The Cultivated Landscape

By the late twentieth century, idyllic depictions of eighteenth-century manorial landscapes had become artistic expressions of dislocation. Western agricultural paradigms had shifted, as had the relationship between art and agriculture. "The Cultivated Landscape" uses over seventy illustrations to look at the development of Western agriculture from feudal times to the present. Craig Pearson and Judith Nasby discuss the evolution of how we think about agriculture, its use of the land and impact on landscape, and how landscape has been portrayed historically in art. They also offer a wider discussion on the role that science and economics have played in agricultural development and the parallels to changes in art form. "The Cultivated Landscape" ends with a discussion of the complex issues facing agriculture today, the need for greater connectivity between agriculture and our environment, and options for the future.

Paul Shepheard explains how every architectural move that man makes is set in a landscape. He draws on examples of fortified settlements in Norman England that reflect occupation and the New World's grid-layout cities reflecting reason.

Paul Shepheard's previous book, What is Architecture?, was about making real, material things in the world—landscapes, buildings, and machines. The Cultivated Wilderness is about those landscapes, and about the strategies that govern what we've done in shaping them.In the author's words, this book is about "seeing things that are too big to see." His emphasis on strategy makes landscape fundamental—he says that every architectural move is set in a landscape. Norman England, for example, was constructed as a network of strong points, in a strategy of occupation. The eighteenth-century grid cities of the New World reflect a strategy of reason. Our current strategy is the economic exploitation of the Earth, an intricately woven blanket of commerce that covers up a multitude of other possibilities, many other ways to treat the surface of the globe—some of which are the landscapes revealed in this book.In a series of first-person narratives, reminiscent of his last book, the author pairs six landscapes, in order of descending scale from global to local, from the seven wonders of the ancient world to the condensed destruction of World War I's Western Front. In an engaging style, Shepheard takes the reader on an odyssey through these landscapes, meeting people and seeing places. He states that now, at the end of a century in which the appropriate landscape was sought but never found, the strategy of turning the land to profit is under review—and offers this book as his contribution to that review. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images found in the physical edition.

Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes examines Indian agriculture in South America. The focus is on field types and field technologies, including agricultural landforms such as terraces, canals, and drained fields, which have persisted for hundreds of years. What emerges is a picture of mostly successful indigenous farming practices in difficult environments--rain forests, savannahs, swamps, rugged mountains, and deserts.

This is a significant contribution to the engaging and enduring theme of landscape creation and environmental adaptation in North America, which challenges established theories about native agriculture. Richly illustrated with over 200 maps, drawings, and photographs it contains a wealth of information for both scholars and students and is likely to be the standard reference work on the topic for many years to come.

This book presents twelve major paintings by masters of the Ming-dynasty (1368-1644), Qing dynasty (1644-1911), and modern periods.