ABSTRACT
The contributions in this volume are in many instances somewhat removed from what we initially envisioned as our jumping off point for understanding the creation of landscape meaning by mobile hunter-gatherers—a combined product of the individual perspectives of the scholars engaged in the discussion and presentation, the juxtapositioning of multiple disciplinary practitioners in the discourse, the recommendations of observers situated at greater distances from the subject, and our own constantly changing perspectives on the spatial negotiations of small scale and mobile human systems. At its inception the goal was to better understand the circumstances and the fashion in which these societies physically marked landscapes, largely intentionally. It rapidly became clear that this more myopic view of how mobile peoples create meaning in the spaces they use did them a disservice, despite the fact that many of us were already coupling intentional landscape marking with the use of unintentionally modified landscapes as key nodes in spatial systems, overlaying landscape naming practices on both natural and cultural features, as well as inserting cosmological import and historical event on marking and naming practices. How these different dimensions are overlaid, are modified, and are interrelated became a more compelling vantage point from which to infer the creation of landscape meaning by such groups.
