Cultural Landscape

Early Development of Cultural Landscapes

The term landscape developed primarily from two words that display similarities and differences with one another. The Old English word landscaef referred to a clearing of forested land by humans or, to be more precise, the occupation or control of the “wilderness.” This term provides geographers with the basis for studying the human-modified environment, as well as the interaction of humans with the land. The second term, landschap, comes from the Dutch and is associated with the appearance of the land. This latter term was primarily linked to visual art, especially paintings. This allows for a certain “reading” of the landscape.

In geography, the concept of the cultural landscape has antecedents in the research and philosophies of French and German geographers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The German geographer Otto Schlüter, who is often credited with coining the term cultural landscape, held the landscape itself as the centerpiece for all geographers. The various forms and spatial arrangements create a bridge between physical geography and human geography, as the landscape itself is an object that both sides of the geographic dichotomy focus much attention on.

However, Schlüter's approach to the study of landscape geography, or more precisely landscape morphology, focused only on the visible landscape and therefore did not dwell entirely on the meanings and symbolism behind the landscape. In other words, Earth should be studied from a bird's eye view, where the roads, buildings, gardens, oceans, and forests create a visible image that is the focal point for geographical study. Others, however, felt that this limited focus on the visible landscape detracted from the pursuit of deeper meanings that could be discovered in the cultural landscape.

It is also worth noting that the German school of geography is credited with developing yet a third meaning for landscape associated with the German word landschaft. This term deals primarily with forms of landscape in a particular area. To the Germans, landscape studies were synonymous with regional studies.

Another aspect of the cultural landscape was the marriage of social and physical characteristics. The French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blache held that the natural landscape and the human landscape should be viewed as inseparable. To Vidal, every cultural group adapts to its natural environment in its own way and creates a unique region. A result of this adaptation is the formation of the cultural landscape, which is a reaction to the natural landscape. This process amalgamates two seemingly opposite ideas—society and nature—into one observable phenomenon, one that Vidal believed should be the focal point of geographic study.

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