Studying Past Landscapes: Lived, Reconstructed and Animated

Abstract

This article deals with the contemporary situation in the study of past landscapes. An overview of past landscapes’ nature is given, then different categories of research approaches are described and explained, and in the main part of the article diverse methodologies of past landscape research are explained and exemplified. The approaches mentioned in the article are settlement archaeology and field-system analysis, path dependency, phenomenology and landscape biography. Those approaches are the most common and modern ways of studying past landscapes, but the authors will argue that the best results will be gained combining different aspects of those approaches.