of pervasive technologies to explore rich archaeological contexts. There has, also, been a scale change in the availability of archaeological digital resources so that in some instances, the extent of data, whilst not necessarily replacing the lack of figures within a landscape, may occasionally have a positive formative value in theoretical terms. This paper will explore this issue in relation to work currently being carried out within the Holocene palaeolandscapes of the North Sea.