There can be no doubt that advances in the methods for archaeological remote sensing in the last few years have revolutionized what we can see of past landscapes. Technology now allows us to see buried landscapes more clearly, with greater resolution and over larger areas than had hitherto seemed conceivable. Furthermore, the complementary use of different techniques for survey and the improvement in computer software has generated excellent results both at individual sites and increasingly across broader landscape. We can and do learn more and more, but this raises a doubt in my mind, triggered by a discussion at a conference a couple of years ago about ‘ground truthing’. Have our technologies moved beyond the intellectual framework within which we are working? And do we not need to start to re-think the whole idea of landscape archaeology in the light of the new technology. This paper will explore this question, even if it cannot provide an answer.
MARTIN MILLETT