Cultural Life at the Abyss: The Grounding of Ideology in Nature

Ideology  dominates social research, encouraged by rejections of nature and the  past, and often ignores the direct experience of actual people. This  archaeological study takes a different approach, grounding concepts of  culture, landscape and art in ecological relations that embrace all of  life.

An ecological approach considers that life  exists in the interactions of people with the environment surrounding  them. This theoretical grounding therefore supports research at a local  scale and validates the analysis of individual effort. The case studies  explore individual perception, action and expression in a startlingly  diverse set of objects and features from the past: natural and  constructed monuments, ancient and recent rock paintings, petroglyphs,  fresco paintings and impressionist landscape art. While traditional  cultural approaches render ordinary people as proxies, these  individuals, as members of families and communities, do the actual work  of society, using their senses, bodies and minds. The analysis here  therefore turns away from traditional speculations about the meanings of  cultural things to look for evidence of the personal choices of  travelers, inhabitants, pilgrims and artists as they acted, and attempt  to gain insights from these decisions about the past as lived.

The  book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and advanced students  in culture and society who may be restless in theatres of discourse  dominated by self-affirming narratives, who wish to consider the fields  of possibility in an environmental perspective that integrates culture  with nature and humans with other beings in a singular, physical world.