Mapping evolving historical landscape systems

Abstract

Landscape is not a sum of elements to be juxtaposed in a paper or a digital space. It is a complex system of relationships among components that have evolved over time. It is not a sum of material permanencies, more or less recognizable and placeable in space, but an interweaving of economic, social, religious and political meanings that link permanencies and give them value. How to represent these relationships from existing geographic or historical databases? How can we illustrate the co-evolution between nature and culture that has given form to today's landscape? And how to allow at the same time to update data and their relationships? Through the comparison among examples taken from local participative experiences (ecomuseum community maps) and others directly managed and produced by the Authors (itinerary maps), the contribution reflects on these main critical issues: landscape representation problems, data collecting and updating, information sharing. The main results show that the data digitalization and georeferencing can help to illustrate and understand tangible and intangible characteristics of landscape and overcome the gaps from a sharing mapping procedure with a bottom-up approach and the point of view by the experts with a top-down approach. On the contrary, the digital representation of landscape data shows another set of problems that currently are mainly solved in traditional ways. The paper will also deal with these aspects..