ABSTRACT
The landscape archaeology of the Vale of Ffestiniog also suggests a number of ways in which the methodology might be refined. The Vale of Ffestiniog has been identified as a 'test-bed' landscape for the purposes of this chapter because, unlike other industrial areas within the region, no one landowner was all-powerful, and the interplay of the various social groupings might be more apparent. In the Vale of Ffestiniog, cultural discontinuity is more marked as the monument category changes form, rather than at the point at which it is introduced. The Manchester methodology acknowledges both by restoring human agency to the archaeological resource, and provides a descriptive system in which the transformative capacity of industrialisation in this region may be quantified. On this basis, the Manchester methodology becomes more than a model by which to describe the process of industrialisation; it provides the archaeological community with the means to make a distinctive theoretical contribution to the study of this transformative era.
