Cultural Landscapes: Cause & Effect

Cultural landscapes are both the cause and the effect of cultural values, cultural institutions, and human behavior,
which interact with the natural environment.

In other words, "Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result"
(Sauer 1963: 343).

In this course, we will examine cultural landscapes, our first perspective, to understand human behavior, the second perspective, and ideas, the third and most abstract perspective. All three elements are related to one another and all reflect and affect the others.

This course deals with what is called Material Culture: the concrete manifestations of cultural beliefs and practices, which of course also has strictly behavioral and intellectual expressions, as the above diagram shows.

Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 5 June 1996; last revised on 18 May 2011.