‘Our human landscape is our unwitting biography, reflecting our tastes, our values, our aspirations, and even our fears in tangible visible form.’ (Lewis)

 

Cultural landscapes categories for World Heritage purposes were (still are) intended to increase awareness that heritage places (sites) are not isolated islands and that there is an interdependence between people, social structures and the landscape. Inextricably linked to this cultural concept of landscape is that one of our deepest  needs is for a sense of identity and belonging and a common denominator in this is human attachment to landscape and how we find identity in landscape and place.  The paper critically reviews emerging trends in the non-monumental cultural landscape approach; reflects on how the innovative ideas of cultural geographers and anthropologists from the late nineteenth/early twentieth century through the twentieth century shifted intellectual discussion on landscape from physical determinant to cultural construct creating a context for a global cultural landscape discourse; and reflects on the opportunities for WH cultural landscape work in Asia.