Abstrakt: | Landscape currently takes a particularly important
place in many scientifi c disciplines, for
example in geography, cultural anthropology,
aesthetics, architecture, landscape architecture,
landscape ecology and sociology. Th e reason
for the great interest in landscape is that it is
synonymous to everyday existence, the surroundings
and the human environment. Th e
article draws attention to the fact that contemporary
landscape seems to be a key issue
in understanding the historical processes occurring
in the human environment. Th e concept
of landscape is therefore a kind of “link”
between geography and history. Nowadays the
literature of the sources says about “the idea of
landscape,” which expresses the historical effort
to connect the visual image and the material
world. Th e following considerations are
attempts to develop a concept which describes
the memory of landscape on the basis of geography.
It is an attempt at a complementary
approach to the existing studies in the fi eld of
humanistic geography, cultural anthropology,
sociology and the theory of aesthetics.
Th e article presents the genesis of the concept,
giving the source of its ambiguity. In geography
landscape commonly means the following:
– a set of spatially related physical objects
(both natural and anthropogenic) constituting
the content of the landscape;
– a system of interrelated natural and cultural
processes integrating the physical structures;
– a set of stimuli aff ecting the various senses
of the user;
– a set of natural values (potentials), social,
economic, physical, spiritual, historical, physiognomy,
aesthetic, symbolic and others;
– a system providing the actual and potential
service (now called landscape services or so-
-called landscape functions);
– text, symbol, icon, palimpsest, or even
a metaphor.
In the broadest sense, memory is the ability
to remember, store, recall, recognize and
localize something that happened in the past.
In the case of transfer of this concept onto the
fi eld of landscape, it is like the identity of the
countryside, the memory does not mean forms
of space personalization, but it expresses a special
ability to record, store and recall the information
about the phenomena and processes
taking place in the history and taking place in
the social and geographical environment. It is
also the process of collecting spatial information.
Regarding the landscape, this ability depends
on many factors. It may take the shortterm
form (memory of history record about
events, short duration story) but usually, the
landscape is a storehouse of information and
traces of theoretically unlimited capacity and
storage. Th e author proposes to separate a few
types of landscape memory:
– material memory, which is physical storage
of objects and their inter-systems (spatial
structures) as a form of static, real being.
“Saved” and fi xed objects in the landscape are
not only the relics of ancient times, monuments,
but they also clearly organize the space.
Th e material form of “landscape memory” is
expressed mainly by the presence of “hibernating”
spatial systems (villages, towns, urban
structure, texture and copper fi elds, road systems,
etc.) with origins in ancient times, often
surrounded by sites from a later period (from
another era);
– axiological memory, understood as storage
of value. It is based on continuity, among
others, tradition, identity, familiarity relating
to both, tangible and intangible qualities of
landscape;
– phenomenological memory, which means
storing information about phenomena (events,
incidents, including extreme ones in terms of
natural and cultural ones);
– magnifi cence of space is located here,
which is registered in landscape biography. It is mostly short-term memory, episodic, written
in the history of long duration;
– ontological memory, interpreted in the
context of storing information about the nature
of the landscape, its properties, causality
(factors and stimuli), properties. It is the story
of landscape recognized as a dynamic phenomenon,
in which the rights and principles of
landscape creation are saved;
– semantic memory, which means storage of
fi xed meanings (symbolic landscapes, semiotics
of space, storage of genius loci, the sacrum). Th e
possibility which is given by “re-reading” the
former and modern functions of landscape.
Th e paper explains the above-mentioned
forms of landscape memory on the grounds
of the author’s concept of cultural landscape
stratigraphy. Th e basic types of landscapes were
separated due to the relative arrangement (ascertainable
in chronological order) of cultural
strata present in the landscape, as a product of
particular communities functioning in the history
of the area. |