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Theoretical Issues in the Analysis of Spatial Patterning
WILLIAM H. MARQUARDT AND CAROLE L. CRUMLEY
 

Societies form and are formed by their natural and constructed environments. People make their territories, houses, living spaces, and work spaces their own by consciously modifying them in terms of their effects on the senses, their utility, and their economic value. For houses and other buildings, such efforts are invariably conditioned both consciously and unconsciously by the nature of the building materials already in use and potentially available, by the site, and by the technological capacity, imagination, and cultural sensibilities of the individuals who construct them. Similarly, how a group adjusts to a geographic area reflects much of the group's history, organization, and values, and in turn such adjustments influence that group's perception of the physical and the constructed environment. The landscape is the spatial manifestation of the relations between humans and their environment. Included in the study of landscapes are population agglomerations of all sizes, from isolated farmsteads to metropoleis, as well as the roads that link them. Also included are unoccupied or infrequently occupied places, such as religious shrines, resource extraction sites, river fords, passes through mountains, and other topographical features that societies use and imbue with meaning.

Infrequently occupied places pose particular problems in the study of past landscapes. How can an archaeologist identify and assemble the components of a landscape when many features of importance show little or no trace of use or occupation? Workers in what has been called settlement archaeology have concentrated their research efforts on population agglomerations and have defined sites as places where there is evidence that people lived (occupation sites) or were buried (cemeteries). Since 1975 our research team, with a staff trained in a variety of disciplines-anthropology, geography, geology, history, art history, ecology-has set out to expand the scope of settlement studies, and thus to contribute to a broad-based analysis of the human use of space. In order to expand the definition of sites to include infrequently occupied or unoccupied places, we have defined functional centers (Crumley 1976:67) as places that serve functions not equally available elsewhere. Thus we study land use as well as settlement and give attention to uninhabited buffer zones between groups as well as cities, cult springs, and overnight camps. We have explored in numerous ways the varieties of human behavior that have patterned settlement and land use in southern Burgundy since the Iron Age. Our orientation is spatial, and our overall analytic strategy is critical and comparative.

A Spatial Orientation

A basic assumption made by archaeologists is that temporal change is reflected in spatial change. Whether stylistic (as in the decoration of a bowl), statistical (as with changes in the concentration of objects or attributes in space), or physical (measured by inference from the spatial relationships in a site's accumulated deposits), the bulk of archaeological evidence has a spatial component. From spatial evidence temporal continuity and change are inferred. If archaeologists are to provide more than descriptions of spatial and temporal variation in material culture, or, more broadly, if as anthropologists we are to study the mechanisms of cultural change, we must address directly the fundamental question of how cultural change is encoded in and inferred from spatial discontinuity.

The answers we reach relate to the scales at which this question is addressed. In this book, scale refers to the "grain" of the unit of analysis relative to the matrix as a whole; effective scale is any scale at which pattern may be recognized and meaning inferred. For many years the study of society has been dominated by research at the community scale, where patterns of relations among individuals and groups have been identified and defined. Social scientists have concentrated on establishing a working methodology that integrates patternrecognition techniques from sociology, psychology, economics, and social anthropology, techniques that have proven applicable to a wide range of cultures at the individual and small-group scales. In recent decades, researchers in all of these fields have focused on the definition of human action at a broader scale,' in keeping with a holistic concept of culture. This broader-scale spatial analysis has been applied to the economics of regional marketing systems (see Smith 1976), national and international geopolitics (see Tarrow 1977; Wolf 1982), and the controlled comparison of culture areas (Skinner 1977). Other than these table exceptions, however, little theoretical or methodological effort has been made to relate micro-scale community studies to meso- and macro-scale cultural analyses. The questions of how regions are related to one another, as well as to patterns of sub- and supraregional variation, and how all of these patterns undergo change have yet to be pursued.

Our research goal was to formulate a multidisciplinary, multitemporal, and multiscaler cluster of methods for the study of patterns of human activity. A primary objective of our research has thus been to operationalize the study of "region" without arbitrarily delineating its boundaries in advance. In this book, region is used to indicate a spatial configuration at a scale at which certain phenomena exhibit recognizable areal distribution. But what constitutes a spatial and temporal definition of region? Are there observable patterns of regional change? To answer these questions, we have been obliged to integrate social theory with the more quantitative natural sciences (biology, climatology, geology) and the more qualitative humanities (languages, literature, art, history). A rapprochement among these fields is advisable, considering the rapidity of regional development on a worldwide scale. Thus far the methods employed in regional development have derived primarily from economics, to the exclusion of social and ecological considerations.

Researchers and consultants in regional development have often neglected the attitudes (conscious and unconscious) of an area's inhabitants toward their surroundings. Both historical and cognitive perspectives are critically needed in such studies. An integrated approach to regional development, such as we advocate, involves juxtaposition of archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic data with those of the natural sciences. Ultimately we intend to apply our results to contemporary questions of regional development. Only a cooperative, multiperspective, problem-oriented investigation is suited to such a task.

Geographers are also concerned with such integrative, broad-scale studies. The emphasis in geography has traditionally been on the interaction of human and physical landscapes, and in anthropology on the interaction of human and cultural landscapes. The concerns of geographers and anthropologists overlap in human ecology, economic geography, linguistics, and culture-area studies. Geographers have struggled for decades with the definition of the term region. The definition has evolved to the viewpoint that a region is a relatively flexible, macro-scale spatial division of the earth's surface. Regional science is pursued by a number of researchers with common interests in the determination of the properties of any area on the face of the earth in relation to a variety of critical cultural and physical factors. Elsewhere one of us (Crumley 1979:156-157) has argued that although regional scientists-predominantly geographers, political scientists, and economists-admirably relate the economic aspects of human society to the landscape, they have yet to integrate data on other cultural aspects collected by anthropologists.

Geographers and political scientists have long understood the methodological problems of scale and economy, and the importance of the natural sciences, but have largely been untrained in wider cultural aspects of regional analysis. Conversely, social and cultural anthropologists have failed (apparently for fear of being thought environmentally deterministic) to integrate the geographic (global scale) perspective with cultural configurations or to develop a methodology that would adequately relate community studies to the macro-scale investigation of societies.

Until the past two decades, few studies in either field were diachronic, except in the strictly comparative sense. An exception to this tendency towards synchronic, macro-scale studies has been the work of anthropological archaeologists. In using physical remains of past cultures in the study of human evolution, they have been forced to consider the meaning of regions through time.

A primary objective of our project has thus been to examine regions both spatially and temporally at a variety of scales. We have concentrated (see below) on determinants of the location of functional centers (Crumley 1976:67) and on the deteminants of boundary maintenance and dissolution. To identify and investigate these determinants, we have devised methods for the diachronic study of regions and have integrated diverse perspectives and bodies of data. These data result from the macro-scale study of geology, climate, soils, flora, fauna (natural sciences); settlement patterns and land use, social and economic networks, and political organization (social sciences); and literature, history, and the history of art (humanities).

The diachronic, processual fluctuations of boundaries (both of the system as a whole and those within the system) are most easily studied in an area with the following characteristics: (1) heterogeneous physiography (see Crumley 1979:143 and Chapter 2, this volume), (2) a historical record of considerable duration, and (3) absence of extensive construction and other modifications of the land that destroy previous spatial configurations. We chose southern Burgundy, for which more than two thousand years of archaeological, historical, and ecological evidence is available, as our research area. Its physiography is heterogeneous, its spatial and written history is long and well-preserved, and its geographical configurations since the Iron Age are known with some confidence.

An Explicitly Critical Analytic Strategy
 

We perceive our interdisciplinary study as explicitly critical, diachronic (processual), and generalizing. Anthropology is the comparative, relativistic, and generalizing study of humans at all times and at all places. Advancement in anthropological knowledge is attained as a result of systematic data-gathering accompanied by sustained criticism at several levels, including self-criticism of biases and assumptions within one's own research team, criticism of previous scholarly work and other written records, and, at a more general level, criticism of the theoretical assumptions, methodological orientations, and leading conclusions of anthropologists, historians, and regional scientists. Three assumptions have guided our investigations.

First, we assume that human understanding of the environment is cultural, that humans collectively define and redefine their surroundings. We conceive "environment" broadly, to include not only the materials that can be perceived and used as resources by humans (food, raw materials for tool manufacture, building materials, etc.), but also other humans, playing a variety of roles, and the sociohistorical structures imposed by people upon their physical surroundings. Not only is all human reality culturally comprehended (cognized), but it is in constant flux, as people in groups, acting on the basis of vested interests that make it attractive to perceive the environment in specific ways, expend energy in ways that, in turn, affect and come into conflict with the results of past social actions, energy expenditures, and perceptions.

Second, we assume that any comprehension of the world, including our own, must be examined critically. The analyst must proceed by explicitly doubting culturally comprehended reality, to reach beneath the surface to reveal underlying relations. Then it can be seen that contradictions, inequalities, and incompatibilities are characteristics of human life. The role of the analyst is to challenge prevailing theories, by means of criticism intended to reveal those theories' internal structures and contradictions and to show how they can be transformed. We are explicitly skeptical of prevailing theories (especially those that justify the status quo), but we do not reject them, in part or in their entirety, without careful consideration of their merits. In practice this criticism is begun in the identification and analysis of underlying assumptions.

Third, we assume that theory and practice must be united. Theories of culture or explanations of historical processes are not produced in isolation from social contexts but instead are shaped by peer criticism, and by economic and political vested interests. Purposeful reconstruction of human relations, such as the radical transformations envisioned by Marx, constitute only one kind of practice. Participation in the development of theories of culture is clearly an important kind of practice, because dominant ideas tend to channel academic production within what Kuhn (1970) calls "normal science." Advancement is well served when ideas are put forward and tested in the arenas of scholarly peer criticism, but we firmly believe that the best test of anthropological generalizations lies in realworld application.

Our analyses can and do apply at multiple scales and concern different time periods. As one of us has observed elsewhere (Crumley 1979:143-45), any region may be seen as heterogeneous at one scale, homogeneous at another, and organizational structure may be seen as hierarchical or heterarchical, depending on the focus of the study. The researcher can vary the scale of the inquiry in order to uncover contradictions in past human-environmental relations, with the aim of tracing the paths of their resolution through time.

Our focus in this volume is on spatial aspects of cultural continuity and change. By emphasizing spatial aspects we do not mean to negate the importance of time; on the contrary, we believe that if properly applied, our methods lead to a rich understanding of sociohistorical processes. Nor have we espoused the use of one specific spatial model to the exclusion of all others. Our aim is to contribute to the understanding of cultural processes by applying a variety of strategies and techniques to the study of a particular part of the world through time (Crumley 1979:165-166). This broad, interdisciplinary approach has been dictated by our assumption that all human activities, individual and collective, take place in specific but ever-changing social and historical contexts, that these actions tend to come into conflict with objective historical products of previous actions, and that the resolution of these conflicts produces an ever-new sociohistorical totality.

We have said that a landscape is the spatial manifestation of relations between human groups and their environments. Landscapes are real-world phenomena, and we can study them scientifically. In interacting with their physical environment, people project culture onto nature. That is, they make decisions and expend energy according to their own mental models of how the world is structured and how it operates. To the extent that such models of the real world are 11 correct," that is, to the extent that mental models of the environment are not incompatible with the uncognized world, people often reach the intended goals of their actions, and their applications of energy successfully transform their surroundings. To the extent that such models are incompatible with the uncognized world, unintended consequences may result from human action. For example, we consciously extract coal to provide energy for domestic consumption and industrial production; in the process, we unintentionally produce acid rain, which may have a long-term deleterious effect on agriculture and, eventually, on the health of our own society.

Contradictions inevitably arise as humans interact with their cognized environments. Within human groups contradictions result from the differential participation of people in the development of models of reality. Between human groups contradictions emerge because people occupying particular localities develop models of their environments based on their specific needs and experiences; these models may be at variance with those of other groups, leading to competition over scarce resources, religious conflicts, and the like. Contradictions constitute the raw material of change, which occurs in the resolution of conflicts and tensions between and among human groups, and between humans and the physical environment.

The real consequences of social action feed back to the constructed social world; that is, people tend to reinforce or change their ideas about the world as a consequence of the objective results of the application of their models of reality. Although norms, values, and ideas tend to change as a result of the objective outcomes of concrete actions, such superstructural elements are not merely epiphenomenal. People share a large number of conventional understandings about the real world, but they participate differentially in the production and application of models of reality. A dynamic tension between the infrastructure (the realm of material production and social relations) and the superstructure (the realm of ideas) characterizes human life. Landscapes are manifestations of that totality; hence they are appropriate objects of anthropological investigation.

As abstractions, landscapes cannot be studied directly. The concept of scale activates both human-environmental relations and our study of those relations. just as specific models of reality are conceived, negotiated among human groups, and applied at specific scales, so are our investigations of landscapes undertaken-and the results of our studies applied-at specific spatial and temporal scales (Marquardt 1985:69-70). When we choose a particular scale during one moment of our analysis, we do so because at that effective scale we can comprehend patterns: functional centers and the connections between them. A region is a unit that we recognize at a certain scale in its distinctiveness from and interrelations with other such units, both spatially and temporally (Crumley 1979:164-165).

Of course our recognition of pattern and distinctiveness at one scale constitutes an individuation-an abstracting or bracketing of a part of the world from its context for purposes of study. The act of individuating reifies the abstraction, obliging us to analyze the apparent patterns in ways that reveal their relations with other patterns at that spatial and temporal scale and others. Furthermore, because we individuate in a particular way due in part to our own political, economic, or other biases, we must also be dubious toward our own abstractions, however obvious they may seem initially. This is the essence of our method, a critical analysis and exposition of the relations among and between various constellations of human-environmental interaction.

A Dynamic Concept of "Region"

 To summarize thus far, we have investigated landscapes in southern Burgundy at multiple spatial and temporal scales in an explicitly critical manner, with the ultimate goal of explaining human action. However, as scientists, and in particular as archaeologists, we do not deal directly with landscapes, but with their material residues. We call these landscape signatures, by which we mean the material imprints left on the earth's surface by particular constellations of human groups. A landscape signature is the concrete, recognizable result of the resolution of contradictions that have arisen in the interactions of people with their environments.

Two types of organizational structures determine landscape. Sociohistoricalstructures include class, inheritance, descent, political liaisons and interest groups, defense, trade, and laws, along with the administrative units through which people draft and enforce them-in short, sociohistorical structures are political, legal, and economic. Physical structures, although not without societal meaning, are those that nonetheless are relatively independent of human control, such as climate, topography, and geology. In our view the sociohistorical and physical structures and their interpretations (aesthetic, symbolic, religious, ideological) are determinative and mutually definitive of landscape. Change in the order of importance of certain structures (and ultimately their modification or replacement) is not only "a function of adaptation to physical environmental challenges, but also is a function of the resolution of conflicting and contradictory interpretations of the meaning of sociohistorical structures" (Marquardt 1985:67-68). For example, when considering questions of defense in the history of the research area, relief (elevation) can be seen to have been more important during the Iron Age, when the inhabitants relied on hillforts, than during the Pax Romana, when hillforts were abandoned for romanized cities and settlements at lower elevations, military threat shifted to a supraregional boundary, and an improved military and administrative road network facilitated import and export trade.

The La Ta Tene period (ca. 600 B.C. to the Roman conquest, 58-52 B.C.) is the first period in Burgundian history for which we find that the variety and quality of information are sufficient to warrant our construction of a landscape signature. Although data from a variety of sources have been collected for a period of two thousand years, certain lacunae in the available information prohibit equivalently well-documented signatures throughout the study interval. In a sense, we have stratified temporally, rather than spatially. However, instead of a random selection of equivalent time slices, availability of data and the integrity of landscape signatures have dictated the selection of particular time intervals for closer examination, and each interval selected has been examined at a variety of spatial scales. At each temporal scale certain spatial boundaries coincide; others do not. It is in this aspect of our research strategy that we depart from many regional analysts.

Some researchers initially draw arbitrary boundaries around a study area of interest (e.g., MacNeish 1964; Willey 1953). Others view boundaries as areas of 11 non-centeredness," as in the study of the distribution of certain artifact types, such as coins (Hodder and Orton 1976:98-197). For hierarchical marketing models, such as the central place model, boundaries are seen as likely places for the emergence of secondary centers because of their placement between the service areas of relatively large centers (Lbsch 1954; Smith 1976).

For us the dual nature of boundaries is of primary concern. Boundaries are dual in that they are artificial divisions of the physical landscape; by virtue of their continuity, they effect discontinuity. But beyond this conception of boundary as barrier or as dividing line, boundaries themselves are worthy of study because they often serve simultaneously as both edges and centers within the landscape under investigation. For example, the quantity of information and/or goods moving along a boundary may often be significantly greater than the quantity moving across that boundary. From the standpoint of the groups divided by the boundary, that boundary is an edge, a periphery. From the point of view of participants in commerce and communication, the boundary is in fact an important kind of functional center. An area peripheral to two (perhaps antagonistic) groups is also a neutral territory, a no-man's-land that has the potential to serve as a meeting ground (a functional center) for commercial and social activities between the groups divided by it, and for others passing through.

We consider boundaries to be of substantive interest because of their inherent duality, from the point of view both of the researcher and of the societies under study. In general we eschew drawing arbitrary boundaries around an area of interest that are intended to last for the duration of the study. Instead we have approached a research area at a number of different scales, observing the multiplicity of (not necessarily coincident) boundaries around functional centers on the one hand, and the multiple, and sometimes shifting, roles played by boundaries within societies on the other.

Of course, on a practical level, some initial, tentative areal delineation is necessary before a study of any region can begin. That is, an initial scale must be specified. We have stated above that our intention has been to investigate an area that is heterogeneous, has ample data for at least some time periods, and possesses some integrity of archaeological residues. How, then, does one begin investigating such an area multitemporally and at multiple spatial scales? Our answer to this problem, at least for this particular study area, has been to take administrative and political boundaries as tentative first approximations of regional relations, followed always by further investigations aimed at revealing other relations either spatially coinciding with or cross-cutting the administrative and political relations noted in the first phase of research. In this way we approach a richer understanding of the dynamics of the human landscape, and of the processes and human-environmental relations through time.

In sum, the concept of region itself must be dynamic. Homogeneity and connectivity are perceived by us, the analysts, only at particular spatial and temporal scales, e.g., "the territory of the Aedui and their client states in the one-hundred-year interval just before the Roman conquest, 58-52 B.C.," or "the area encompassed by the pagus Augustodunensis during the reign of Chlothar 1, ca. A.D. 555-561." Any area of the earth may be termed a "region" for purposes of the study of human-environmental relations, so long as one can recognize within it demonstrable homogeneity. But such a region is inadequately conceptualized in the sense that both its temporal relations (connections with the past and future) and spatial relations (connections with other areas at the same scale and at larger and smaller scales) are unspecified. This deficiency, prevalent in spatial approaches ranging from traditional culture area studies to modern regional marketing analyses, can be rectified, we believe, by utilizing a multiscalar (hence, multiregional) and multitemporal analytical strategy.

In each of the following chapters, an aspect of the part of the world that we informally call "southern Burgundy" is characterized or analyzed. We hope that in the aggregate these chapters convey a multifaceted understanding of the area that is broader and richer than that which could be obtained by employing a less dynamic regional concept.

Regional Dynamics in Burgundy
 

Throughout the past two millennia the centers of commerce, power, and prestige in what is now France have moved steadily northward, from Provence

(Marseilles, Lyon), through Burgundy (Autun and Cluny, Beaune and Dijon), to Paris (see Figure 1). The northward movement of important cities is closely tied to the movement of the commercial and military frontiers between Mediterranean and Celtic peoples on the one hand, and Celtic and Germanic peoples on the other. Those southern (Mediterranean) and eastern (Germanic) pressures have been reenacted in recent years, as in the battle for Alsace-Lorraine in World War I and the occupation of France by the Germans during World War 11. In modern history the German frontier has proven the most variable, but in ancient times the southern boundary was equally unstable. Today Mediterranean contacts are predominantly economic and cultural (in the sense of architecture, cuisine, viticulture) rather than administrative and military, as they were in Roman times. Despite numerous incursions from both the east and south over the past two thousand years, the administrative configurations of contemporary France reflect to an astonishing degree an essentially Celtic regionality-more the result of physical and sociohistorical than genetic continuity.

Although the administrative pattern of France may be characterized as a nested and hierarchical organizational structure (a type of structure in which, on the basis of certain factors, some elements are subordinate to others and may be ranked), one must bear in mind that the administrative template has been placed over a landscape in which a great number of distinctions of all sorts-linguistic, topographic, climatic, historical, commercial-might reasonably be made. The organizational structure of the landscape as a whole is heterarchical, that is, it possesses "the potential of being unranked (relative to other elements) or ranked in a number of ways, depending on systemic requirements" (Crumley 1979:144). Administrative structure is but one of an infinite variety of structures that might be derived from combinations of elements within a system.

For example, the concept of "region" as concerns wine may give Burgundy a configuration widely accepted and appreciated, yet there is little viticulture in three of the five departments that today comprise Burgundy. Another example is the Morvan, a mountainous area in western Burgundy. It is geologically related to the Massif Central and retains many notable features-patois, traditional songs and dress, etc. -that distinguish it from Burgundy as a whole. The inhabitants of the area think of themselves as Burgundians of a special sort; the term Bourgogne-Morvan reflects local pride in both traditions, and pinpoints for the listener or reader the particular part of Burgundy under discussion. The Morvan is quite specifically designated as a region on the basis of ecology by the French government, which has made it a parc naturel regional, but the government considers it an administrative part of Burgundy as well.

Clearly there is no particular size or raison d'etre a region must have, nor can any place on the face of the earth be considered to be a part of or to comprise only a single region. The point is that the term region, to be meaningful, must be identified contextually. Boundaries of the salient characteristics of any area (e.g., vegetation and topography, patois, administration and jurisdiction, traditional music and dress) crosscut one another such that no unified, nested, hierarchical whole with a single set of characteristics emerges. To use the term region unambiguously one must identify the characteristics that unify a part of the earth's surface (keeping in mind that the choice of other characteristics would dictate other configurations) and relate those characteristics to others and to larger cultural systems.

Administrative boundaries are perhaps the source of the richest information, and they may be the most thoughtfully drawn of all types of boundaries, reflecting many different factors (e.g., history, aesthetics, defense, resources, etc.) that have been consciously weighed and ranked in importance. Yet those who determine the administrative unit set the stage for its negation by selecting certain unifying characteristics of a region and disregarding differences, only to enshrine, at a subregional level, those very disharmonies. From the point of view of the vested interests of those who control the larger administrative unit, such subregional differences lead at best to a balanced symbiotic relationship within the larger polity; at worst, conflict destroys the overarching administrative unit. Power and dominance are measured by the strategic ability of individuals or groups to mediate internal conflicts while maintaining a united front at a broader scale with neighboring polities. This is of course the essence of both government in general and of the state in particular, both of which function to blur differences and to promote unity.

We concentrated our initial research efforts toward learning how administrative boundaries change. This was appropriate for two reasons. First, the boundaries themselves are often recorded, even though records of the decisionmaking process are generally lost. Second, shifts in boundaries signal shifts in the order of priorities and thus reveal changing conceptions of environment. Thus, by studying the relations that influence structural change on one continuously observable but fluctuating parameter (administrative boundaries), one can begin to study the dynamics of a region. A recognizable region emerges when there is consensus both about what characteristics are important and about their concomitant spatial representations. When we define a region, we do so because we can comprehend, identify, and select it as a unit in its relationships with other units; thus the use of the term region is always with respect to a certain perceptual size. It is defined at a scale at which the researchers believe they can distinguish pattern. To find an appropriate scale of analysis one must search for (1) a measure of the connectivity (at different scales) of the area under consideration with contiguous areas, and (2) areas that seem to exhibit a high degree of overlap of a variety of boundaries. Viewed in this way, a region never has the same meaning, nor does it occupy the same boundaries, throughout its history. Region, defined spatially and temporally, is a system, but the system is not confined to the limits of an administrative or political region. By region we mean a spatial configuration at a scale at which certain phenomena exhibit recognizable areal distribution. In France, regions have historically been seats of power and influence, representing impressive consensus but frequently failing to expand that consensus to a broader scale. This is an important and recurrent theme in the history of France, and a cornerstone to the understanding of the emergence of the French state.

Our concept of region requires that recognition of boundaries, as well as of the functions of centers, must remain flexible over both space and time if the investigator is to grasp the manner in which the region functions and changes. In other words, the spatial and temporal relations are part of the definition of a region.

Any act of bounding a system for analytical purposes limits what one can observe of the operation of that system. In our research we devised a practical solution to this classic problem in the following manner. We ini ' tially identified a portion of the earth's surface by reference to the administrative configuration for which we first had documentation. We then explored the relationship of that administrative- unit to others around it and to a variety of other parameters, among them geology, soils, topography, and climate. Some of these parameters vary over the two-thousand-year span under scrutiny (e.g., climate) and others do not (e.g., geology). All are of concern in solutions to questions of defense, commerce, ethnicity, and the like, and all have definable boundaries. Administrative and physical boundaries are readily retrievable by documentary and archival, archaeological, and natural historical research, and their variability is observable. For some periods the data have allowed us to derive information on other sorts of boundaries, e.g., linguistic, ethnic, commercial, religious. We intentionally did not bound the research area in advance, and its temporal definition has been dictated by the presence of documentary and other evidence of administrative and natural-historical boundaries. For example, the first century B.C. is the first period for which administrative boundaries are preserved for our scrutiny; at that time the area was the territory of the Celtic Aedui. In the later Middle Ages, when the dukes of Burgundy held sway, the area had a somewhat different administrative configuration than it did in the Iron Age, or than it does today. Tracing the successive changes in boundaries greatly enhanced our ability to pinpoint issues that most strongly determined the administrative configuration at any given time. Although in some ways administrative boundaries reflect only a temporary solution to conflict over the importance of various issues, which are not always measurable or preserved, they nonetheless record the dominant opinion for the period, however briefly that ranking of priorities may have prevailed. This comparative and diachronic approach is of particular utility in areas such as Burgundy, where successive cultures have held hegemony over roughly the same territory. Assuredly, the most consistently important issues in administrative boundary decision-making are at base political and economic.

Understanding the relationship between center and periphery is equally essential. What constitutes boundary and center administratively? A boundary that is a river not only divides two territories and serves as a limit to them both, but centralizes interaction between them and in turn links both territories to areas up- and downstream. In similar fashion, cities may aggregate, integrate, and mediate varieties of custom and opinion, serving a function also served by some boundary areas. Some centers and some boundaries are sparsely populated, yet charged with meaning, e.g., "no-man's land," "ceremonial center"; some teem with human mental and physical activity, e.g., "gateway cities," "markets"; all gather their importance because of the spatially localized coincidence of various scales of activity and thought on the face of the earth.

As with regional analysis generally, an extremely important principle in the study of boundaries and centers is that of scale. What may constitute a center at one scale is a boundary at another. For example, Vichy, a spa and symbol of provincial elegance in east-central France since ancient times, was established as a Roman center of administrative control and also as a center of healing and relaxation; but it was also used as a wedge between the two great, rival Celtic powers, the Arverni and the Aedui, who had in preconquest times enjoyed the greatest power in the east of Gaul and whose territories lay in two major mountainous areas, the Massif Central and the Morvan. Reached easily from the east, Vichy served a similar purpose in World War 11 as the seat of government for German-occupied France. The Massif Central and the Morvan were now strongholds of the Resistance; the Germans wisely knew the risks of being trapped in Paris if this mountainous region, which also has contained since pre-Roman times some of the most important commercial activities and routes in western Europe, were to be regained by the French. Similarly Dijon, the administrative and cultural center of modern-day Burgundy, is situated at the juncture of the c6tes (southeast-facing slopes of the Sa6ne river valley) and the rolling uplands of Champagne, and at the break in terrain between the low country west of the Belfort Gap and the Paris Basin. Dijon's strategic importance as a break-in-bulk point, or gateway city, in both north-south and east-west commerce, and its central location relative to a wide variety of resources, has assured its continuing importance since the time of the dukes of Burgundy (twelfth century). The city of Autun is similarly situated at a more local scale. It would seem, then, that both centers and edges may be functional centers (Crumley 1976:67), a functional center being any place that serves a function or functions not equally available elsewhere, be it border crossing or marketplace. The essential difference between concepts of boundary and center would then turn on questions of scale, context, and perception.

Some places are more consistently chosen as centers-for whatever reasonthan others; some characteristic of a place causes many to recognize, out of an infinite geographic array, the possible advantages of that place over others. Examples are the place on a steep path where most climbers fall short of breath, or the place on a hillside that catches the breeze on a still, hot summer day but is protected from winter winds. Local directions have long been given by reference to such homely places; the farmer's directions, seemingly vague to the traveler, are so only because the traveler is bent on thinking at the broader scale of his journey. He is not accustomed to seeing the familiar landmarks at a more local scale. The traveler considers himself nowhere, between two somewheres; the farmer is in the middle of his somewhere, and his mental map of home territory is dotted with places of note, obvious, so far as he is concerned, to all.

Many such places are given meaning as a result of their daily function in society at some scale or scales. A particularly large tree may shelter from the sun both the farmer on errands between house and field and the traveler between towns. However, such practical concerns may reveal only one of the tree's numerous functions at a variety of scales. If the tree is an oak and the farmer Celtic, the tree is given a certain magical significance as well. If, additionally, it has grown tall and beautiful because its roots benefit from a spring at its base, the farmer and his neighbors are likely to consider the tree and the spring sacred, and activities around the tree may be significantly more spiritual than practical. Suppose that local legend has it that cures for barrenness are effected there, and women come from some distance away, to visit the spot and to dip their breasts in the spring's waters. The power of the place may become more widely known, and travelers may begin to stop there for spiritual reasons, beyond the practical considerations of shade and refreshment. Then suppose that at a later time, others with different political and religious ideas (which are in turn related to differing vested interests and perceptions of the environment) find the story of the power of the tree offensive and the customs paganistic, and seek to Christianize the spot by erecting a cross.

Some such sequence of events forms the history of many places in Burgundy and elsewhere in the world. To assume that there is not a continuity of sacred meaning despite the ostensible claim to the spot by those of one religion or another is to deny the essential centrality and importance of places deemed sacred partly because of their physical characteristics and partly because of the meaning attributed to them by the people for whom they are a portion of the daily, visible landscape. One such spring, at Certenue, in Burgundy, retained this continuity of sacred meaning as late as the end of the nineteenth century.

Similarly, prominent places such as Mont Dardon (506 m above sea level and 360 m above the valley of the Arroux River) have for centuries been held in reverent esteem. Assuredly, Mont Dardon has long served more practical defensive functions: it was first fortified more than two thousand years ago, in the late lron Age, and has been regularly reused since, most recently in World War 11 by the Germans as well as by the Resistance. But its voluptuous contours, the magnificent view it affords, and its high visibility from every direction must have provided local inhabitants a point of inspiration in the distant as well as the more recent past. From this perspective, it is not at all difficult to understand why Mont Dardon has had a succession of temples, chapels, and churches, as well as fortifications, on its summit, and why the people from the three contemporary communes that touch near its highest point still attend fetes champetres (rural festivals) there, where they erected three monumental concrete crosses. (Similar wooden crosses marked the summit in earlier centuries).

Administratively speaking, for the people of the communes of Uxeau, Ste.Radegonde, and Issy-I'Eveque, Mont Dardon marks a boundary, an edge. It is also-and has long been-a center as well, for defense, inspiration, and social gatherings. During peaceful times its sacred functions would have been more obvious; during times when local defense was critical, its name would have been a rallying cry for both attacker and attacked.

The intentional destruction of at least one of the architectural manifestations of its sacredness, a tenth-century church that seems not to have stood more than perhaps one hundred years, illustrates the lightning-rod effect of a holy place and the essential relationship of politics and religion in geographical space. The incorporation of one group's sacred space into that of another's by the political redefinition of boundaries is devastating, but commonplace. A striking contemporary example is the fluctuation of political boundaries within the city of Jerusalem.

Conclusion
 

The concept of region, to be meaningful, must be defined both temporally and spatially. Its spatial definition is in turn based on the interrelated concepts of scale, organizational structure, and perception. An important aspect of scale is the notion of effective scale-the scale at which certain features form a recognizably homogeneous unit. Within any apparent spatial homogeneity there exist other, heterogeneous features with the potential to render that homogeneity irrelevant. The importance, in any given period, of certain features turns on both the internal dynamics of the regional administrative and political system and its external relationships. However useful it may seem to bound, or close, a system for purposes of studying it, all cultural systems are in fact open to events and decisions at a variety of scales. Our approach has been to delineate a region initially in a somewhat arbitrary fashion (that is, to choose some existing boundaries for orientation at the beginning), fully understanding that these arbitrary limits will be qualified, negated, and superseded as study proceeds and we become able to recognize the sociohistorical contexts in which people have made decisions to rank certain issues over others in importance.

Clearly, when also considering the passage of time, one can expect changes in the ranking of certain priorities as conditions are altered. Thus, over time, regional boundaries are subject to change. We concentrate our study not on a region per se, but on the choice of elements that define it, the relative ranking of those elements at given times, and changes in ranking through time. Such changes in ranking are most easily measured by examining changes in boundaries and in the functions and relations of boundaries and centers. We select certain elements from a great variety of characteristics that constitute any portion of the earth's surface, but we do so no more than did people in the past who drew and redrew administrative, hierarchical lines of demarcation on the heterarchical face of nature. Our goal is to introduce an explicitly critical method of pattern recognition to the spatial study of human social formations. The practical results provide its test and its justification.

Acknowledgments
 

A number of people read earlier drafts of this chapter and offered helpful constructive criticisms. After careful consideration, we have not followed all of their advice, but their comments have led to many refinements in our use of terms and caused us to think carefully through the logic of our arguments. Especially helpful were Jeffrey Boyer, Veletta Canouts, Robert E. Daniels, Stanton W. Green, John Gulick, Janet E. Levy, Ellen Messer, Dan Raffalovich, Prudence M. Rice, M. Estellie
Smith, Richard A. Watson, Robert J. Wenke, Dorothy Davis Wills, William E. Woodcock, and M.Alison Wylie.

Note
 

1. The concept of scale has been used in numerous ways in anthropology. See Marquardt (1985:69-70) for a review of some of these uses. Confusion can result when the modifiers "large" and "small" are applied to the term. One can speak of a "large-scale survey," meaning that a large area is to be covered, but in cartography a "large-scale map" is one that represents a small amount of territory; for example, an aerial photograph or map of France is said to be at a lar@ger scale than a map of Europe, even though the latter represents the larger area. To avoid such confusion, in this book we use the adjective "broad" when we wish to imply that more area is included-that is, "broad scale" rather than "large scale." We also use the terminology introduced into anthropology by Watson and Graves (1966:971) and followed by Clarke (1971:11; see also Hall 1944; Watson 1972) when comparing human activity at various scales: "micro-scale" contains less area than "macroscale," for example. We do not use "scale" to refer to the size of populations or to the relative degree of interaction (intensity of social relations), a common usage among sociologists and social anthropologists.
 
 
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