Marking the Land

<p><em>Marking the Land</em> investigates how hunter-gatherers use physical landscape markers and environmental management to impose meaning on the spaces they occupy. The land is full of meaning for hunter-gatherers. Much of that meaning is inherent in natural phenomena but some of it comes from modifications to the landscape that hunter-gatherers themselves make. Such alterations may be intentional or unintentional temporary or permanent and they can carry multiple layers of meaning ranging from practical signs that provide guidance and information through to less direct indications of identity or abstract highly symbolic signs of sacred or ceremonial significance. This volume investigates the conditions which determine the investment of time and effort in physical landscape marking by hunter-gatherers and the factors which determine the extent to which these modifications are symbolically charged. Considering hunter-gatherer groups of varying sociocultural complexity and scale <em>Marking the Land</em> provides a systematic consideration of this neglected aspect of hunter-gatherer adaptation and the varied environments within which they live.</p>