ABSTRACT
The concept of embodiment provides a fundamental starting point to discuss, phenomenologically, the significance of stones for people. Experiencing stones in place links an understanding of them to memory. It is memory that serves to connect knowledges of one place to another, without which experience remains shallow and non-contextual. Experiencing places in the landscape involves taking as much account of the landscape in which the place is embedded, its relationship with its physical and topographical context, as of the place itself. Things and places are active agents of identity rather than pale reflections of preexisting ideas and sociopolitical relations. The argument in a nutshell is that social relations are simultaneously relations between material forms. Since the meanings and significance of artefacts and places, landscapes and representations are intimately linked, separations between them are inevitably of an artificial character. The also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
