ABSTRACT
My aim in writing the paper is to pursue the wider objective of introducing concerns derived from the field of archaeological heritage management (AHM; otherwise cultural resource management or CRM) into ‘mainstream’ or ‘research’ archaeology texts. Since the concept of the ‘settlement’ is not a specific concern of AHM, but the nature and use of the concept of ‘site’ is such a concern, the two concepts will be compared and juxtaposed in order to gain some insight into what the combined term ‘settlement site’ may refer to. The first part of this chapter thus constitutes a ramble through the conceptual history of the ‘settlement site’ in English language usage, in research archaeology, in UK and US law and in the management practices of archaeology. In the course of this discussion, the concept inevitably becomes involved with ideas about landscape and the colonization of space – some of it other peoples’. Drawing on and developing these themes, the chapter then goes on to outline a possible alternative to ‘site-based’ settlement archaeology and some of its implications. Among these is the recasting of the ‘settlement’ concept from that of a fixed location in space to an extended process over time.
