Woods, trees, clearings and contemporary archaeology

Andrew Hoaen (Open University)

How do we approach the non-human in the past and in the present? Since 2012 I have been
conducting a series of projects looking at this question as it applies to trees and woodlands.
These have included individual trees such as the Borrowdale Yews memorialised by
Wordsworth, the woodlands planted at the important mental hospital (now closed) at St.
Wulstans and the now vanished woodlands (removed to create heathland) at the nature reserve
of Devils Spittleful, near Kidderminster. I have just completed a survey of an ancient holly
wood in the largest area of ancient woodland in England in the Forest of Dean.
I have attempted in these studies to draw out what we can of the archaeology of the history of
these long lived non-human life forms. In this paper I wish to discuss how we might theorise
the archaeology of life based on the ideas of Jane Bennet, Arne Naess and the poet/philosopher
Gary Snyder’s ideas around the non-human and the wild. Trees are adept at creating not only
their own ecology but they present obstacles and opportunities for both humans and nonhumans. Ancient trees by their sheer size represent challenges and opportunities both in the
past and the present and can come to structure human and non-human activities. Equally,
woodland scrub can cover abandoned spaces in favourable conditions in 10-15 years, such that
they are no longer part of the domestic human world and move from wastes to wilds. How
these dynamic processes interact with human projects in the present has lessons for our studies
of the deep past.