our definition of landscape
Landscape is a controversial term with multifarious definitions and uses in different disciplines and different stages of its development, ranging from a term referring to an areal category or human traces in the environment to a purely mental image of physical environment (Jones 2003; Olwig 1996; Keisteri 1990 etc) In line with the developments of human geography from the second part of 1980ies (the so-called cultural turn in geography), but nevertheless avoiding the exaggeration of some humanistically oriented scholars who see landscape as a purely mental image, we consider landscape as not a mere conglomerate of physical land forms but a holistic phenomenon where both the material aspects of the surrounding natural environment and the mental aspects of a given culture are equally manifested. Landscape is an interface between nature and culture (Palang, Fry 2003), embodying the circular relationship between humans as a cultural animal and its natural living environment.
Born into certain climatic and geographical conditions, every culture is naturally limited in its developmental possibilities by available resources and possible sustenance activities, and that in turn influences the mental structure of the culture. On the other hand, while modifying its surroundings, human cultures depart from their value systems, fashioning the surroundings according to their beliefs of what is good and acceptable, what/who should be included or excluded etc. Therefore, every social (and economic) formation creates its own landscape (Cosgrove 1984/1998). Landscape features and the way how they are represented can thus give us considerable information about the power relations, legal system, race and gender issues etc as shown by research in both human geography (Blomely 2001; Duncan, Ley 1994; Gregory, Walford 1989; Peil, Jones 2005; Mitchell 2003, Mitchell 1994 etc) and archaeology (Gero, Conkey 1991, Thomas 1991, Nash 1997) Moreover, both on the individual and collective level landscape has an immense emotional and identity value for its inhabitants that is beyond its physical dimension (Tuan 1974; Relph 1976), up to the point where landscape representations have become one of the main tools for fostering national identity (Setten, Semb, Torvik 1999; Sooväli, Palang, Külvik 2003; Larsen 1999; Cosgrove, D 1988 and others). Landscape can also function as a tool for cultural memory where memorable events are recorded (Schama 1995; Lowenthal 1985; Lynch 1972; Sörlin 1999; Stewart, Strathern 2003) For its inhabitants landscape is an experiential space, the location of their everyday activities, where decisions for altering environment can be taken out of habit, custom or aesthetical reasons that do not necessarily coincide with the logic of experts or outsiders (Ingold 2000; Palang, Fry 2003; Olwig 2004; Coerterier 2002). Thus any successful analysis of human impact on the natural environment has to take into account both the material/visual and immaterial/perceivable aspects of landscape (Keisteri 1990, Fig.1.), the functions and the practices performed in a landscape (Fig.2) but also the general cultural context, which endows everything with meaning (Widgren 2004).
Changes in culture can be either gradual or explosive (Lotman 2001) and the same holds true for landscape: landscape structures can change gradually with each component changing in its own pace, or the change processes in different components can coincide and be of a greater magnitude, disrupting the existent landscape structures and creating a qualitatively new landscape (Antrop 1998). Since each cultural formation fashions the landscape according to its own beliefs and needs, landscape can be described as the gsum of erasures, accretions, anomalies and redundancies over timeh (Palang et al 2004). Present-day landscape contains elements and traces from different historical periods and different cultural formations (Vervloet 1986; Fig.3), which might not have the same meanings and functions as they did originally. The methodology of landscape archaeology consists namely of greadingh these traces and reconstructing the social system behind them (Aston 1995, Jochim 1998, Kobayashi 2004, Verhart 2000, Wagstaff 1987).
Different periods of time have created different layers in landscape. In our view there are two revolutionary leaps in landscape history that can be considered marker layers in landscape: Neolithisation and Modernisation. (Fig.4)