ABSTRACT
To find out what any ancient society was like, students must look at landscapes, for the peoples who know the plow and the cultivation of cereals leave their characteristic marks upon the land they occupy, and these may well be their most enduring memorial, just as the stone walls they built are likely to be the most enduring memorial of the invasion of New England by the English. Long after the bloodlines of a society have died out or the society itself has changed its ways, by the surface of fields, their shape, and the distribution of the old house sites may be read the traditional arrangements by which the society made its living: the agricultural techniques people had at their command and the ways in which they grouped themselves and worked together in using these techniques. Furthermore, these traditional ways of making a living are in a relation of mutual dependence with the other customs of the society, so that the study of landscapes that are not natural but made by men is more than the study of different farming practices. It is the study of societies insofar as they are determined by and determine their use of the land.
