Land and Sky : an attempt at creating an ontology of cultural landscapes and related concepts

Abstract: The aim of this study has been to attempt to create an ontology of cultural landscape and related concepts through the use of several forms of bibliometric analyses. Cultural landscape is perceived as a transdisciplinary concept and the theoretical point of departure emphasizes this through a focus on the possibilities of communication between and beyond disciplines and existing structures. Frequency distributions are presented in order to obtain an overview of the different concepts. Co-occurrences analyses are carried out on the different concepts and the results are presented in the form of bibliometric maps. The discussion focuses on the relations between the words and the concepts, as well as in the case of the concept of cultural landscape only, on the shifting relations between words over time, as well as on the intellectual structure of the discourse. The heterogeneous quality of the field of cultural landscape studies makes the creation of an ontology difficult. What the study may contribute to, however, is an increased transparency as regards the structures of the discourses; this in turn may help to improve the conditions for transdisciplinary communication and collaboration.