3.7: Cultural Landscapes

As noted above, in the English-speaking world, regrettably, the term 'site' tends to be rather vaguely used in archaeology. In the previous section, I showed the example of a deserted medieval village earthworks. Within that area, archaeologists may term just part of the complex (manor house, mill, church and churchyard), or the whole earthwork complex may be considered as such. But then, the earthworks of the field system (and the ploughed out earthworks of the field system) stretching out around it may also be argued to be part of that settlement complex, so therefore part of the site. In reality, 'sites' function as part of a wider group of loci interconnected by activities and social behaviour. So the medieval village had forest beyond its fields - in which wood was felled, firewood collected, charcoal burnt, the pigs were led out to feed and so on. Beyond them were other settlement units with which there was also interaction (exchange, intermarriage, etc).

It is obvious from this that however one wants to define the term, 'sites' do not exist in isolation from their environment. Neither is that environment free of effects from the fact that the area is inhabited and exploited by humans. The cumulative effects of various cultural processes that have occurred through time will leave a human imprint on the landscape, which represents an amalgam of different processes operating over disparate timescales. The removal of trees to create arable land, sometimes leading to changes in the soil structure there and causing soil erosion by runoff and wind erosion. Earthmoving and settlement may introduce long-term changes in the environment. The grazing of meadows and the forest floor by domestic animals, the hunting of wild animals and gathering of food from the areas around a settlement will affect the environment of that zone. The pollution of the environment with the products of human activities will affect the area. These changes will persist in the landscape at least for the lifetime of the community involved, or the exploitation may be so damaging that the effects last for many centuries.

From about the 1920s, the view has come to prevail that over much of the surface of the inhabited world human culture has to a greater or lesser degree been an agent in the shaping of the landscape.   The symbiosis between humans and the natural environment that supports a certain lifestyle is expressed in the term 'cultural landscape' (first used [Kulturlandschaft] by the geographer Otto Schlüter in the early 20th century to denote a landscape created by human culture). The term refers to the landscapes themselves that are the combined works of nature and of man. This may refer to 'a landscape designed and created intentionally by man' or to 'organically evolved landscape, that may be a 'relict (or fossil) landscape' or a 'continuing landscape' that is an 'associative cultural landscape' (UNESCO 2012) The landscape itself is, therefore, an archaeological record of the factors that have shaped it. The landscape is in fact "an inscribed surface, akin to a map or a text, from which cultural meaning and social forms can simply be read" (World Heritage Centre, 'World Heritage Conventions Operational Guidelines 2006)

The cultural landscape is the subject of the broad discipline of 'landscape archaeology'. This is the study of archaeological remains (sites, and site complexes, artefact scatters) in terms of their wider spatial and chronological relationships and development through past human interaction.

Cultural landscapes formed by erasure and replacement (overwriting)
of elements of earlier manifestations ( Damian Grady/Historic England)

 Easby Moor North York Moors (Mick Garratt)

Apollonia (Mallakastra Regional Archaeological Project, Albania)

Lenborough cultural landscape from ground level

Lenborough cultural landscape

Clipston village - cultural landscape 

In addition to the physical aspects of past landscapes – in terms of both environmental and human processes – a landscape is explicitly or implicitly associated with layers of human meaning and value. The recognition of this has led to conservation schemes to protect the values implicit in selected landscapes and areas of landscape.

Bibliography:
UNESCO (2012) Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention , UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Paris.

Tamara Kroftova comments:
"The recognition that the human landcape of the areas is not a stable permanent entity is an important one, given the significance that a sense of place and the landscapes in which we lead our lives is so important in defining our self-image and relationship with the world around us. We must therefore recognise that the landscapes of the past fulfilled a similar role as the dynamic backdrop to people's lives, and it is the task of our study of the past to take the many strands of evidence and put the sites and assemblages of material that we find, study and record into that broader environment. It would be irresponsible, and doing a great disservice to the other inhabitants of these landscapes, to simply devastate sites (for example by collecting artefacts away)  without providing the mitigating evidence that allows the cultural landscapes to be reconstructed in all their richness".