Search

A landscape is a medium that reflects material, spiritual, and cultural activities of communities in the past, present and future. Understanding landscape in the context of space and time necessarily demands the conceptual approaches of different scientific and expert fields of study. Through a variety of case studies from Southeastern Europe, this volume explores the concept of landscape from multiple fields of study in order to gain insight into how disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, folklore, sociology, and history define and approach this concept.

A landscape is a medium that reflects material, spiritual, and cultural activities of communities in the past, present and future. Understanding landscape in the context of space and time necessarily demands the conceptual approaches of different scientific and expert fields of study. Through a variety of case studies from Southeastern Europe, this volume explores the concept of landscape from multiple fields of study in order to gain insight into how disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, folklore, sociology, and history define and approach this concept.

Place names, as landscape signifiers, indisputably enable the most direct way of „reading the landscape“, since names directly reflect the relationship between humans and the land. At the same time place names provide valuable data on the ethnolinguistic affiliation of the community that created them. Names may indicate former ways of life, as well as linguistic and cultural changes that occurred over time. Toponomastic research is usually conducted from the linguistic or geographical perspective, whereas anthropological research so far did not pay due attention to place names. However, anthropology can offer a new approach to the study of place names. With data from place name research, we can analyze how humans have perceived and experienced their relationship with the landscape. The landscape can be „read“ as a system of communication, within which naming is most explicit way of shaping and identifying with the landscape. Within the language system place names never occur randomly. On the contrary, names regularly represent an ordered set of signs in the framework of micro- community as well as indicate relationships to the landscape. Reality is interpreted through the connection between the geographical realities (objects in the landscape) and names (language signs). The purpose of this paper is to show the relationship between humans and the landscape on several Croatian islands through the analysis of the distribution of few selected geographical terms and place names derived from them. Data has been collected through our own field research (the islands of Brač, Iž, Mljet, Rab, Pag, Pašman, Ugljan), and relevant toponomastic literature on other Croatian islands. For the analysis and mapping we used GIS (ArcGIS 10.1 software) in order to point out the possibility of using GIS in the ethnolinguistic research.

The areas of Croatia, occupied during Homeland War (1991-1995), and afflicted by war activities, destruction and migration of population, have experienced, both during war and post-war period, the changes in landscape that have an impact on lives of current and emigrated inhabitants even today. The author discusses one of such areas in Central Croatia. The region Banija/Banovina was occupied from 1991 until 1995, and even today it is the area of unrepaired material and other damages caused by warfare, of insignificant economic and commercial development, undeveloped infrastructure, areas covered with landmines and unfavorable demographic structure. In this area there are 100 000 less inhabitants than twenty years ago, mainly due to war activities, emigration and depopulation. The inhabitants link the questions and problems of everyday life on this area directly with the insufficient number of people and the changes in landscape: deserted villages, overgrown infields, reduction in arable land areas, propagation, disease and exploitation of forests, increase in number of wild animals etc. The inhabitants that emigrated from this area during or after wartime thematize the dismal state of this area, as well as the sorrow for the lost homes and villages, in songs and video clips (among other things). In this presentation the author is focused on analysis and interpretation of narrations of current and emigrated inhabitants in which the localities and markers of landscape are mentioned (river Una, mount Djed, Zrinska gora Mountain, Šamarica forest, plums and plum orchards, fertile fields, dewy grass etc.), as well as the negative changes in the landscape, the regret for passed times and wanted comeback to idealized, never forgotten home. These narrations about post-war landscape of Banija/Banovina are the result and part of much wider political, social and cultural changes and processes. Also, thanks to the interwoven elements of personal and family memories and recollections, past and present experiences of everyday life in this area, they are the reflection of different levels of identification of inhabitants with the space of their living or ancestry.

Landscapes have multiple meanings – they represent both the materialistic world and the subjective perception of space. Geographical research in the past has mostly dealt with the landscape's physical and social features. Over time, the focus has shifted and contemporary geographical research emphasizes the study of land use and land cover changes. Landscape development in Croatia and especially Littoral Croatia was marked by complex historical, social and economical factors. Ravni Kotari, the research area, is a physiognomic subunit of the central part of Littoral Croatia. Its physical features, such as fertile land and availability of water made Ravni Kotari suitable for agricultural production and settling since prehistory. Furthermore, the period of Roman rule and the Late Middle Ages marked the first two peaks in Ravni Kotari landsacpe development. Unfavorable conditions during Ottoman-Venetian wars in the 16th and 17th centuries caused discontinuity in landscape development. After liberation from Ottoman rule, the Venetian Republic organized settlement in Ravni Kotari because it wanted to establish a permanent military border towards Ottoman Empire. Settlers were given land and in return they had to serve as soldiers in case of war. Division of land was performed by cadastral survey, the first to take place in Ravni Kotari or Croatia. The primary role of cadastre was to monitor settling. However, the cadastre also recorded general spatial distribution and the surface of different land use categoriessuch as ploughlands, pastures, vineyards, meadows, uncultivated and infertile land. The largest shares belonged to pastures and ploughlands as a result of dominant grain cultivation and cattle breeding. The Venetian cadastre was not flawless considering the measurement techniques of that time and the categorization of land, but its importance is in introducing land survey that marks a starting point in land use study of Ravni Kotari area. The cadastre was made in the early 18th century which means that today we can track landscape development up to 300 years in the past. Another important fact is that contemporary Ravni Kotari landscape has its roots in early 18th cenutry, meaning that there were no more such profound discontinuities in landscape development.

The number of second homes in Croatia grew rapidly in the last inter-censal period (from approx. 182.000 in 2001 to 250.000 in 2011) and as a result, second home expansion continues to be one of the strongest factors of spatial transformation in Croatia with coastal regions being most affected. Having that in mind, focus of this analysis will be on social and spatial patterns of second home expansion in Croatia. Starting from the fact that second home use implies not only (temporary) change in place of residence, but also, very often, movement to different landscapes, the main aim of the analysis is to find out what kind of landscape do owners of second homes in Croatia prefer and what are basic characteristics of Croatian households that have a second home. The specific objectives of the analysis are as follows: first, to describe spatial distribution of second homes (settlement size ; type of settlement: rural/urban, core/peripheral, developed/developing ; location: Continental/Adriatic region) ; second, to get insight into main features of places of primary residence (places where families with second homes permanently live) ; and the third objective is to compare households with and without second home based on their family, economic and housing status. Part of data for the analysis will be taken from the 2011 Census. However, as the data about second home owners in Croatia aren’t collected with the Census, data from an empirical research on the national representative sample conducted in the autumn of 2014 (N=3000) will be used for getting insight into socio- spatial background of Croatian households with a second home.