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Between the Prehistorical and the Industrial: A Few Remarks on Anthropology of Landscape

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2009

Abstract

The conceptual debate on recently quite a fashionable topic of landscape is, at least within Czech academia, deeply influenced by the concepts and imagery of natural sciences. In this article, we advocate an alternative concept of landscape, that developed by anthropology of landscape.

We understand landscape to be a widely conceived "way of seeing", way of grasping, experiencing and understanding the world, rather than simply a piece of reality out there. In the first part of the paper we present, how anthropology of landscape theorizes its subject.

In the second we offer two applied examples – analyses of prehistoric and (post)industrial landscape. The main aim of the article is to balance otherwise natural science driven debate about landscape and to return to the concept of landscape what it lacks – human experience.