Landscape Biography as Research Strategy: The Case of the South Netherlands Project

This paper presents the outline of a biographical approach to landscape as developed in the Netherlands during the last 15 years by archaeologists, thereby integrating perspectives formulated by the social anthropologists Appadurai and Kopytoff and the cultural geographer Samuels. The result is a historicising longue duree perspective, that runs from the later prehistory up to the present-day, and that focuses on the study of the interrelationships between spatial transformations, social and economic changes and the construction of regional and local identities in the region. This approach also offers interesting possibilities for applications in the sphere of heritage management, landscape design and spatial planning. The implementation of this biographical approach to landscape is illustrated by presenting a case-study for the southern Netherlands, a semi-urban region which ranks among the most intensively studied cultural landscapes of Western Europe.