Research Information System
ESLAND Conference, Italy, 1 - 04 November 2012, pp.15, (Full Text)
Landscape is defined as an area, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors which has been subjected to an important public interest role in the cultural, ecological, environmental and social fields. Hereby European Landscape Convention includes water and marine areas as well as land and inland and acknowledges that landscape is an important part of the quality of life for people everywhere.
Landscape character is a distinct, recognisable and consistent pattern of elements in the landscape that makes one landscape different from another, rather than better or worse. There are number of parameters in evaluating landscape character such as land cover elements, visual aspects and perceived aspects. Accordingly place names often reflect the cultural and natural characters of the landscape and perceived aspects.
Islands are pieces of land surrounded by water. Although they are physically isolated from the continental land, island landscapes have many symbolic meanings based on natural features and cultural history based on multi-interactions between islands and main lands.
As a result of continuous human-nature interaction, place names have become an integral part of the landscape and brought from past into present. Place names are a kind of linguistic form that people are attached to the landscape and become a tool of the characterisation of the landscape through human perception.
In this study characteristics of island landscapes of Turkish Mediterranean Antalya will be evaluated with their names as a reflection of cultural and natural landscape characters. There are around 20 islands around Antalya are typically characterised by Mediterranean conditions and some of them such as Sıçan Island (Lurnateia) was an important landing point in ancient time and recently has been a land mark of the city.
Because island landscapes include not only natural features of the land, but also relations through history, study result would provide different tool in cultural understanding of the island landscapes, how to apprehend past and current activities throughout the relations between islands, main land and people as a code of cultural heritage