ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore how archaeologists have mapped archaeo-topographical features, the ‘lumps and bumps’ that sometimes remain when a site’s function has been abandoned, such as the ditches and banks surrounding a disused field system. I will focus particularly on the analytical earthwork survey approach, the practice of which is largely confined to the UK, and which is an explicitly subjective method that integrates interpretation into the recording process, commonly resulting in a map of an archaeological site or landscape in which archaeo-topographical features are portrayed with a distinctive hachure symbology. Following an outline of this approach, this paper will delve into the wider context of archaeological field practice in the UK, in which analytical earthwork survey has become a relatively peripheral element. Finally, discussion will move on to recent technological developments in archaeo-topographical survey that are increasingly negating the practical need for techniques such as analytical earthwork survey, arguing that a shift to a strictly objective framework risks losing much of the interpretive dynamism of these earlier subjective approaches.
