Skomer today exemplifies the interactions between
people and place, which are visible in settlement systems and
pattern ways in which humans use the surface of the Earth. Its
prehistoric families may be viewed in relation to the large annual
nomadic circuits which became more compact with the emergence of
diversified foraging, and people established winter camps that they
then occupied for greater and greater numbers of months until the
first permanent hamlets were born.
From this beginning Skomer is part of
the hierarchical settlement systems which emerged in several
independent locations in Afro-eurasia and the Americas. Cities grew
along with states and empires. Region settlement systems became
linked in interaction with other distant regions and eventually
form the single global system of cities in which we now live.
Large cities will soon contain over half of the
human population of the Earth. Thus have we gone in only a blink of
time from nomadic hunter-gatherers to denizens of huge warrens that
blanket the surface of our planet. The processes of settlement-
building and the resource consumption of cities have been major
motors of social change and world history .
The source material used in landscape
investigation are aerial photographs, historic documents, maps,
etc. Environmental archaeology, intertidal and wetland
archaeology, place- name evidence and charters, buildings, and
recording of standing buildings also provide important
evidence.
Environmental evidence can be used to explore the
way changing traditions of agricultural practice, tenure and
settlement have shaped the landscape. Food-producing landscapes and
their settlement can be deduced from topographical evidence as
can landscapes of administration, systems of defence,
landscapes of lordship, communications networks, industrial
exploitation, ‘New Age’ landscapes, contested
landscapes, and landscapes of pleasure and recreation. Ritual
and cognitive landscapes may be discerned in prehistoric
contexts.
Skomer is a microcosm in which all of these
concepts can be illustrated.