Landscape, Materiality and Heritage: An Object Biography

Exploring the changing stories, meanings, locations, uses and feelings of the sculpture, Tim Edensor adopts a broad temporal frame across twelve centuries that moves away from a periodisation that solely considers its original meanings and uses. This book focuses on a single artefact, the Barochan Cross, a ninth century stone sculpture in Renfrewshire, Scotland. Exploring the changing stories, meanings, locations, uses and feelings of the sculpture, Tim Edensor adopts a broad temporal frame across twelve centuries that moves away from a periodisation that solely considers its original meanings and uses. Narrating the shifting ways in which the Barochan Cross has been moved, utilised, cared for, interpreted, encountered, sensed, copied and appropriated allows for a sophisticated yet highly accessible discussion about its changing relationships with the physical and conceptual landscapes in which it has been situated. This book thus expands the ways in which landscape might be conceptualised, revealing how artefacts can inform future critical thinking about heritage and bringing an important contribution to theories about material culture and landscape. Tim Edensor is Professor of Social and Cultural Geography at the Institute of Place Management, Manchester Metropolitan University.