This publication is the second of the Practicing Landscape Field Guides: a series of publications emerging from a programme of online seminars devised by GSA's Reading Landscape group. The seminar series ran during academic year 2021-22, entitled 'Practicing Landscape: Landscapes of Energy and Extraction'.

Field Guide No. 2, 'Landscapes of Energy and Extraction: Landscape as Archive', has been developed from the presentations and responses given in the original seminar by Dr Gina Wall (GSA-Forres campus), Dr Alex Hale (Historic Environment Scotland) and the respondent to their research, Michael Mersinis (GSA-Fine Art Photography).
The resulting publication reflects the subsequent expansion and consolidation of their ideas. These essays follow up on the topics addressed in both the 'Practicing Landscape: Land, Histories and Transformation' online symposium (2020) and the 2021-22 seminars: of landscape as a palimpsest.

In the Foreword, Susan Brind provides the context for Wall, Hale's consideration of this idea, teasing out how, in their illustrated essay, 'Landscape as Archive', they pay careful attention to the ethics of excavation; of how we experience bereavement in life in relation to what remains - in this world and beyond. And in his response, Michael Mersinis prompts us to think below the material surface to reawaken our poetic and imaginal ways of thinking about death.