Mette Løvschal Turns In Her PhD Dissertation
After months of hard work and late nights at the IMC, archeologist Mette Løvschal could finally turn in her PhD dissertation last week. "Lines in the Landscape - Boundaries of the Mind" is the title. Read an excerpt of the summary here.
Lines in the landscape, boundaries of the mind: The emergence of landscape and settlement boundaries in north-western Europe in the first millennium BC
This thesis is a study of the chronological emergence and social genesis of physical, linear landscape and settlement boundaries in north-western Europe in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (c. 1100 BC-1 AD). Its main aim is to cover the emergence of boundaries in a new culture-historical synthesis, to gain a deeper theoretical understanding of the interregional connections and socio-cultural consequences of this phenomenon and to contextualise its potential in the current cognition theoretical debate.
The thesis comprises an introduction and synthesis followed by a collection of five papers, which are divided into three main parts. The first part (paper 1) assesses the material on an interregional level and forms a systematic empirical basis for the identification of empirical and theoretical problems that are explored throughout the project. The second part (papers 2-4) contributes with an exploration of the boundaries on a regional level with three analytical scopes: their social genesis (paper 2), their syntactical genesis (paper 3), and their landscape contextual genesis (paper 4). The third part of the thesis (paper 5) returns to an overall conceptualisation of the boundaries and contextualises the study of their emergence within the current cognition theoretical discussion.
NB: The full summary of "Lines in the Landscape" can be downloaded below as a Word file.
