Holistic
Perspective of
the European
Landscape
Convention
Intensive social and economic processes and globalisation
accelerate transformation of the landscape, making it more
uniform.
The European Landscape Convention integrates concerns
about the loss of landscape values and other qualities that
are very important for individuals and society as a whole.
(Ministry for the Environment and Planning, Republic of Slovenia,
http://www.arhiv.mop.gov.si/fileadmin/mop.gov.si/pageuploads/publikacije
/drugo/en/eek_izvajanje_v_sloveniji_ang.pdf)
LANDSCAPE IS A LIVING
PROCESS.
Landscape never is static,
it always has changed,
does change and
will change.
LANDSCAPE DOES NOT ONLY EXIST IN THREE
DIMENSIONS,
but in four - and the fourth dimension, time, is at
least as important as geographic, morphological
or climatic aspects. In fact, all these aspects
change in time as well.
Human beings have shaped and changed the
landscape they live in.
BUT MAN DOES NOT ONLY
CHANGE LANDSCAPE,
intentionally or unintentionally, but
man also shapes the landscape in
his mind and around his mind.
The way people think, the things
people believe in, have a crucial
influence on how people treat the
landscape, how they form it.
AS LANDSCAPE
IS A PURELY
HUMAN
CONCEPT,
the way how we
perceive the
landscape is an
important part of
this landscape.
THE MENTAL LANDSCAPE: the landscape in the mind of people,
as a result of the history of the landscape and the actual state of
the people living in the landscape,
is not only crucial for
understanding the landscape and how it emerged, but
as well for planning the future development, for
managing the change and the process of change.
(Pathways to Cultural Landscapes, Culture 2000 Project; http://www.pcl-eu.de/project/landscape/index.php)
PREAMBLE
The member States of the Council of Europe signatory hereto.
-Concerned to achieve sustainable development based on a balanced and
harmonious relationship between social needs, economic activity and the
environment;
-Noting that the landscape has an important public interest role in the cultural,
ecological, environmental and social fields, and constitutes a resource favourable to
economic activity and whose protection, management and planning can contribute to
job creation;
-Aware that the landscape contributes to the formation of local cultures and that it
is a basic component of the European natural and cultural heritage, contributing to
human well-being and consolidation of the European identity;
Acknowledging that the landscape is an important part of the quality of life
for people everywhere: in urban areas and in the countryside, in degraded
areas as well as in areas of high quality, in areas recognised as being of
outstanding beauty as well as everyday areas;
Noting that developments in agriculture, forestry, industrial and mineral
production techniques and in regional planning, town planning, transport,
infrastructure, tourism and recreation and, at a more general level, changes
in the world economy are in many cases accelerating the transformation of
landscapes;...
...
Believing that the landscape is a key element of individual and social wellbeing and that its protection, management and planning entail rights and
responsibilities for everyone;
Acknowledging that the quality and diversity of European landscapes
constitute a common resource, and that it is important to co-operate
towards its protection, management and planning;
Article 1 Definitions
For the purposes of the Convention:
-"Landscape" means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is
the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors;
-"Landscape policy" means an expression by the competent public
authorities of general principles, strategies and guidelines that permit the
taking of specific measures aimed at the protection, management and
planning of landscapes;
-...
-"Landscape protection" means actions to conserve and maintain the
significant or characteristic features of a landscape, justified by
its heritage value derived from its natural configuration and/or from human
activity;
-...
-"Landscape planning" means strong forward-looking action to enhance,
restore or create landscapes.
Article 5 General measures
Each Party undertakes:
-to recognise landscapes in law as an essential component of peoples
surroundings, an expression of the diversity of their shared cultural and
natural heritage, and a foundation of their identity;
-...
-to establish procedures for the participation of the general public, local and
regional authorities, and other parties with an interest in the definition and
implementation of the landscape policies mentioned in paragraph b above;
-to integrate landscape into its regional and town planning policies and in its
cultural, environmental, agricultural, social and economic policies, as well as
in any other policies with possible direct or indirect impact on landscape.
Article 6 Specific measures
A
Awareness-raising
Each Party undertakes to increase awareness among the civil society,
private organisations, and public authorities of the value of landscapes, their
role and changes to them.
B
Training and education
Each Party undertakes to promote:
-training for specialists in landscape appraisal and operations;
-multidisciplinary training programmes in landscape policy, protection,
management and planning, for professionals in the private and public sectors
and for associations concerned;
-school and university courses which, in the relevant subject areas, address
the values attaching to landscapes and the issues raised by their protection,
management and planning.
C
Identification and assessment
With the active participation of the interested parties, ..., and with a view
to improving knowledge of its landscapes, each Party undertakes:
-to identify its own landscapes throughout its territory;
-to analyse their characteristics and the forces and pressures
transforming them;
-to take note of changes;
-to assess the landscapes thus identified, taking into account the
particular values assigned to them by the interested parties and
the population concerned.
...
Landscapes
&
Archaeology
The civilizations of classical antiquity viewed
the landscape as a manifestation of ideas
about the fulfillment of life’s aspirations (the
bucolic landscape, warm sun, springtime, lush
vegetation, fertility).
Martin Gojda, Landscape Archaeology
(http://www.eolss.net/EolssSampleChapters/C04/E6-21-01-09/E6-21-01-09-TXT.aspx)
Medieval peasants, …were fully imbued with the
landscape that surrounded their everyday
horizons... They therefore felt no need to examine
their environment from the outside and to consider
it an autonomous or detachable part of reality.
Medieval cosmology saw no difference between
natural and anthropogenic landscape components.
Martin Gojda, Landscape Archaeology
(http://www.eolss.net/EolssSampleChapters/C04/E6-21-01-09/E6-21-01-09-TXT.aspx)
… the ever-increasing number of town dwellers began to see nature
as more distant from their immediate environment and experience,
and the free landscape began to a greater extent to be understood
as an artifact.
Considered to be formed in some way by natural forces and
man, the landscape was at the same time something with its
own internal dynamics, secrets, and poetry, a space worthy of
the attention of artists.
Martin Gojda, Landscape Archaeology
(http://www.eolss.net/EolssSampleChapters/C04/E6-21-01-09/E6-21-01-09-TXT.aspx)
In the period of European Romanticism, a
reaction of people against rigorous Rationalism,
estrangement from and disillusionment with
modern civilization, this relationship with the
landscape came to a head. Nature became a
temple and forgotten paradise to which it was
necessary to return and in which it was
necessary to seek out the ancient roots of
human nature.
For Romantic poets and painters, the return to
the womb of nature was thus not only a
return to the original natural environment but
also to the past, to human history. Merging
into the landscape was for the Romantic spirit
the most propitious means of coming closer to
the thought processes and perceptions of the
world of the ancestors.
Martin Gojda, Landscape Archaeology
(http://www.eolss.net/EolssSampleChapters/C04/E6-21-01-09/E6-21-01-09-TXT.aspx)
This dualistic model is,
however, shaken by the
discoveries of science,
atheism, and the secularism of
the modern age—it has come
to the crossroads of one
antithesis with another (the
profanation of the sacred, or
the secularization of the
profane).
European understanding of space (and thus landscapes) is marked
by a typical dualism, differentiating between worldly (profane) and
sacred (sacral) places. This approach is a typical expression of
mythological thought, adopted into the Christian worldview and
spreading from there into diverse secular ideologies; it is linked to
the emotional experience of space.
Martin Gojda, Landscape Archaeology
(http://www.eolss.net/EolssSampleChapters/C04/E6-21-01-09/E6-21-01-09-TXT.aspx)
Modernist
(rational)
space:
access, control, order,
resource, economy,
function…
PostmodeRn
(eclectic) plaza:
Social and cultural
pluralism, disunity,
unclear bases for social
unity, simulacrum,
fragmentation,
individualization
ARCHAEOLOGICAL
REPRESENTATIONS OF
SPACE
TRADITIONAL ARCHAEOLOGY
REPRESENTATIONS: distribution, territory, 2D geometry, political geography, PROCESSES: migrations/adaptation/colonization RELATIONSHIPS: geographic detereminism, non‐theorised space, MODERNIST
ARCHAEOLOGY
REPRESENTATIONS: abstract/universal/objective/neutral/atemporal space, activities polygon
PROCESSES: ecosystemic adaptation, rational exploitation, systemic balance,
RELATIONSHIPS: ecologic/economic determinsm
ARCHAEOLOGICAL and HISTORICAL THEORIES ecosystemic, economic, POSTMODERN ARCHAEOLOGY
REPRESENTATIONS: humanized space (place, landscape), space as medium, subjective space, power strategies, contradiction, temporal
PROCESSES: simbolization, perception, active transformation RELATIONSHIP (HUMANS : SPACE): dialectic, indirect (through perception)
ARCHAEOLOGICAL and HISTORICAL THEORIES : structuration, textual metaphors, phenomenology...
LANDSCAPE IS NOT SPACE
It is concrete places for which we care. It is in our caring where meaning of
things in landscape are created.
PEOPLE DO NOT REACT ON LANDSCAPE DIRECTLY
People react through meanings attributed to things in our process of care.
SPACE DOES NOT EXIST APRIORI.
It exists only as world which exists only if we care. The relationshipo of care
constitutes the world.
CAPITALIST SOCIETY CONSIDERS SPACE AS RESOURCE FOR
EXPLOITATION
In capitalist system relationship between human activities and space are
functional.
THE ‚SPACE‘ OF PRE-CAPITALIST SOCIETIES IS ANTHROPOMORPHIC
Its order has references in cosmological, religious and mythological. Places are
chosen for certain needs because they are useful for thinking (C. Tilley 1994,
20).
Particular meaning of space is directly associated with
experiences of living in it.
Human experiencing is mental process which
simultaneously grasp reality (world-around), its
meanings and its representations. In this process
horizons of past, future and reality (present) are fused
together. Time and space create a singularity.
Every „staying or living with things“ is act of
humanization in which things achieve their meanings
which can not be separated from the things
themselves.
Space is never neutral – it is always contextualized in
the form of humanized medium.
THIS IS LANDSCAPE.
LANDSCAPES AS MATERIAL ARCHIVES OF MEMORIES:
-collective and individual memories on significant events,
peoples, origins, ancestors, myths, cosmology... are stored in
landscape.
-such an archive is not closed and completed, and is
constantly enriched by new experiences and representations
-archive accentuates cultural and historic continuity of
community
-Human memory does not exploit directly from such an
archive, rather than fom ad hoc construction from certain
associations
-This is the very reason why there is not one definitive
meaning of a landscape; landscape is object and mean of
numerous practoces and reinterpretations
LANDSCAPE AS IDENTITY:
-People constantly create and attribute meanings to cestain
places
-Identification with such places (i.e. evidences of human
activities in landscape) represent expression of social and
cultural identity
LANDSCAPE AS EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL
ORDER
-Every collective identity is closely tied to
particular social order and order of
things.
Archaeological systemization of landscapes (after
W. Ashmore in B. Knapp 1999):
Constructed landscapes:
-Created by man-made
physical/material transformation of
space: settlements, infrastructure, landuse, changes of morphology,
vegetation...
-Mostly as result of everyday life
-Reasons: economic, political, religios,
cosmological...
Archaeological systemization of landscapes (after
W. Ashmore in B. Knapp 1999):
Conceptualized landscapes:
-Enable creation of various images and
representations stemming social
practices and experiences.
-Conceptualized landscapes are
mediated through different social
processes and are part of this
processes
-They serve for further production of
concepts
Archaeological systemization of landscapes (after
W. Ashmore in B. Knapp 1999):
IDEATIONAL LANDSCAPES
-Mental images or projections
-Emotional representations of some ideals
or value
(in broader sense, all constructed or
conceptualizted landscapes).
...we would suggest that landscape is
esentially all of these things at all times: it is
the arena in which and through which
memory, identity, social order and
transformation are constructed, played out, reinvented, and changed.” (Ashmore and Knapp
1999, 10).
Thank You