In this issue of assemblage, we are pleased to present two experimental articles in this features section – experimental both in format and in content. Both challenge the way in which we approach peoples' understandings of place, in the past and in the present. Through language which is as rich as their images, they disrupt traditions of representation which have dominated archaeology for far too long, bringing to the fore a very personal and human conception of place. It could be the start of something big! After you have been swept along in the ebb of the seascape or climbed the social history of the towerhouse, let us know what you think about these different ways of seeing the past.

Wade Tarzia an independent scholar from Connecticut, provides a personal account of his work on the folklore, social history and landscape that surrounds Fleming's Folly in Ireland. Presented as a narrative of discovery and reflection, he brings out the clashing tensions that have surrounded this monument and the individuals who have retold the past and thus reclaimed it as their own.

Graeme Warren from the University of Sheffield offers a non-linear account of the Western Scottish Mesolithic and presents the reader with the opportunity to create their own narrative whilst navigating the 'seascape'. Challenging the traditional way in which we landloving archaeologists cling to our shores, he argues through narrative and illustration, that people of the past had very different understandings of place and identity.

Email assemblage

© assemblage 1997