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The juxtaposition of the terms landscape and memory in landscape studies
appears in various contexts and approaches. While the definition of the former
is given great attention, also in response to the requirements laid down in leg-
islation (Council of Europe, 2000), the use of the latter is rather intuitive and
its unequivocal definition and application in landscape studies requires us to con-
sider not only the landscape aspects but also the philosophical (Lothian, 1999) or
environmental-psychological aspects (Ohta, 2001) of the issue.
As outlined in the previous section, specific research issues included in the con-
cept of landscape memory have largely been concerned with the landscape as a
narrative medium, where individual landscape features (sites, monuments) or the
landscape's overall design are interpreted iconographically (cf. Cosgrove & Daniels,
1988), as symbols of events (e.g. Charlesworth, 1994) or as representations of power
(Mitchell, 2002). Another topic to be dealt with in the perception of the landscape
and its symbolic context is the relationship between landscape as a motif and art as
a result (Andrews, 1999; Sandberg & Marsh, 2008). However, landscape memory,
interpreted through the prism of the social sciences, cannot be understood only as
the result of human activity having an effect on the landscape and our subsequent
perception of the landscape. Rather, perception is a means of changing our think-
ing that can, in turn, change the landscape and impart to it a specific sense of place
(Tuan, 1974; Urry, 1992; Allen, 1999). Similarly, in the classical work by Schama
(1995), the whole cycle returns to the landscape or its natural foundations, which
can become the starting point for human activity in the landscape. The ideal cre-
ated through our perception of the landscape can then become the essence of our
decision-making.
In contrast to this socially constructed approach, we can outline another
approach, one that accentuates the landscape as a tangible product of historical pro-
cesses resulting in unique physical transformations of the environment and new
features in it. However, even these objects can have their abstract value for the
sense of place. In this approach, the concept of memory is replaced by the more
straightforward term history and the research methodology is based on geography,
environmental studies and archaeology. The expansion of landscape historiogra-
phy and landscape archaeology is primarily thanks to the British school. Classical
works include Hoskins (1955); numerous contributions were later published in
Landscape History (e.g. Hook, 2000). The natural environment and the ecolog-
ical/environmental context in the study of historical societies were discussed by
several authors (e.g. Butzer, 1964; Renfrew, 1983; Gojda, 2000).
There are certain differences between the two approaches. The former chiefly,
though not solely, emphasises the current sociocultural interpretation of the past
landscape, while the latter tries to reconstruct it. Despite these differences, how-
ever, both approaches focus primarily on the past landscape and for this reason
they cannot be readily applied in landscape planning and the development of
futurescapes (Antrop, 2005). Therefore, the concept of landscape memory needs to
be approached in a different way, which hinges not on the anticipation of landscape
content and its interpretation but on an analysis of the form - landscape components,
i.e. what exists a priori before our interpretation (cf. Ohta, 2001).
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