Page 189 [189]
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LANDSCAPE IN THE RESEARCH OF ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES 187
the most important and suggestive concepts of this, by now classic, landscape
historical approach is the “readable landscape”, which reveals itself to those “who
know how to read” — that is, to researchers who can make landscape historical
records speak. It logically follows that such researchers consider the landscape as
“the richest historical record we possess” (W. G. Hoskins cited: Aston 2002: 12), the
richest semiotic system of history. Reading the landscape is no longer the privilege
of researchers alone. It is made widely accessible by easy readings which introduce
— like a manual with few annotations or bibliography, but with a wealth of
illustrations the landscape history of the whole or some part of the British Isles
(Richard Muir's work is noteworthy in this regard; see: Muir 1984; 2000). The
historian’s job in these studies is often like the detective’s and practical
methodological guides are also provided for the “investigation” (see: Muir 2001).
The objective approach sees the landscape as a dynamically changing,
impermanent phenomenon whose systemic determinant is change, rather than
constancy (Aston 2002: 12). To quote Michael Aston’s simile: “If we could see the
English landscape developing over the last 6000 years in a speeded-up film, it
would certainly resemble an ants’ nest, with not only the ants moving about at a
great pace engaged in many jobs, but the nest itself being shifted constantly!”
(Aston 2002: 12). Works of the objective approach also often use the palimpsest
as metaphor. A type of documents known in diplomatics, it signifies a document
with an old piece of (effaced) writing on which a new writing is superimposed. In
other words, the old text was scraped out so that the paper could be reused. The
old writing can be made visible again with diverse procedures. The major value of
these documents is provided by the different writings from different ages, often
in different lettering and styles, and the contents also differ. The historical
stratification, the different qualities of the strata, and the methodological challenges
of reading them provide perfect comparability between the palimpsests and the
model of the readable landscape. The objective approach often puts small places
under scrutiny, i.e., an aspect of one of the characteristics of the landscape (for
instance, land use or settlement research). Thus, it can be linked to ethnographic
and local historical elaborations (Whyte 2002: 17).
As seen earlier, a landscape is not only a system of physical elements. It is a
symbolic system as well. In this sense, it is a construction of the human mind. In
the objective approach, we use diverse methods to make the data interpretable.
For the subjective approach, we need to take a vantage point. Hoskins thought a
landscape could be read like a text. Current interpretations of the landscape as text
claim that it is a text of multiple layers of meaning suitable for being read differently
in accordance with a wide variety of interpretations at a time (Whyte 2002: 18).
Whyte illustrates the difference between the two approaches with a forest. The
objective approach would be concerned with the composition of tree species,
systems of forest use, and past changes on human influence and the underlying
social implications. The same forest, for a subjective approach, would provide
themes related to spirituality, mythology, the forest’s ecological values, differences
in male and female perceptions, and other less tangible aspects.
From the 1970s onwards, the change in the interpretive attitude has resulted
in important changes not only in geography but also in other fields of scholarship.
Landscape semiotics, landscape phenomenology, and landscape aesthetics appeared
(Tilley 1994; Lindstrém — Palang — Kull 2013). A change in quality was brought