Teaching Landscapes - Theory or Practice?: Training Archaeology Students in Britain.

This paper outlines the problems of teaching landscape archaeology to Master's Degree students in Britain. The M.A. in Landscape Archaeology trains postgraduate students to a high professional level primarily for fieldwork in the profession, but it is firmly embedded within an academic base. There is much in the literature of how we perceive, understand and interpret landscapes both from a philosophical and theoretical viewpoint, but these theories have to be balanced with the essential practical elements of fieldwork. This paper will explore the balance that needs to be reached between teaching the theoretical aspects of landscapes with the practical problems that professional archaeologists will encounter in their working lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]