The temporality of the landscape

Tim Ingold

Prologue

I adhere to that schoo l of thought which hold. th at social or cultural anthropology,

biological anthropology and archaeology form a nece. sar unity- that they are all part of
the same inte llectual enterprise (lngold 1992a : 694) . I am not co ncerned here with the link
with biological or 'physical' anthropology but what I have t say doe bear centrally on the
unifying theme of archaeology and social-cu ltural anthrop log . I want to . Ire. two uch
themes and they are clo. e ly related. First, human life i. a proc . that involves the pa sage
of time . Second, this life-proce s i also the proces of formation of the land. capes in which
people have lived. Time and landscape, then , are to my mind the essential point of topical
contact between archaeology and anthropology . My purpo e, in this article , is to bring the
per ·pectives of archaeology and anthropology in to unison through a focu on the
temporality of the landscape. Tn particular , I believe that uch a focus might enable u to
mov beyond the terile opposition between the naturali. tic view of the land cape as a
neutral, externa l backdrop to human activities. and the culturalisti c view that every
land cape i a particular cogni tive or symbolic ordering of space. I argue that we ·hould
adopt, in place of both these views, what I call a 'dwellin g perspective', according to which
the landscape i consti tuted as an enduri ng record of - and testimony to - the lives and
works of past generations who have dwelt within it. and in so doing, have left there
o mething of themselves.
F r anthropologists to adopt a perspective of this kind mean bringing to bear the
knowledge born of immediate experience, by privileging the understanding that people
derive from their lived, everyday involvement in the world. Yet it will surely be objected
that this avenu e is not open to archaeologists concerned with human activities in the
di tant past. 'The people'. it is ·aid 'they're dead' (Sahlins 1972: I); only the material
record re mains for their successor of our own time to interpret as best they can. But this
objection mi ses the point, which is that the practice of archaeology is itself a form of
dwelling. The knowledg born of thi practice is thu on a par with that which comes from
the practical activity of the native dwe ll er and which the anthropologi t , through
participation, seek to learn and understand. F r both the archaeologist and the native
dweller, the land cape tells - or rather is - a story . It enfold the lives and time of
predece ·sors who over the generat ions, have moved around in it and played their part in
its formation. To perceive the landscape i therefore Lo carry out an act of remembrance ,
and remembering is not ·o much a matter of ca llin g up an internal image tored in the

World Archaeology Volume 25 No. 2 Conception · of Time and Ancient Society

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 The temp orality of the lands ape 153

mind, as of e ngag ing pe rceptually with an environment that is itself pregnant with the past.
To be sure, the ru le. and met hod s of engagement employed re pectively by the native
dwell randthearchaeologi twilldiffer ,aswillth toriesthe yte ll , nev rthel s -in ofar
as both eek th e past in the la nd cape - th e are engag d in projects r fundamentally the
·ame kind.
It is of cour · part fan archaeological training to learn to attend to those clue. which
the re. tofus might pass o er (literally, when they me below lh urface ), and which ma ke
it possible to t LI a fuller or a richer story. Likew i , native dwellers (and the ir
anthropo logi cal companions) learn through an educa ti n of attention . The novice hunter.
for examp le, travels through the cou ntry with his mentors, and a. he goe , speci fic feature ·
are pointed out to him. Other things he di cover · for him e lf , in the cour e of further
fora . . by watching. li stenin g and feeling. Thus t h experie nced hunter is the knowledgea-
hle hunt r. He can tell things from ubtle indication that you r I , un killed in the hunter's
art, might not even n tice. Called upon toe plicdte this kn ledge, he may do . o in a form
that reappears in the work of the non-native ethnograph r a a corpus of myth · or stories
whereas the archaeo logi st' knowledge - drawn from th e practices of xcavation rather
than hunting - may appear in the seemingly authorita tive form of the site report. But we
·hould resist the temptation to assume that since stories are Lorie they are, in som e sense,
unreal or untrue, for this is to suppose that the on ly real reality, or tru e truth. is one in
whicb we as livi ng, experiencing beings, can have no part at all. Telling a s tory i · not like
weaving a tapestry Lo co 1er 11p the world, it is rather o way of guiding the attention of
listener~ or r aders i11.10 it. A p rson who can ·tell' i, ne, ho is perceptually attuned I
picking up inrormation in the env ironment 1hat others, les · skilled in the tasks f
perception, might mi ·s, and the teller, in rendering his knowledge explicit. conducts the
a1tention of his audience along the ·ame path.· as his own.
Following that preamble, Is all now go on to layo ut the burden of my argument. Thi · is
presented in four principal section . In the fir:t two, T attempt to specif m r preci ely
what I mean by my key terms - land ·cape and temporalit . I argue that temporality inheres
in the pattern or dwelling activitic. that l ca ll the tas kscape . ln the third secti n I consider
how laskscape relates to landscape and, ultimately by di . s lving t he distinction between
them. I proceed lo recover the temporality of the land ·cap it ·elf. Fi nail., I dra s me
concre te illu tration of m arguments from a wel l-kn wn painting by Bruegel. The
I lan ·es1ers.

Landscape

Let me begin b e plaining whatthe landscape i · not . It is n l "land·. iL i, not ·nature'. and it
i. not 'space·. Con. ider, first of all. the d istinction hctwee n land and landscape . Land is not
omething you can see. a ny more than yo u can see the weight of phy ·ical objects. All
objects of lhc most di erse kind!-i have Wt!ight. and it is pos ible LO expre ·s how much
an_ lhin g weigh relative to any o th er thing . Likewi. e, land is a kind of lowe ·t common
denominator or the phenomenal world inherent in every portion or the canh·s surface yet
directly visible in none, and in t ·rms of which any portion may be rendered quantitatively
equiva lent to any other (Ingold 1986a: 15~). You can ask of land. as or weight , how
154 Tim fngolcl

much there is, but not what it is like. But where land is thu · quantitative and
homog neou , the landscape is qualitative and heterogeneous . Supposing that you are
standing utdoors. it i what you see all around: a contoured and textured surface replete
with diverse object. - living and non -living, natural and artificial (the ·e distinctions are
both problematic a we hall see , hut they will · rvc f r the time being). Thu. at any
particu lar moment. you can ask of a landscape what ii is like but not how much of it there
is. For the landscape is a plenum , there are no holes in it that remain to be filled in, . o that
every infi ll is in reality a reworking. As Meinig ob. rve, , one hould not overlook ' the
powerfu l fact that life must be lived amidst that which was made bef re· (1979a: 44) .
The landscape is not ·nature '. Of course nature can mean many things, and thi s is n t
the place for a discour e on the hi ·tory of the concept. Suffice it to ay that I have in minu
the rather specific ·ense whose ontological foundation is an imagined separation between
the human perceiver and the world, such that the perceiver has to reconstruct the world, in
consciousness, prior to any meaningful engagement with it. The world of nature. it is often
aid, is what lies 'out there'. All kinds of enlitie are supposed toe i tout there , but not
you and f. We live 'in here ' , in the intersubjcctive space marked out by our mental
repre entations. Application of thi · logic force. an insistent duali m, between object and
subject , th material and the ideal, operational and cognized, 'etic' and 'emic' . Some
writers distingui h between nature and the landscape in just these term - the former i · said
to stand to the latter as physical reality to its cultural or symbolic con ·truction. For
example , Daniel and osgrove introduce a collection of essays on The fconography of
Landscape with the following definition:· A landscape is a cultural image, a pictorial way of
repre ·en ting or symbolising surroundings' (198 : l ) .
J do not share this view. To the contrary. I reject the division between inner and outer
worlds - respectively of mind and mall r , meaning and substance - upon which ·uch
di ·tinclion rest . The landscape 1 hold , is not a picture in the imagination , ur eyed by the
mind's eye ; nor, however. is it an alien und formles · substrate awaiting the imposition of
human order . 'The idea of landscape' , as Meinig writes , 'run counter to recognition of any
simple binary relationship between man and nature' (Meinig 1979b: 2). Thus, neither is
the land cape identical to nature , nor is it on the side of humanity againsl nature . A · the
familiar domain of our dwelling, it is with us. not again t us. but it i no less real for thaL.
And through living in it , the landscape becomes a part of u , just as we are a part of it.
Moreover, what goe for its human component goes for other components as well. In a
world construed as nature , every object is a ·elf-contained entity, interacting with others
through ·ome kind of external contact. But in a landscape, each component enfolds within
it · e ·sence the totality of its relations with each and every other. In short, whereas the
order of nature is e ·plicate, the order of the landscape i • implicate (Bohm 1980: 172).
The landscape is not· pace '. To appreciate the contrast, we could compare the everyday
project of dwelling in the world with the rather pecul iar and specialized project of the
urveyor or cartographer whose objective i to represent it. No doubt the surveyor, as he
goe abo ut his practical ta ks experience the landscape much as does everyone else
whose bus ines. or life lies there. Like other people he i mobile, yet unable t be in more
than one place at a time. Jn the landscape, the distance between two places. A and B, i
experienced as a journey made, a bodily movement from one place to the other, and the
gradually changing vi tas along the route. The . urvey r's job, however. i. to take
 The temporality of 1he Landscape 155

instru me ntal measurements from a considerable number of places, and to combine these
data to produce a sing! picture which is inde11e11dent of any point of ob ·ervation. This
pictu re is of the world as it could be directly apprehended only by a consciousness capable
of being everywhe re at once a nd n where in particular (the nearest we can get lo thi · in
practice is by taking an aerial or 'bird's-eye' view). To such a consciousness, at once
immobile and omnipre e nt. the di ·tance between A and B would be the length of a li ne
plotted between two points that are simultaneou ly in view that line marking one of a ny
number of journeys that could potentially be m . d c (cf. Bourdieu 1977: 2). It is as though ,
fr rn an imaginary position above the w rid. 1 could direct the movements of my body
within it lik e a co unt er n a board, so th at to say 'T am here ' is not to point from
somewhere to my surroundin gs, but to point from nowhere to the po ition on the board
where my body happens to be. And whereas actual journey, arc made through a
landscape, the board on which all potential journeys may be plotted is equivalent to spa e.
There is a tradition of geographical research (e.g. Gould and White 1974) which ·ets out
fro m the premise lhat we are all cartographer · in our daily lives . and lhat we use our bodies
al. the l.urve or us hi in truments, t regi t r a sensory input from multiple point of
ob ervation. which i · th n processed by our intelligence into an image which we carr
around with u , like a map in o ur heads , whc:r ·ver we go. The mind , rather than reaching
inlo its su rroundin gs from its dwelling place within the worl I, may be likened in thi view
lo a film . pread cut upon its exterior surface. To understand the sen se of ·pace that is
implicated in t hi s cartographic view of environmental perception , it i. helpful Lo draw an
analogy from the lingui ·tic of Ferdinand de Saussure. To grasp thee ·sence of language,
Sau ·sure invites us to picture thought and ou d as two continuous and undifferentiated
planes, of m ntal and ph ni c sub ta nee re pectively like two sides of a sheet of paper. By
cutting the s hee t into pieces (words) we create, on one side, a system of di crete concepts,
and on the ot he r , a sy ·tern of discret ounds; and since one side cannot be cut without a t
the . ame lime cutting the other, the two sys tems of division ·1re necessa rily homologous ·o
that to each co ncept there corresponds a . ound (Saussure l 959: 112-13). Now when
geographers and anthropologi t write about pace, what is generally implied is something
clo ·e l ak in to Sau . ure' sheet of paper, only in this case the counter-side to thought is the
continuu m not of phonic substance but of the surface of the earth . And so it appears that
the d ivi sion of the world into a mosaic of externally bounded segment i e ntailed in the
very production of spatial mea nings . Ju t as th e word, for Saussure, is the union of a
concep t with a delimited chunk' of so und ,. o the place is the union of a yrnbolic meaning
with a delimited block of the earth's surface. Spatial diffe rentiation implies spatial
segmenta tion .
T hi s i not so of the landscape, h wever . For a place in the land cape is not ·cut out' from
the whole , ither on the plane of ideas or on that of material ubstance . Rather each place
embod ie the whole at a particular nexus within it , and in 1his re pect is different from
e ery ther. A place owe its character to the expe rience · it afford to tho e who spend
time there - to the ights , ound and indeed mells that constitute its specific ambience .
And these in turn, depend n the kind. of activitie in which its inhabitants engage. lt is
from thi relationa l c ntext of people' engagement with the world. in the bu ine ·s of
dwelling, that each pl ace draws it unique significance. T hus whereas with pace , meanings
are atwched LO the world. with the land cape they are gathered from it. Moreover, while
156 Tim Ingold

place. have centres - indeed it would be more appropriate to ·ay that they are centre -
they have no boundaries. In journeying from place A to place Bit makes no sen e to ask,
along the way , whether one i • till in A or has 'cro ·sed over' Lo B (Ingold 1986a: 155). Of
course, boundarie. of va,iou · kinds ma be drawn in th landscape , and identified either
with natural feature uch a the course of a river or an e ·carpmcnt, or with built structure
·uch as walls and fences. But such boundaries are not a condi tion for the con ·titution of the
places on eith r side of them; nor do they egm nt the landscape, for the features with
which they are identified are them el e an integral part of it. Finally, it i important to
note that no feature of the landscape is , of it ·elf, a boundary. It can only become a
boundary, or the indicator of a boundary, in relation to the activities of the people (or
animal ) for whom it is recognized or experienced a · such.
In the course of explaining what the land cape is not, I have already moved ome wa
towards a positive characterization . In hort, lhe landscape is the world a. it i~ known to
those who dwell therein, who inhabit its place:- and journey along the paths connecting
them. Is it nol, then , identical lo what we might otherwise call the environment? C rtainly
the distinction between land cape and environment is not easy to draw. and for many
purpo es they may be treated as practically synonymou ·. It will already be apparent that I
cannot accept the di tinction offered by Tuan. wh argue · that an environment i · ·a given.
a pie e of reality that is simply there' , as opposed to the landscape , which is a product of
human cognition. 'an achievement of lhe mature mind' (Tuan 1979: 90, 100). For that i.
merely to reproduce the di h t my between nature and humanity. The environment is no
more ·nature' than i. the landscape a symbolic construct. Elsewhere. I have contrasted
nature and environment by way of a distinction between reality of- ·the physical world of
neutral objects apparent only Lo the detached, indifferent observer', and reality .for - 'the
world constituted in relation lo the organism or person whose environment it i •' (Ingold
L992b: 44) . But to think of environm nt in this sen e i · t regard it primarily in terms of
Jitnction, of what it affords LO creatures - whether human or non-human - with certain
capabilitie and projects of action. Reciprocally. to regard the e er aturcs a. organism · is
to view them in terms of their principles of dynamic functioning. that is as organized
syste m · (Pitlendrigh 1958: 394) . As Lewontin succinctly puts it (1982: 160). the environ-
ment is ·nat ure organised by an organism '.
The concept of landscape, by contrast, puts the · mpha is on form , in just the same way
that the concept of the body emphasizes the form rather than the function of a living
creatu re . Like organi m and environment. body and landscape are complementary terms:
each implies the other, alternate ly a" figure and ground. The forms or the landscape are
not, however, prepared in <1dvance for creature to occupy. nor are the bodil_ rorms of
those creatures independently specified in their gene ti c makeup. Both sets of forms are
generated and ustained in and through the processual unfolding of a total field of relations
that cuts across the emergent inter face between organism and environment (Goodwin
1988). Ha ing regard to its formative propertie. , we may refer to this process a. one of
embodiment. Though the notion of embodiment has recent! come much into fashion ,
there has been a tendency - following an ancient inclination in Western thought to
prioritize form over process (Oyama 1985: L3) - to concei c of it as a mo ement of
inscription, whereby some pre-exi ting pattern , template or programme, whether genetic
or cultural , i · 'realized ' in a , ubstantive medium. This is not what l have in mind, however.
 The temporality of the landscape 157

To the contrary, and adopting a helpful di ·tinction from Conn ·rton (1989: 72- 3), l regard
embod iment a a movement of incorporation rather than inscription, not a transcribing of
form onto material but a movement wherein form them elves are ge nerat d (I ngold
1990: 215). Taking th organism as our focu · f reference this movem e nt is what is
comm nly known as the life-cycle. Thu organisms may be sa id to incorpo rate , in their
bodily forms , the life-cycle proce.ses that give ri e l Lhem. Co uld not the ame then , be
sa id of the enviro nm en t? 1 it po sible to identi fy a co rre ponding cycle , or rather a eries
of interlocking cycle. which build themselves into the forms of the landscape , and of
which the la ndscape may accordingly be regarded a a n embodiment? Before answering
thi question we need to turn to the sec nd of my key term · namely ' temporality" .

Temporality

Let me begin, once again , by stating what te pora lity is not. 1t is not chronology (as
oppo ed to history), and it is not hi story (a opposed to chro nology). By chro nology, r
mean any regular ystem of dated tim e interva l , in which event are ·aid to have tak en
place. By history I mean any series of event which may be dated in time according to their
occu rrence in one or another chronological interval. Thus the Battle f Hastings was an
historical event, 1066 was a date (marking the interval of a year), and record tell u th a t
the fo rmer occurre d in the latter. In the mer succe · ion of dates there are no events,
beca use every thing re peat · in the mere succession of events there i no tim e , a nothing
do s. The relation between ·hronology and hi ·tory in th i · conception, has been well
expressed b Kubler: ' WiLhout change there i· no history; without regularity there is no
time. Time a nd history are related as rul e and variation: Lim e is the regular ·etting for the
vaga ries of histo ry' (1962 : 72) .
Now in introducing the concept of temporality , l do not intend that it should stand a · a
th ird term alongside the concepts of chronology and history . For in Lhe sense in which T
hall u e th tern, here. temporality entails a p r pective that co ntra t · radically with the
on e , outlined abo e, that set ' up history and chronology in a relation of complementary
opposition . The contrast i e · entially eq uival ent to that draw n by Gell (1992: 149- 55)
between wha t he call (following McTagga rt) !he A-series, in which time is immanent in
the pa ·age of event . and the B- erie · in whioh event are trung out in time like beads on
a thread. Whereas in the B- · ries , vents are treated as iso lated happening · , succeeding
one ano th e r frame by frame , each event in the A -se ries i - seen to encompass a pattern of
retensio ns from the past and pr tent ions for the future. Thu · from the A-. eries point o f
view, te mporality nd historicity are not oppo ed but rath r merge in th e ex perience of
tho ·e who. in their activities, carry forward th e proce s of ocial life. Taken together. these
activ iti e. make up what I sha ll call the ' ta. kscape,, a nd it is with th e intrinsic temporality of
the task cape that I hall be principally concerned in this section.
We ca n mak e a start by returning for a momenl to the distinction between land and
landscape. As a common denominator in terms of which con tituents of the e nvironme nt
of diver ·e kind may be rendered quantitatively comparable, I compared land with weight.
But I could equally have drawn the comparison with value or with labour. Value is Lhe
denom inator of commoditie that e nables u s lo say how much any one thing i w rlh by
l58 Tim Ingold

compari. on with another, even though these two things may be quite unlike in term. or
their phy·ical qualities and potential uses. In thi ·ense, the concept of valut: (in general) is
cla sically distingui heel from that or use-value , which ref rs to the ·pecific propertie or
'affo rdances' of any particular object that commend it to the project of a user (Ingold
1992b: 48- 9, cf. J. Gib on 1979: 127; Marx 1930: 169). Clearly, this distinction, between
value and use-val ue, is precisely homologous to that between land anti landscape . But ifwc
turn to consider the work that goes into the making of useful things. then again we can
recognize that whil. t the operati ns of making arc indcetl a unlike a. the objects produced
- involving different raw materials, different tools, different procedure. and different
skills - they can nevertheless be compared in that they call for variable amount of hat
may simply be called ·Jabour' : the common denominator of productive activities . Like land
and value. labour is quantitative and homogeneous, human work shorn of it particu-
larities. It is of course the founding pre mi. e of the labour theory of value thal the amount
of value in a thing is determined by t.he amount of labour that went into producing it.
How , then, ·hould we describe the practices of work in their concrete particular ·? For
thi s purpo e I sha ll adopt the term 'task·,defined a any practical operation. carried out by
a skilled agent in an environment, as part of his or her normal business of life . In olher
word . tasks are the constitutive acts of dwelling. No more than features of the land:cnpc,
however, are tasks ·u. pended in a vacuum . Every ta ·k takes its meaning from its po ·ition
within an ensemb le of tasks, performed in eries or in parallel, and usually by many people
working together . One of the great mistakes of recent anthropology - what Reynold ·
(1993: 410) calls 'the great to 1-u e fallacy' - ha. been to in ·ist upon a separation between
the domains of technical and ·c.)Cial activity , a 'epara tion thul has blinded u to the fact that
one of the outstanding fealllre of human technical practices lies in their embcddednes in
the current of ociality . It is to the entire ensemble of tasks, in their mutual interlocking.
that I refer by the concept or taskscape . Just as the land. cape i. an array of related feature ·,
. o - by analogy-the task cape i. a n array of related activities . And as with the landscape, it
i qualitative and heterogene us: e can ask of a taskscape. as of a landscape what it i
lik e, but not how much of it there is . In short, the ta k_capc is to labour what the landscape
i. Lo land and indeed what an e nsemble of use-value is to value in general.
Now if value i · mea ·ured ut in unit · of money , and land in unit of ·pace , what i the
currency of labour? The answer. of cour.e. is time- but it is tim e of a very peculiar sort. one
that must b wholly indifferenl lo the modulations of hum an e perience . To most of us it
appears in the familiar guise of clock-time: thus an hour is an hour, regardless of what one
is doing in it. or of h ,w one feels. But lhi. kind of chronological time docs not depend upon
the ex istence of artificial clocks. It may be ba ed on any perfectly repetitive, mechanical
system including that (putatively) constituted by the earth in its axial rotations and in it.
revolutions around the sun. Sorokin and Merton (1937), in a classic paper, call it
·astronomica l' time: it is, they write, ' uniform. homogeneous ; .. . purely quant it ative.
shorn or qualitative variations'. And they distinguish it from social time ', which they see as
fundamentally qualitative , omething to which we can affix moral judgements such a1> good
or bad. grounded in the 'rhythm·. pulsations and beats of the societie in which they are
found'. and for that reason tied to the particular circum tances of place and people
(1937: 621-3). Adopting Sorokin a nd Merton'. di ·tinction , we cou ld perhaps conc lude
that wherca~ labour is measured out in units of astronomical time. or in clock-time
 The lemporality of the landscape 159

calibrate d to a n as trono mi cal . ta nd a rd , the temporality of the taskscape i. es. e ntia ll y

social. Before we can accept t hi conclusio n owever, th e idea of ·ocial time must be
c a m ined a li ttle more clo ely .
ln rn ea rlier d i cussio n of the ·ignilicance of pace, l showed that in the ca rtographi c
imaginati n, the mind is uppo ·ed to be la id o ut upon th e urface of th e ea rth . Likewise in
the chro nological pe r:pective, Lim a ppears a. th · inl rface bet ee n mind and 'du ralio n'-
by which i mea nt a n undifferentiated ·tream of bodily act ivity and experie nce. Taking
time in t his sense. Du rkheim famously lik ened it to ·an e nd less chart, here a ll du ra ti on is
·pn: ad o ut before the mi nd, a nd upon which all po sib le eve nts ca n be loca ted in relation to
fixed and detcrmi na l guid e li nes· ( 1976[ 19 1 J: 10). Ra th e r lik e a u. sure ·s sheet of paper,
it could be compared to a strip of infinite length, with th o ug ht on one side a nd duration on
the o th ·r . B cutting the . trir into egmen ts w e tablish a d ivision, o n the one hand, in to
calcnd r ical interval r date , a nd o n the ot her hand, into discrete 'chunks' of lived
ex perience, such th a t to ever_ chunk there corre pon L a date in a uniform equence or
befo r a nd after . And as every chu nk ·ucceeds the n ext lik ~ fra m es on a reel of film, we
imagin ourse lves to be looking o n ·as time goe!> hy', a thoug h we could t ake up a point or
view t.l tached from the tempora l proces. of our life in the world and watch o urselve.
engaged now in thi · ta, k, no"" in th at. in a n un ending se ries of pre e nl instant. . Wh ence
then, come the divi ion s which give chrono logical fo rm lo , he sub tance of experie nce?
Durkh im ' s ans wer, a · is well known , was tha t these divisions- 'indispensable g uide lin e.'
for the tempora l ordering of events - come from sociery, cone ponding to the ·periodica l
recurrence of rit.es, ~ asts, and publi c cere mo nie.·' ( ibid .) . Thus for Durkh ei m , time i · al
once chrono logical and socia l. for sc,c ie ty itsel f is a kind of clock, who e movi ng part. are
individua l human be ings (Ingo ld 1986b: 341) .
Thi is no t . however, the way we p erceive th e ternporality of the ta skscape. For we do o
not a. pectators bu t a. p rticipants, in the very performance o f our tasks. As
M rleau-Pont put it, in reckoning with an env iro nment , I a m 'a t my task rather than
c< nfron ting it' ( 1962 : 416). T he notion that we an . t a nd aside and observe th e passage o f
time is founded upon a n illusion of disembodiment. Thi · passage is, ind eed , non ot her
than o ur own journey through the taskscape in the bu. in ss f dwelling . Once aga in we can
take o ur cue fro m Merlea u-Po nty : ' th e pa sag of o ne present 10 the nex t is not a thing
which 1 co nce ive nor do r see it a. an on looker, T effecr it' (1962: 42 1. my empha is).
Reaching o ut into the taskscape, I perceive. a l this mome nt. a particul ar vi sta o.f past and
future: but it is a vista tha t is ava il able from this mo ment and no other (see Gell l 992: 269) .
As such it constitutes my present, co nfer rin g uron it a unique cha ract er. Thus th e present
i not marked off from a past th at it ha s rep laced or a future tha t will in turn . re pl ace it; it
rather ga thers the pa, t a nd future into itse lf, like re fraction . in a c rysta l ball. And ju. t as in
the landscape. we can move from p lace 10 place wi thout cro ·sing any boundary since th e
vista tha t con titutcs the iden tity of a place changes e ve n a. we move, . o lik ewi e can we
move fro m one present to an Hher without having to break through a ny ch ronologica l
barrier t hat might be s upposed to se pa rate each present from the next in lin e. Indeed th e
features that Durk he im ide ntifie d a serving t hi segmenti g funct ion - rites, feasts a nd
cere monies - are them ·elves as integral lo the task. cape as ar bound a ry marker · such as
walls or fences to the la ndsc~pe.
T he te mporal ity of the ta. kscape i. soc ial , the n , not because ·ociety pro ides a n ex te rn a l
160 Tim Ingold

frame against which particular tasks find independent measure , but because people. in the
performance or their tasks, also auend to one anotfl er. Looking back, we can ·ee that
Durkheim s error wa. lo divorce the sphere of people's mu!Ual involvement rrom that of
their everyday practical activity in the world. leaving the latter lo be carried ut by
individuals in hermetic isolation . In real life , this is not how we go about our business. By
watching, li stening, perhaps even touching, we cont inuully feel each other's presence in
the · cial environment, at every moment adjusting our movements in response to thi
ongo ing perceptual monitoring (Ingo ld ] 993: 456). For the orchestral mu ician , playing an
instrument watching the conductor and listening to one's r llow players are all inseparable
aspects of the same proces of action: for this reason, the gestures of the performers may be
·aid lo resonate with each other. Jn orchestral mu . ic, the achievement of resonance is an
ab olute precondition for uccessful performance. But the same is true. moregenen.1lly, or
social life (Richards 1991; Wikan 1992). Indeed ii could be argued that in the resonuncc of
movement and feeling stemming from people 's mutually attentive engagement. in shareu
contexts or practical activity, lies the ver foundation of sociality.
Let me pursue the ana logy between orchestral performance and social life a lilllc further
·ince. more than any other arti . tic genre, music mirror · the temporal form of the
Laskscape . l want , by mean of this analogy, to make three points . First. whibt there are
cycles and repetitions in musi as in social life these arc e ·sen liall rhythmic rather than
metronomic (on this distinction, see Young (1988: 19)). Il is for precisely this reason that
:ocial time, pace Durkheim, is not chronological. A metronome , like a clock, inscribes an
artificial divi. ion into equal segments upon an otherwi ·e undifferentiated movement;
rhythm by contra t, is intrinsic to the movement itself. Langer has argued that the essence
of rhythm lies in the <;ucccssive huilding up and resolution of tension. on the principle that
every resoluti n is itself a preparation ror the next built.ling-up (1953: 126-7) . There ma of
course be rests or sustained note within a piece, but far from breaking it up into segment ,
such moments are generally ones of high tension , whos resolution becomes eve r more
urgent the longer they are held. Only our last exhalation of breath is not a preparation for
the next inhalation - with that , we die; similarly with the last beat the music come 10 an
end. Social life, however, is never finis hed, anu there are no breaks in it that are not
integral to its ten ile structure, to the 'ebb and now of activity' by which societ itself seem.
to breathe (Young I< 88: 53).
My second point is that in music a in cial life . there i!. not just one rhythmic cycle. but a
comp lex interweaving of very man concurrent cycles (for an exemplary analysis of ' the
rhythmic structures of economic life '. see Guyer ( 1988)) . Whilst ii rellects the temporal
form of social life , music in fact represent a ery considerable simplification. :i ncc it
involves only one sensory regi ·ter (the auditory), and its rhythm~ are fewer and more
tightly controlled. In both cases, howeve r. since any rhythm may be taken as the tempo for
any of the others, there is no single. one-dimensional strand of time . As Langer put it: ' life
is alway a den ·e fabric of concurrenl tensions , and as each of them is a mea. me of time.
the measurements themselves do not coincide' (1953: 113). Thus the lemporality of the
taskscape, while it i · intrinsic raU1er than external! imposed (metronomic), lie not in any
particular rhythm, but in the network of interrelationship, between the multiple rhythms
of which the taskscape is itself constituted. To cite a celebrated anthropological example:
among the Nuer of southern Sudan , according to Evan ·-Pritchard, the pas ·age of time is
 The temporality of the landscape 161

'primarily the successio n o f[ pastorall tasks and rheir relations LO one another' (1940: 10 1- 2:
my e mphasis). Each of these relations is, o f course, a specific resonance. And so, just as
social Ii fe consists in the unfolding of a fie ld of relationships among persons who atte nd to
one ano the r in what they do, its temporality consists in the unfolding of the resulta nt
pattern of resonances.
Third. the forms of the taskscape, like those o f music, come into bei ng thro ugh
movement. Music exists o nly whe n it is being perform ed (it does not p re-exist , as is
sometimes tho ught , in the score, any more than a cake pre-exists in the recipe fo r making
it). Similarly , the taskscape exists o nl y so long as people are actually e ngaged in the
activities of dwelling, despite the atte mpts of a nthropologists to translate it in to something
rather equivalent to a score - a kind of ideal design for dwe lling - that generally goes by the
name o f 'cul ture· , and that people are supposed to bring with them into their e nco unte r
with the world. This paralle l, however. brings me to a critica l question . Up LO now . my
discussion of te mporality has concentrate d exclusively on the taskscape , a llowing the
landscape to slip fro m view. lL is no w hig h time to bri ng it back into focus. f argued in the
pre vious section that the la ndscape is no t nature ; here I claim that the taskscape is no t
culture. Landscape and taskscape, then, are no t to be opposed as nature to culture. So how
are we to understand the relation between them? Where does o ne e nd a nd the othe r
begi n? Can they even be d istinguished at a ll? Tf music best reflects the forms o f the
taskscape, it might be thoug ht tha t painting is the most natura l medium for representing
the for ms o f the landscape. And this suggests that a n examination o f the diffe rence, in the
fie ld of art , between music and painting might offer some clues as Lo how a distinctio n
might possibly be drawn between taskscape a nd landscape as facets o f the real world. I
begin by following up this s uggestion .

Temporalizing the landscape

At firs t glance the difference !>eems obvio us: paintings do no t have to be performed , they
arc presented to us as wo rks that are comple te in the mselves. But o n closer inspection , this
contrast appears more as an a rLe fact of a systematic bias in Western tho ught , to which I
ha ve already a lluded , that leads us to privilege fo rm over process. Thus the actual work of
painting is subordinated to the final product; the fo rme r is hidde n from view so that the
la tte r alone becomei, an object of contemplatio n. In many non-Western societies, by
contrast. the o rde r of priority is reversed : what is essential i the act of painting itse lf, o f
which the products may be re la tive ly sho n-lived - barely pe rceived before being erased or
cove red up. T his is so , fo r example , among the Yolngu, an Aboriginal people of northern
Australia , whose ex perience of fi nished paintings, according to the ir e thnographer, is
limited to 'images fleetingly glimpsed through the corner of their eyes' (Morphy 1989: 26) .
The e mphasis, here, is on painting as pe,formance. Far from being the preparation of
objects for future conte mplatio n , it is an act of contempla tion in itself. So , too , is
perform ing or listeni ng to music . Thus all at once , the contrast between painting and music
seems less secure . Tt becomes a matter of degree . in the exte nt to which forms e ndure
beyo nd the immediate contexts o f their production. Musical sound . of course , is subject to
the property of rapid fading: speeding outwards from its point or e mission , and dissipating
162 Tim Ingold

as it goes, it is pre ·ent nly momentarily to our scns . But where, a in painting, gesture·
leave their traces in olid sub tant:c, the re ulting form may last much longer. albeit never
indefinitely.
Returning now from the contrast between music and painting to that between taskscapc
and landscape. the first paint to note is that no more than a painting i the land ·cape given
ready-made. One cannot, as Inglis points out. 'treat land:cape as an bject if it is to be
understood. TI i a living process; it make · men; it i. made by them· (1977 : 489) . Just as
with music, the f rms of the land cape are generated in movement: these forms. however,
are congealed in a solid medium - indeed. lo borr w Ingli ·: words again. ·a landscape is
the most so lid appearance in which a history can declare itselr (ibid.). Thank. to their
solidity, feature · of the landscape remain avai lable for in. pection long after the movement
that gave rise to them ha ceased. If, as Mead argued ( l 977l 1938] : 97), every object is to be
regarded a. a ·col lap ed act', then the la11dscape as a whole must likewise be 1111derswod a,
the taskscapc in ill>' embodied form : a pattern of activities 'col lc1pscd' into an array of
feature . But lo reiterate a point made earlier. the landscape take. on its forms through a
pro e. of incorporation, not of inscription . T hat i. to say. the process is not one whereby
cultural design i · impo:ed upon a naturally given substrate, a: though the movement
issued from the form and wa: completed in its concrete realization in the material. Fo r th e
form. of th landscape ari e al ngside thol'.e of the ta kscape , within the same current of
activity . Hwe r cognize a man·s gait in the pattern of hi · footprints. it i nol because the
gait preceded the footprints and wa ' inscribed' in them, but becau ·e both the gait and the
prints aro~e within the movement of the man·s walking .
Since, moreover. th activities that comprise the taskscape arc unending , the landscape
is never comp lete: neither ' built' nor ·unbuilt", it is perpetually under c n truclion . Thi is
why the con entional dichotomy between natural and artificial (or 'man-mad e') com-
ponents of the landscape i · ~o problematic. Virtually by definition. an artefaCL is an object
shaped to a pre-concei ved image that motivated its cons truction, and it is ·finished ' at the
point when it is brought into conform ity with this image. What happen · to it beyond that
point is supposed to belong to the phase or use rather than manufacture. to dwelling rather
than bui.lding . But th e forms of the landscape are nol pre-prepared !'or peopk: to live in -
not by nature nor b human hands -fo r it is in the very process of dwelling that the ·e forms
are constituted. 'T build' , as Heideggcr insi ted, 'is it ·elf already to dwell' (1971: 146).
Thus the landscape is a lwa · in the nature of 'work in progress' .
My conc lusion that the land cape is the congealed form of the taskscape doe. enable us
to expla in why , intuiti e ly. the lanttcapeseems lo be what we see around us, whereas the
ta kscape i what we hear. To be ·cen, an object need do nothing itself, ror the optic array
thaL specifies its form l a viewer consists of light reflected off its outer surface ·. To be
heard , o n the other hand. an object must acliv ly emit sounds or, through its movement,
cause so und to be emitted by other objects with which it comes into contact. Thus, o utside
my window l ·ee a landscape of houses. trees, garden . a street and pavement. I do not
hear any of thee thing , but I can hear people talking on the pavement, a car passing by,
birds ·inging in the tree • a dog barking so mewhere in the distance. and the ound of
hamm e ring as a neighbour repairs his garden shed. fn short, what I hear i actil'ity. even
when its source cannot be seen. And ince the form . of the task cape, uspcnded a. they
are in movement. are present only as activity, the limits of the taskscapc are also the limits
 The temporality of the lan dscape 163

of lhe a udilo r y world. (Whil st l dea l here on ly with viirnal a nd aural perception we shou ld
not underelitimate the . ignifican ce of Lo uch, which is imporlant to all o f u_- bul above all to
blind peop le, for whom it ope ns up the poss ibility of access lo the la ndscape - if o nl y
thro ugh proximate bodily con tact.)
This argu me nt carrie. a n importa nt coroll a ry . Whil st both the la nd cape and the
ta, k ca pe pre:uppo. e the presence of an agent who watche. and li ste ns, th e ta kscape
mu st be popu lated with be in gs who are th e mselve age nt , a nd who reciprocally 'act back'
in the proces of their own dwell in g. fn other wo rds, the task cape exi. ts not j usl as activity
but as interactivi ty. Indeed thi s concl usion wa · a lrea dy foreshadowed wh e n l introduced
the co ncept of resonance as the rhythmic ha rmoniza tion of mutual atten ti on. H;,iving sa id
that. however. th e r is no rea on why t he domai n of interactivity s hould be confined to the
m ve menl of h uma n bei ngs . We hea r anima ls a.; well as peopl e, uch as t he birds a nd the
dog in my exa mple ab vc. Hunters, to ta ke another exa mple are a le n to every sight ,
sound or . me ll that revea ls the prese nce or ani maL, and we can he sur that th e a nim als ar
lik ewi. e a le rt to the prcse nceol' hum an , as they are a lso to tha t of one another. O n a larger
. cale , the hunt rs' journ ey through the land ·cape, o r th e ir oscillation. be tween the
pro urement of d ifferent ani mal speci e , reso na te.:: with th e migra tory movem e nt of
terrestrial mammaL, birds and fish . Pe rhaps the n , a Reed argues, there is a fu nd amental
differe nce betwee n our pe r p tion of animate b ings a nd inanimate objects, since t he
former - by irtue of their capacity for a uton omo us mov ·me nt - ·a re aware o r their
surr unding (including us) a nd bcca u e they act o n those ·urrounclings (including u. )'
( Reed 19 8: I 16). ln othe r word. they afford the possibility not only of action but a lso of
interactio n (cf. J. Gibso n 1 79: 135). hould we, the n d raw the boundaries of the
laskscape around th e limits of t he animate?
Th oug h the argu ment i. a compelli ng o ne, I fi nd that it is ultim a tely unsa ti . factory, for
two reason: in pa rt icu lar. Fir. t , as Langer ob rves, 'r hyth , is th e basis of life , b ut not
limit d to life' (1953: 12 ) . The rh ythms of hum a n activitie. re ·onate not only with those of
other Ii ing things but also with a whol e hos t o f o ther rh ythmic ph e nom e na - th e cyc les of
da and night and of the season · , the winds. th e tide , and s on. iting a pe tition of 1800
from the seaside tm n of Sund rland , in which it i ex plained t hat ·peo ple are ob li ged to be
up a t a ll hours of the night to atte nd the.: tides and the ir affairs upon the river', T homp ·on
( 1967: 59-60) notes th a t ' the operative phra e is "attend the tides'·: the patterning of social
time in the seaport fo llows 11po11 t he rhythms of th e sea ·. In ma ny cases the. e natural
rh t hmic phenomena find the ir ultima te cause in the mechanics of planetary motion , but ii
is not of course to th ese that we resonate. T hus we resonate to the cycle. of light and
dark ni.:ss not to the ro ta ti on of the earth , e ven thoug h Lh e d iurnal cycle is ca used by the
ea rth's ax ial rota tion . And we re onare to the cycle. of vegetative growth and decay . n t to
the ea rth 's revo lutions a round the sun . eve n though the la tter cause th cycle of the
seasons. Moreover the ·e reso na nces a re embodied, in th e sen ·e tha t they a re n o t only
historica ll y inco rp rated into the e ndu rin g fea tures of th e landscape but al o deve lop-
men tall y inc r porated into ur very co nstitution a biologic;,il o rga ni ·ms. T hu s Young
de · rib s th e body a 'a n array f inte rlocking or internowing) c cl es, \. ith their own
spheres of part ia l ind ep e ndence within th e solar cycle· ( 1988: 41 ). We do not cons ult these
cyc les, a we might consu lt a wrist-watch , in order to tim our o wn activ itie . for the cycles
arc inh rent in the rhythmic struct ure of the activit i s t he mse lves. Tt would see m , then ,
164 Tim Ingold

that the pattern of re. onance that co mprises the temporality of the taskscape must be
expa nded lo embrace the to t al it y of rhythmic phenomena, wh ther animate or ina nima te .
The . econd rea.on why I would be reluctant to res trict the task cape to the realm of
living things has to d with the very notion o f animacy . I do not think we can regard this as a
property th a t can be a cribcd lo object in i. olati o n. such that some (animate) ha e it and
o the rs (inanimate) do not. For li fe i. not a principle that i. se parate ly installed insiue
individu a l organisms, a nd which. ets them in motion upon the stage of the inanimate. To
th e contrary , as I have a rgued e lsew here life is 'a name for what is going 01 1 in the
gene rative field within which o rga nic form · a re located and ' held in place" ' (1 ngold
1990: 215). That generati ve fie ld is constituted by the to tality of o rganism-envi ronment
relations, a nd th e activities of orga nism · a re moments of it: unfo ld ing. Indeed o nce we
think of th e world in this way. as a to tal movement of becoming which builds its If in Lo the
fo rm. we . ee, and in which eac h for m take shape in conti nuo us relation to t hose a round it.
then the distinction between the animate and th e in ani mate. eems to dissolve . The world
itse lf takes on the cha racter of a n organis m, a nd th e movements of a nimals - including
those of us huma n beings - a re part. or a. peel. of its li fe-proce . (Love lock "1 979). Thi.
means Lhat in dwelling in the world. we do not act upon it , or do thing to it; rather we move
a long with it. Our action do not transform the world. they a re part a nd parcel of the
world'. transforming it elf. And that i just another way of . aying that they be long to time.
For in the fin a l a naly ·is , everyt hing i su. pended in moveme nt. A · Whitehead once
remarked , th ere is no holding nature till a nd loo king at it' (cited in H o 1989: 19-20).
What appear to u , as the fi xed forms of the landscape passive and uncha nging unle ·s acted
upon from outside. are the m selves in moti on, a lbeit o n a cale immeasurably slower and
more majestic th an that on which our own acti vities are co nducted. Imagine a film of the
landscape shol over yea rs, cent urie . even millennia. Slightly peeded up, plant appear
to e ngage in very a nim al-like movements , tree · Rex their lim bs with ut a ny prompting
from the winds. Speeded up rather more, glaciers l'low lik e rivers and eve n th e earth begin ·
to move. At yet greater , peed . ol id rock bends buckle a nd flow like molten metal. The
world itself begins to breathe. Thus the rhythmic pattern of human act ivitie ne t within
the wider pattern of activity for all animal life, which in turn ne t within the pattern of
act ivity for a ll so-called living thin gs. which nest. within the life-proce. of the world. At
each of these level. coh renc is fo unded upon re o nance (Ho 1989: 18) . U ltimately,
t hen I y re pl aci ng the tasks of human dwelling in their proper context with in the proces of
becoming of the world as a whole, we can do away with the dichotomy between taskscape
and la ndscape - o nl y, however, by rec g nizing th e fundamental temporality of the
landscape itself.

The Harvesters

ln order to provide . ome illustration of the ideas developed in the preceding sections. l
reproduce here a painting which, more than a ny ot he r I know. vivid ly cap tures a sense of
the temporality of the landscape . This is The T/arvesters painted by Pieter Bruegel the
E lde r in 1565 (see Pl ate 1). J am nol an art hi ·torian or critic, and my purpo e is not to
ana lyse the painting in term of style. composition or aesthetic effecL. Nor am T co ncerned
 The temporalicy of the landscape 165

Plate J The Hnrve rers (1565) by Picter Bruegel the E lder . Reproduced b permission of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1919 (19.164),

with the historical context of its production . Suflice it to sa that the picture is believed to
be one of a eri soft welvc, i;ach depicting a month of the year ut of which only five ha c
:.ur ived (W. Gib o n 1977: 147). Each panel p rtray a land scape, in the colour and
apparel appropriate LO the month , and shows people engaged in the tasks of the
agricultural cycle that are usual at that time f year. The Harvesrers depicts the month of
ugust, and ·hows fi Id hands at work reaping and shearing a luxuriant crop of wheat ,
whilst oth rs pause for a miduay meal and some well-earned rest. The ·e n e of ru ti
harmony conveyed in this ·cene may. perhap.. represent something or a n idealization on
Brucger. part. As Wah r Gib on p ints out. Bru g I was inclined to ·depict peasants very
much as a wealthy landowner would have viewed them, a. the anonymous L nders of hi
field and flocks' ( 1977: I 57-8). Any landown er would have had cause f r sa ti . faction in
such a fine crop, whereas the hands who sweated to bring it in may hav had a rather
differe nt xperience. Nevertheless, Bruege l painted during a period of great material
pro. perity in the Netherlands, in hich all shared to some degree. The e were fortunate
times.
Rather than viewing the pain Ling as a work of art, 1 would like to invite you- th e reader -
lo imagine your ·e lf :et down in the very landscape dcpictctl , on a :ultry August day in
1565. Standing a little way off to the right of the group beneaLh the tree, you are a witnes ·
lo the enc unfoldin g about you. And of cours you hear it to , for the sce ne does not
unfold in silence. So accustomed are we to thinking or the landscape as a pi ture that we
can look at , like a plate in a book or an image on a screen. that it is perhaps n ce ·ary to
166 Tim Ingold

remind you that exchanging the painting for ·real life' is not simpl a mattl..:r of increasing
the scale. What is involved i · a fundamental difference of orientation. In the landscape of
our dwelling e look around (J . Gibson I979: 203). In what foll w-; I :hall focus n six
components of what you see around you, and comm · nt on each in so far a · they illustrate
aspect. of what I ha e had l say ab >ut landscape and temporality. They are: the hill. and
valley, the paths and tracks. lhe tree the corn, the church , and the people.

The hills and valley

The terrain i. agent! undulating one of low hill · ·rnd valley . . grading off to a . horeline that
can just be made out through the summer haze. Yoll are standing near the summit of a hill,
from where you can look out across the intervening valley to the next. Ho , then d you
differentiate between the hills and the valley a components of this landscape? Are they
alternating block. r trips into which it may be divided up? Any attempt at such division
plunges u immediately into ab. urdity. For where can we draw the boundarie · of a hill
e cept along the valley bottoms that separate it from the hill. on either ide? And where
can we draw the bountlarie · of a valley except along the summits of the hill. that mark its
watershed? On way. we would have a landscape consisting only of hills the other way it
would con ·isl only of vall ys . Of course, 'hill" and 'valley' are opposed terms. but the
opposition i. not spatial or altitudinal but kinae. thetic. lt i. the movements of falling away
from. and rising up towards, that specif the form of the hill· and the movements of falling
away towards, and rising up from. that specify the form of the valley. Through the
exercises of descending anti climbing, and their different mu. cular entailments, the
contours of the landscape are not so much measured as felt - they are directly incorporated
into our bodily exp rience. But even if you remain rooted to one pot. the ·ame principle
applie . As you look across the valley t the hill on the horizon, your eyes do not remain
fixed: swivelling in their sockets, or as you tilt your head, their motion. accord with the
movemen t of your attention as it follows it. course through the landscape. You 'cast your
eyes' first downwards into the valley, and then upward. towards the distant hill. Indeed in
this vernacular phrase, to 'ea. I one'· e es ' . commonsense has once again grasped
intuitively what the psychology of vision. with it. mctaph rs f retinal imagery, has found
so hard to accept: that movement i. the very essence of p rception. It i. because, in
scanning the terrain from nearby inlo the distance. your downward glance is followed by
an upward one, that you perceive the valley.
Moreover someone standing where you are now would perceive the same topographic
panorama, regardless of the time of year, the weather conditions and the activities in which
people may be engaged. We may reasonably suppose thal over the ccnturie .• perhaps even
millennia, thi · basic topography has changed but little. ScL against the duration of human
memory and experience. it may theref re be taken to establish a baseline of permanence.
Yet permanence, as Gib. on has stressed, is always relative: thu 'it is betLer to ·peak of
persistence under change· (J. Gibson 1979: 13). Although the topography is invariant
relative to the human life-cycle, it i not itself immune to change. Sea-level. ri e and fall
with global climatic cycles, and the pre. ent contour · of the country are the cumulative
outcome of a ·low and Jong drawn out process of erosion and deposition . Thi. proees ·,
moreover. was not confined to earlier geological epochs during which Lh landscape
 The lemporality of the landscape 167

assume d iLs pre ent t.opograp hi c fo rm. For it is stil l going on , and will continue so lon g as
the s tream, just isiblc in the valley bottom, flows on toward th e sea . The strea m does not
flow b ·twee n p re-cut banh, but cuts it banks even as it nows . Likewise , as we have en.
people shape the land ·cape even a· t hey dwell . nd human activitie ·, as well as the action
of riv rs and th e s a, contribute sig nificantly to the process of erosion . A · you watch the
strea m flows, fo lk are at work , a land ·cape is being fonncd a d time passes.

The paths and tracks

r remarked above that we experience the co ntours of th land ·cap· by moving through it ,
so th atit e nters-a Bachelardwouldsay - inlo ur· muscular co n ciousness'. Reli ingth e
experience in our imagination , we are inclined to reca ll the road we took as 'c limbing' the
hi ll, o r a · ' de. ce ndin g· into th e valley , as though ·the road it elf had mu. cl e., or rat her.
coun ter-mu cles' (Bachelard 1964: 11). And thi ·, too, is proba bly how you recall the paths
a nd trac ks that are visibl to you now: ·1Fter a ll you mu t have trave ll ed a long al least some
of the m to reach the pot whe re you are cur rently standing. Nearest at hand a path has
been cut through th e wheat-lield, allowin g she · ves to be carried down, and water and
pro is ion. to be carried up . F urther off, a cart-track runs alo ng the valley bottom, and
a not her wintls up th e hill behind. In the di:tan e path. criss-cro. s the vi llage grc •n. Taken
together, these paths and track impose a habitual pattern on the move ment of peop le·
(Jackson 1989: 146). And yet they al. o arise utnfthat move me nt , for eve ry path or track
show up as t he accumul ated imprint of counties journey · that people have mad e-wi th or
witho ut t hei r ve hicles or domestic animals - as they have gone ·1 bout their eve ryday
husines . . T hus the same movement. is e mbod ied , on th ~idc of the people . in th e ir
muscul ar con scjousnes, , and on the ide of t he land.cape, in its n twork of paths and
tracks. In this network is sedimented the activity of an enlire community over many
gene rations. Tt is t·h taskscape made vi ible .
In their journeys alo11gpaths a nd tracks , however. people a lso move from place to place.
To reach a p lace, you need cro no boundary , but you must follow some kind of pa th .
Th u · there can be no p laces without paths, a long which people arrive and depart; and no
path · wit hout places, t hat constitute their de ' tinations and points of departure. And for
the harveste rs, the p lace to which they arrive , and whence they will leave at the end of the
da_ . is marked by the next feature of the landscape to occupy your attention .. ..

The tree
Rising from th spot where peopl e are gath er d for their repast is an old a nd gnarled
pear- tree, wh ich provides the m with both shade from the sun, a back-rest and a prop for
utensils. Being the month of Augu t , the tree i_· in full leaf, and fruit is ripening n th e
branches . But this is not just any tree. For one t.hing. it draws the e ntire landscape around it
into a unique focus : in other word , by it · pr se nce it constitutes a particular place. T he
place was not there before the Lree, but came into being with it. And fo r tho e who are
ga thered t here, the pro peel it a ffords. which i · to be had nowhere e lse, is what gives it its
particular character and identity . For another Lh ing, no other tree has quite t he same
configurat ion of branche ·, diverging. bending and lw isti ng in e actly the same way. In its
J68 Tim Ingold

present form Lhe tree emb dies the e ntire history o r its development from the moment it
first took root. And that histo ry consi ·ts in the unfolding of ils relations with manifold
components of its 'nvironmenL including the people who have nurtured it, tilled the oil
around it, pruned it · branche. , picked its fruit, and-as at present - use it as .·omething to
lean against. The people. in other word , are a· much bound up in the life of the tree as is
the tree in the lives of the people . Moreo er, unlike the hill: and the valley , the tree has
manifestly grown within living memory . Thus ils lemporality is more co nsonant with that
of human dwelling. Yet in its branching structure, the tree combi nes an entire hierarchy of
temporal rhythms , ranging from the lonu c cle of its own germination, growth and
eventual decay to the short , an nu al cycle of flowering, fruiti ng and foliation. At one
exl re me, rep rc e nted by the sol id trunk, it preside immobile over the passage of human
generations · at the other. represented by the frondesccnt sho ts it re. on ales with the
life-cycle of insects, the seasonal migrat.ions of bird , and the regular re und of human
agricultural activities (cf. Davies 1988). In a sense, then. the tree bridges the gap between
the apparently fixed and invariant forms or the landscape a nd the mobile and tran ient
forms o[ animal life, visible proor that a ll of the:e forms, from the most permanent to the
most ephemeral, are dynamically linked under Lransformation within the movement or
becoming of the world as a whole.

Thecom
Turning from the pear-tree to the wheat-field, it is no longer a place in the landscape but
the surrounding surface that occupies your allention. And perhap what i · mo ·t ·triking
about this surface is its uniformit of colour, a golden sheen that cloaks the more elevated
parts of the country for as rar a the eye can ee. As y u know, wheal takes on this olour at
the particular time of year when it is ripe for harve. ting. More than any other feature of the
land cape, the golden corn gathers the lives or its inhabitants , wherever they may be, into
temporal uni ·on, founded upon a communion of i ·ual experience. Thus whereas the tree
binds past. pre:enl a nd future in a sing le place. the corn binds every place in the landscape
within a ingle horizon of I.he pre ·ent. The tree. we could say, establi ·hes a ivid . en:e of
duration, the co rn an equal ly vivid sen e o f what Fabian ( 19RJ: 31) calls coeva/ness. rt is
this di ·tinction that Bachelard ha · in mind when he contrast · lhe ' before-me , before-us' of
the fore. t with the 'with-me . with-us' of fields and meadows, wherein 'my dream · and
recollections accompany all the different phases of tilling and harvesting' (Bachclard
1964: 188). You may ·uppose that the sleeper beneath th tree i dreaming of corn, but if
·0, you may be sure that the people and the acti itie " that figure in his dream are coeval
with those of the present and do not take him back into an encounter with the past. (Note
that the distinction between coevalness anti duration, represented by the corn and the tree ,
is not at all the same a. the classic Saus:urian dichotomy between synchrony and
diachrony: the former belong to the per ·pective of the A-ser ies rather than the B-series,
to the temporality of the landscape. not to its chronology (1 ngold 1986b: 151).)
Where the corn has been fre · hly cut, it pre ·ents a ·heer vertica l front. not far short of a
man· · height. But this i · not a boundar_ fea ture, like a hedge or fence. It is an interface,
who e o utline i. progressivel transform ed a the harvesters proceed with their work.
Here is a fine example or the way in which form emerges through movement. Another
 The temporali1y of the landscape 169

exampl can be ·een lurther orr, where a man is engag din the ta ·k of binding Lhe wheat
into a ·hcaf. Each completed sheaf ha. a regular form, which arise o ut of the co-ordinated
movement of binding. But the comp! Lion or a sheaf is o nly one moment in the labour
proccs . The sheav swill lal r be carried down the path t hrough Lhe field to the haycart in
the va ll y. Indeed at thi v ry moment , ne woman is :tooped almost double in the act of
picking up a sheaf . and two thers can be seen on Lhe ir way down heaves on their
shoulde rs. Many more operali ns will follow before the wheat i eve ntually transfonned
into bread. In the scene before you, one of the harvester und e r the tree. seated on a sheaf,
is culli ng a loaf. Her the cycle of production and consu mpti o n e nds where 'iL began,\ ith
the producers . For production is tantamounl to dwel ling: it doe. not b gin here (with a
preconceived image) and end there (with a finished artefact) but is co11ti11 11ously going on.

The church
ot far off, nestled in a grove of tree." near the top of the hill is a ton church. lt is
in tructivc to ask: how does the church differ from the tree? Th y have more in c mmon ,
perhap , than meets the eye. Both pos es the attributes of wha t Bakhtin ( 1981 : 84) ca ll s a
·c11ronotope' - that is, a pluce charged with rempora lity, o ne in which temporality take on
palpab le form. Like the trc , th church by it. very presence c n titutes a place , which
owes its character to the unique way in which it raw. in the surroundi ng landscape. Again
lik the tree, the ch urch pans human generati n., yet its temporality i. not inconsonant
with that of human dwelling . s the tree burie its roots in the grou nd , s als people ·
ancesto rs a re buried in the gra e ard beside the church, anu both . t · of root · may reach to
approximately the same temporal depth . Moreover the c hurch, Loo, resonate to the cycle~
of human life and sub, ist nee . Among the inhabitants f the neighbourh od, ii is n ot only
· en but al ·o heard. as its bells rin° out the ·e , son , th e months , births, marriages and
death . In hort, as features f the landscape, both the church and the tree appear as
veritab le monument to the pa sage of time .
Yet despite th se im ilarilies, the difference may seem obvious. TI1e church, after all, is
a building. The tree by co ntrast. is not built, it grow . . We ma agree LO re ·erve the term
'build ing' for any durable structure in the land ·cape wh se form arises and is su 'laincd
within the current or human activity. rt wou ld be wrong lo c nclucle, however, that the
di . tincti n between buildings and non-buildings is an absolute one . Wh re a n absolute
distinction i. made, it i · generally prcmi e d upon the separation f mind and nature, such
that built form, rather than ha ving its source within nature. is sa id t be ·uperimposed b
the mind upon it. But from the per. peclivc of dwelling, we can sec that the form s of
building . . as much a · of any o th er f"eatures of the la ndscape, arc neither given in the world
nor placed upon it. but emerge within Lhe self-tran. forming proce.. es of th e world it ·elf.
With re. pect to any fea tu re. the scope of human invol em nt in these processes will vary
from negl igibl e to considerable. though it is n ·vcr total (even the mo t e ngine red' of
enviro nments i · home to other pecie:). What is or is not a 'building' is th e refore a relative
matter ; moreover as human involvement may vary in the ' li fe history' of a feature, it may
be more or less of a building in different periods .
Returning to the tree and the church, it is ident ly loo simple to . uppose that the fonn
of the tree is naturally given in its genetic makeup. wherea · the form of th church
J 70 Tim Ingold

p re-cxisls, in !he minds or the builders. as a plan which is then 'realized' in stone. In the
case of the tree, w have already observed that its growth consists in the unfolding of a total
system of relations constituted by the fact of its presence in an en ironment, from the point
of germination nwar<ls, and that people. as comp nent. of the lre1::' · environment. play a
not insignificant role in this process. Likewise. the ' biography' or th church c nsists in the
unfolding c r relation: with ili,, human builderJ>. as well as with other components of its
environment, from the moment when the first stone wa . laid. The· final· form of the church
may indeed have been prefigured in the human imagination, but i l no more i. suetl from the
image than did the form of the tree issue from il. gene .. In both cases. the form is the
embodiment or a devel pmental or histori al process. and ii. rooted in the contc t of
human dwe ll ing in the w )rid.
In the case of the church. m reo er. that procci,, <lid not i,top when it:-. form came lo
match the conceptual model. For as long_ as the building remains standing in the landscape.
it will continue - as it tloes now - to figure within the en ironmenl not ju · t of human beings
but of a myriad of other living kinds, pl,111t and animal, which will incorporate it into their
own life-acliviLies and motlify it in Lhe process , And it is subject, too, to the ame forces or
weuthcring and decomposition, hoth organic and mcteorologicul , that affect everything
else in the landscape. The pre ·er ation of the church in its existing, 'finis hed ' form in the
face of these force , however substa ntial it ma y be in it.· materials and construction,
requires a regular input of effo rt in maintenance a nd repair. One(; this human input lapses,
leaving it at the mercy of other fmrns of life and or the weather, it will soon ci.:ase to be a
bu il ding and become a ruin.

The people
So for I have described the scene only a. you behold it with your eyes. Yet you do not on]
look, you li sten as well, for the air i· full of sound. of one kind and another. Though the
folk beneath the tree are too busy eating LO talk , you hear the clatter of wooden spoon~ on
bowl · , the . lurp of the drinker. and the loud "nores of the member of Lhe party who i<;
outstretched in s.l eep. Further off, you hear the swish of scythe. against the corrn,talks and
the cal ls of the birds as they ·woop low over the field in i..earcl, of prey. Far off in the
distance , wafted on the light wind. can be heard th e sounds of people conversing and
playing o n a gree n , behi nd~ hicl,, on the other side of thl.'. i..tream. lies a cluster of cottages.
What you hear is a taskscape .
Tn the performance oft heir particular task·, peop le arc respons ive no1 onl to the cycle
of maturation of the crop, which draws them together in the overall project of harvesting.
but [Llso to each other's activities as these are apportioned by the divi. ion of labour. Even
within the . ame task, individual do not carry on in mutual isolation . Tec hn ically, it takes
only one man to wield a scythe, but the reapers nevertheless work in unison, achieving a
dance-like harmony in their rhythmic movements. Sim il ar ly the two women carrying
sheaves down into the valley adjust their pace, each in relation to the ther, o that the
distance between them remains more or less in ariant. Perhaps there i: les · co-ordination
between the respective movements of the eater ·. however they eye each other intently as
they set about their rep.:L~t. and the meal is a joint activity on which all have embarked
together, and which they ill Ftni. h together. Only the leeper. oblivious to the world, i ·
 The temporalily of the landscape 171

out of joint- his snores jar the senses precise ly because they are 1101 in any kind of rhythmic
relation LO what i going on around. Without ak ful attention, I here can be no resonance.
But in a ttending to one another, do the peop le inhabit a worl<l of their own, an
exclusivel human w rid of meanings and intentions, of belief. and values . detached from
the one in which their bodie are put to work in their several activities? Do they , from
within ·uch a domain finlersubjectivily, look at Lhe world outside through the window of
their ~enses? Surely not. For the hill· and valley, the tre . the c m and the bird are a:-.
palpably present L them (as indeed Lo you too) a~ are th people to each other (and to
you) . The reapers. a · they wield their . cythes. arc with the corn, ju:t as the eaters are with
their fellows. The landscape , in short, i. not a totality that you or any ne else can look at, it
is rather the world in which we 'land in taking up a point of iew on our ·urroundings. And
it is wi1hin the context of this attentive involvement in the landscape that the human
imagination gels to work in fashioning ideus about it. For the landscape. to borrow a
phra. e from Mcrlcau-Pont ( 1962: 24), is not ·o mu h the object a, 'the homeland or our
thoughtl>'.

Epilogue

Concludi ng an essay c n the way~ in which 1he Western Apache of Arizona di cover
meaning. alue and moral guidance in Lhc landscape around them, Bas. a abhor the
tendency in ecological an th ropology to relegate such matters to an 'epiphenomena!' level,
which is seen to have little or no bearing on the dynamics or adaptation or human
populations to the condition. of their env ironments . An ecology that is fully cultural,
Ba!-.~o argue:-. is one that would attend as much to Lhe semiotic as L Lhe material
dimensions of people· relations with their surroundings. b bringing into rocu: 'the layers
or signilicance with which human beings blanket the envir nmenr" (Basso 19 4: 49) . In
rather similar vein. Cosgro e regrets the tendency in human geography to regard the
land. cape in narrowly utilitaria n and functional terms, as 'an imper ·onal expression or
<lcmographic a nd economic f1lrccs', an<l thus to ignore the multipl e layers of symbolic
meaning or cultural representation that are depo:iled upon il. The task of decoding the
·many-layered meaning· of . . mbolic landscapes'. Cosgrove argues. will require a
geogra phy that is not just human but prop1;rly h11manisric (Cosgrove 1989: 120-7) .
Though I have some sympath_ with the view. expre sed by these writers, I believe that
the metaphor~ of cultural con. truction which they adopt have a n effect quite oppo iLe to
that int nded. Fo r the very idea th at meaning covers Ol'er the world, layer upon layer.
carries the imp li ca tion that the way to uncover the m st basic level of human beings'
practical involvement with their environment. is by st rippin g these layers away . In other
words, uch blanketing metaphors actual! serve Lo create and perp Luate an intellectual
space in which human eco logy r human geograp hy can flouris h , untroubled by any
concerns about what the world mcc1n to the people who live in it. We can ·urely learn from
the Western Apache. who insist that the stories they t.ell, far from putting meanings upon
the la nd cape, a re intended L a llow list ners to place themse lves in relation to specific
features of the landl.cape, in ·uch a way that their meanings may be revea led or disclosed .
t ric help to open up the world. not Lo cloak it.
172 Tim Ingold

And such opening up. too, must be the objecti c of archaeology. Like the We ·tern
Apache - and for that matter any other group of people who are truly 'al home' in the
world - archaeologists study the meaning of the landscape. n t by interpreting the many
layer. of its representation (adding further layers in the process) but b probing ever more
deeply into it. Meaning is there to be discovered in the landscape, if only we know how to
attend to it. Every feature, then, is a potential clue, a key to meaning rather lhan a ehicle
for carrying it. This discovery procedure, wherein objects in the landscape become clues to
meaning, is what distingui hes the perspective of dwelling. And since, a · I have shown, the
process of dwelling is fundamentally temporal. the apprehen , ion of the landscape in the
dwelling perspective must begin from a recognition of its temporality . Only through . uch
recognition, by temporalizing the landscape, can we move beyond the division that ha,
afflicted most inquirie. up to now, between the ·scientific' study of an alemporalized
nature, and the ·humanistic' tudy of a dcmaterialized history . And no discipline is better
placed to take this tep th<1n archaeology. I have 1101 been concerned here with either th
methods or the results of archae logical inquiry . However to the question. 'what i~
archaeology the study of?', I believe thcrc is no better ans\ er than 'the temporality of the
landscape'. l hope, in thi . article. LO ha e gone ·ome way towards elucidating what lhi
means .

10.iii .93 Department of Social Anthropology

University of Manchesrer

Note

An earlier version of thi · paper wa presented to the , c. sion on ' Place, time and
experience: interpreting prehistoric lamh.capes·. al the Conference of the The retical
Archaeology Group , University of Leicester, December 1991.

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Abstract

Ingold, T.
The temporality of the landscape
Landscape and tcmpornlit arc the major unifying theme. or archaeology and ~ocial-cultural
anthropology. This paper attempts to1.h w how the ternporality of the land cape may be undersLOod
by way of a 'dwelling perspective' that set ' ut from the prcmi. e of people's active, perceptmtl
engagement in the world. The meaning of 'landscape ' is clarified by contra t LO the concept of land,
nature and spa e. The notion of ·ra. k!cape· i introduced to denote a pattern of dwelling activities.
and the intrin ic ternporality of the task cape is shown ro lie in it· rhythmic int rrelation. or patterns
of re unance. By considering ho ta ·kscape relate t landscape.. the distinction between them is
ultim ately dis~olved, a nd the landscape itself is shown to be fundamentally temporal. Some onc:rcte
illustration of these argument a re drawn from a painting by Brucgcl, The /-lan-estl!rs.