So, it's an awful lot of fun to research in written primary sources and reconstruct events and create a narrative. Understanding those events reaches a whole new level when you can stand on an old battlefield, a busy city block, an empty field, a ghost town, etc. etc. and translate those events to where they actually took place!
My question is: how have you learned (either in general or during the course of solving a specific research question) to translate primary sources to a physical landscape? And likewise, what physical clues typically remain in a landscape that can be used as evidence in a historical narrative? What resources would you recommend in learning more about this method of research and using what's left in a physical landscape as historical evidence?
To give a long-winded for instance, the other day I was looking at sources that described the known physical features of a particular farm in the 19th century--dimensions of the property, number of outbuildings, etc. One of the older historians I occasionally work with had noted that the property probably had an orchard on it. Orchards were a common feature for surrounding farms, but I didn't really see anything in the existing written evidence that supported that an orchard was on this particular farm. So I went and asked him about it. He pointed to a blown-up print out hanging on his wall of a glass-plate photo landscape taken of the area about 70-80 years after the time period we were concerned about. He pointed to a corner and said, see, there's an old orchard on the property and it looks old enough that it's plausible that it was there 70 years ago! (Apparently, apple trees can live to be well over 100 years old--whodathunk?) To my eyes, the entire landscape was full of trees and the little black-and-white glob of orchard looked no different than any of the other wild non-orchard type trees. And to me, without someone pointing it out, I would have no idea how to determine that the photo even included that particular piece of property we were researching.
I try to ask a lot of questions of knowledgeable historians, but I want to know what further research or education I can do on my own so I can learn how to interpret a physical landscape. I mean, unless someone points it out to me directly, I can't even identify reeeeeally obvious man-made marks on a landscape like old mine dumps/tailings on a mountainside, or an old raised railroad bed in a desert, or old trenches dug out on a battlefield. I don't even know how I'd translate an old city plat or map against actual terrain!
*edit to maybe clarify a bit (or maybe I'm just complicating it). So, if I were restoring a house, there are innumerable books and websites giving me information on how to date old building renovations and such by looking at things like handmade nails, or the marks of certain kinds of saws on wood beams, or even when types of linoleum were invented--they're all physical clues that could be used to understand how the building changed over time. Knowing those changes can inform a narrative (in some small way) about the house's former inhabitants.
Similarly, there are innumerable resources about kinds of paper, printing techniques, and handwritings that help a historian analyze a physical manuscript or old book. Those clues can help a historian figure if a manuscript is original or an early copy or even a forgery.
But I'm not seeing the same kinds of resources for anything related to a physical landscape. I know I'm not going to find a one-stop, book-of-all-knowledge. I guess I'm having trouble figuring the right search terms to even begin. I'm asking about an interdisciplinary approach that's similar to studies in material culture. But I want to know about physical places, and not things and objects or necessarily buildings. Are there examples of an historian who has consciously taken this interdisciplinary approach? I suppose the best place to start is to find examples and look for techniques that I study more on and emulate in my own research, but I'm having trouble finding good examples.
The skills you seek are those of the archaeologist, geologist, and the geographer. "Historians" tend to concern themselves with written records. I would try to study up on the techniques used in writing local histories, rather than the analysis of existing well-known sources. Finally, just do a lot of walking around the countryside. There is no subtitute for walking an area yourself -- aerial photographs and satellite image have their place, but there is no substitute for walking the land on your own two feet. And I do mean walk, not driving in a car.
I don't even know how I'd translate an old city plat or map against actual terrain!
If your school has a department of geography or of archeology, consider contacting them -- they may be able to help point you in the right direction.
Hello - I notice that you've also asked a similar question this in the "Saturday Sources" thread, but I'll answer here.
Long story short, yes - "place and space" have become very important subjects for many modern historians. In labour and public history, we have begin to include the interdisciplinary theories surrounding space, urban/rural environments, and "the city" into our analysis. I'll include some works by historians, geographers, and sociologists that discuss specifically history in the lived/built environment, then I'll go into a couple of projects that try to combine theory and practice in a meaningful way. You might want to start with a few sources such as:
Doreen Massey, “Places and their Pasts,” History Workshop Journal 39 (1995), 184.
David Harvey, “From space to place and back again: Reflections on the Conditions of Postmodernity,” in Jon Bird, Barry Curtis et al. Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Changes (London: Routledge, 1993).
David Harvey, “The urban process under capitalism: a framework for analysis,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, v. 2 (March-December 1978).
David Harvey's book Rebel Cities
Taksa, Lucy. “Labor History and Public History in Australia: Allies or Uneasy Bedfellows?”International Labor and Working-Class History 76, 1 (2009), 82-104.
In this book, Taksa explores the landscape of this city as a process of capitalist development / underdevelopment and explains how transitions in the built environment are reflected unconsciously in local public history representations.]
Talja Blokland, “Bricks, Mortar, Memories: Neighborhoods and Networks in Collective Acts of Remembering,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, v. 25, n. 2 (June 2001), 268.
*This article is great - not as much theory as the others that I've recommended. It's a very grounded examination of neighbourhood history in flux and urban landscape in flux.]
Aside from these scholarly sources, historians and other academics have been trying to link up local histories with the spaces and places into which they intervene in the urban environment. One way that this is done is through the creation of "audiowalks," which use oral history testimony and archives sounds to create an atmosphere of "experience" in the urban-walker. As Toby Butler of University of London describes, "movement through city streets offers a fundamentally different view of place than the “rooted” place identities we experience in our homes."
For more information on audiowalks, see:
Toby Butler, “A walk of art: the potential of the sound walk as practice in cultural geography,” Social and Cultural Geography, v. 7, n. 6 (2006), 889.
Robert B. Kristofferson, “The Past is at Our Feet: The Workers’ City Project in Hamilton, Ontario,” Labour/Le Travail, v. 41 (Spring 1998),
David Pinder, “Ghostly Footsteps: Voices, Memories, and Walks in the City,” Cultural Geographies, v. 8, n. 1 (2001), 396.
We've also created an audiowalk of the Lachine Canal here in Montreal. Here is a Montreal Gazette article describing it. Further information on our walk can be found here
Another approach would be to study Historic Preservation. Boston College offers (or offered) a graduate degree in historic landscape preservation.
Learning more about plants is a help too. There are some signature plants (or their progeny) that can outlast buildings. I've walked through the New England woods and come across a lilac or hostas, which let me know I was close to an old house. Walls and even buildings can get covered but a plant needs to be up in the sunshine to survive.
I think you might be interested in Architectural History as well. Here's a master's programme. It is a critical look at the history of modern (18th century and up) architecture. If you're not a student and just looking for relevant stuff to read, I recommend reading up on the history of churches and cathedrals, or perhaps gothic or baroque architecture in general. Being somewhat familiar with the history of ecclesiastical architecture is absolutely wonderful when walking about in old city centers. I think recognizing historical patterns in landscapes is a lot harder, at least it is for me.
How to Read Churches. Seems like a good starting point.
How to Read Buildings. Obviously, these are introductory books.
You might check out Alexandra Walsham's book The Reformation of the Lanscape. It's one of the best examples I can think of that combines more traditional historical methodologies with creative readings of the meanings and use of spaces.
Medieval and early modern religious historians seem to be toward the forefront in using in material culture and spatial history. You might also check out literatures of other histories of non-literate or mostly illiterate societies (e.g. slave or Native American histories), where historians have to use more creative methodologies.