People, Land^Time Peter Atkins • Ian Simmons • Brian Roberts An Historical Introduction to the Relations Between Landscape, Culture and Environment PEOPLE, LAND ANDTIME PEOPLE, LAND ANDTIME AN HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE RELATIONS BETWEEN LANDSCAPE, CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT Peter Atkins, Ian Simmons and Brian Roberts Department of Geography, University of Durham HODDER EDUCATION PART OF HACHETTE LIVRE UK First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Hodder Education, a part of Hachette Livre UK, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH http://www.hoddereducation.com © 1998 Peter Atkins, Ian Simmons and Brian Roberts All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency: Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress 978 0 340 67714 8 10 Composition by Phoenix Photosetting,Chatham, kent Printed and bound by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd., India CONTENTS Preface vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction xiii PART I THE PRE-INDUSTRIAL WORLD I 1 Hunters and Gatherers 3 2 The Origins and Spread of Agriculture 13 3 Early Urbanization and the Hydraulic Environment 27 4 Resources, Population and Sustainability 40 5 Environmental Degradation and the Collapse of Civilizations 53 6 Sustainable Resource Management in Pre-industrial Societies 63 7 Large-scale Landscape Modification: Pays and Pre-industrial Planning 77 8 Clearing the Wood 93 9 The Control of Water 104 10 Landscapes on the Margin: Deserts, Hillslopes, Heath, Moor and Grassland 119 PART 2 THE TRANSITION TO MODERNITY 131 I I Feudal Landscapes 133 12 Urbanization and Proto-industrialization 148 PART 3 THE MODERN ERA 161 13 The Impact of Agriculture 165 14 Landscapes of Energy Acquisition: the Getting of Power 176 15 Industrial landscapes 184 16 Modern Urban Landscapes: Modern Cities and City Life 197 17 Postmodern Landscapes 212 18 Metaphors and Meanings in Modern Landscapes: Reading the Landscape 219 19 Landscapes of power and pleasure 231 20 'Other' Landscapes 239 vi CONTENTS PART 4 THE GLOBAL ERA 253 21 Globalized landscapes 255 22 Conservation 267 23 Conclusion: the Past, Present and Future of the Study of People, Land and Time 274 Index 280 PREFACE The inspiration for this book has been the involve¬ material world of objects to the human processes ment of the authors in a long-standing undergrad¬ responsible and to interpret the outcomes as one uate course at Durham entitled Land, People and form of evidence of the evolving human impact Time. Although taught from the Department of upon the environment. Geography, this is open to all students and has The text is written in a style that we hope will proved very popular as a cross-disciplinary mix of be accessible, with a minimum of technical those issues of environment and culture which jargon. The approach is varied, with a mix of have influenced the evolution of humanized land¬ what might be called environmental history and scapes. The emphasis in the course and in this text historical geography, along with a leavening of is upon material outcomes but there is of course a cultural studies in Chapters 16-20. This range recognition, first, that there is a profound com¬ of voices will illustrate the fascinating range of plexity of interacting processes which drives the methodologies and perspectives which are now production of visible modifications of the natural being deployed to study the culture/nature con¬ landscape and, second, that the study of landscape nexion. is only one among the several approaches which The structure of the book is in four parts, may be adopted in understanding the relation¬ arranged by techno-social stages from the pre¬ ships between society and environment. Despite industrial to the global era. Each part is subdi¬ the recent revival of interest in landscapes in the vided into chapters which are thematic, and these literatures of cultural geography and environmen¬ are supplemented with case studies that accom¬ tal history, there is understandable resistance from pany the descriptions and explanations of a those who see landscape study as a naive interpre¬ general nature. They elaborate points of fact and tation in terms of the purely visual and morpho¬ some (for instance, the case study of the Maya in logical. In this book we have tried to avoid such a Chapter 5) are full-length location-specific illus¬ superficial view by relating our discussions of the trations of a chosen theme. . ■ ! I _