Cultural Landscape of the Gorica Hills in the Nineteenth Century
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Open Geosciences 2020; 12: 1392–1405 Transformation of traditional cultural landscapes - Koper 2019 Tanja Gomiršek* Cultural landscape of the Gorica Hills in the nineteenth century: Franciscean land cadastre reports as the source for clarification of the classification of cultivable land types https://doi.org/10.1515/geo-2020-0191 or human factors [1]. Cultural landscape, on the contrary, received December 30, 2019; accepted September 05, 2020 is the “result of human action into natural space in which ” Abstract: The Gorica Hills (Slovene Goriška brda and also nature is the medium and man represents culture. Each Brda) represent a part of the hilly cultural landscapes in the generation or historical period leaves its own imprint on - northern Mediterranean. Because of the historical develop- cultural landscape. In fact, cultural landscape is a dy [ ] - ment of the states, the Gorica Hills are situated on the namic formation in perpetual change 2 . The area indi - Slovenian western border. The Gorica Hills have been cates the realities of the society of the time, whose popu a synonym for a cultivated landscape since the Middle lation arranges it in their own way. Therefore, cultural Ages. New studies have changed the pre-existing belief landscape mirrors the period in which it is being created. - that the cultivation method and crop types have not changed It enables us to study the challenges faced by past socie through the centuries, except for the introduction of corn ties, as well as their capacity for solving them within their - and potatoes. However, detailed descriptions of the cultiva- knowledge. According to British historian and geogra tion methods and the types of predominant crops in the pher Hoskins, cultural landscape is the most important [ ] cadastre show that during the nineteenth century, and espe- historical document, as long as one is able to read it 2 . fi cially in the period after World War I, the cultivation method De ning the concept of cultural landscape, of how to ofthevineandthetypesofcrops,infact,changedsignifi- study and classify it, is the work of many disciplines, - cantly. At this point, the nineteenth century can be seen as from history, geography, architecture to agronomy. UN “ - the period of the final introduction of corn and potatoes. ESCO recognises that cultural landscapes embrace a di ‘ ’ Thus, the cultural landscape of the Gorica Hills is the result versity of interactions between people and the natural fl fi of the responses to inside and outside economic and cultural environment. Cultural landscapes often re ect speci c - - pulses. The paper will point out the advantages of the land techniques of sustainable land use, considering the char cadastre reports that were used in the reconstruction of the acteristics and limits of the natural environment they are fi ” cultural landscape. It will also present the questions that established in, and a speci c spiritual relation to nature [ ] have remained unanswered and are left open for further 3 . Each and every landscape is an interlacing of past ’ - research. and present. That is why the approach of today s genera tion towards the past and our ancestors’ achievements is Keywords: Gorica Hills, Franciscean land cadastre re- also very important. Many researchers, both historians ports, mixed culture, cultivable methods, brajda, ter- [4–14] and geographers [15–22], have contributed impor- races, fields with vines tant studies related to this topic. The aim of this paper is not to reduce the importance of all the research results, but to prove that historical evidence can help us upgrade our knowledge on cultural landscapes. Using the archival 1 Introduction sources for gathering information about the past land- scapes is familiar not only to geographers and historians The European Landscape Convention states that a land- but also to historical geographers and landscape ecolo- scape is an area, as perceived by people, whose character gists. The surveys were largely based on the use of histor- is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/ ical cadastral maps and accompanying classification of the land plots. With the development of new technolo- gies, the researchers have the possibility to use a geo- ( * Corresponding author: Tanja Gomiršek, History department, graphic information system also written as historical Goriški muzej, Nova Gorica, Slovenia, GIS or HGIS) that may display, store and analyse the e-mail: [email protected] data of past geographies and track changes in time. Open Access. © 2020 Tanja Gomiršek, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Cultural landscape of the Gorica Hills in the nineteenth century 1393 According to the confirmed percentage of inaccuracies in the old cadastral maps, current research goes beyond their use in historical reconstruction of the use of the cultural landscape. This also affects currently valid re- constructions of cultural landscapes that were made with their use [23]. The present study aims to draw attention to another question which the researcher must pay attention to when studying the Franciscean map. The paper will show the differences between classifying the individual land plot and the cultivation methods in the past and today. We cannot find this type of data using only maps but using the archival sources describing the cultivation methods and cultivated plants. The accompa- Figure 1: Gorica hills position between the states of Slovenia and nying material of the cadastral maps from the first half of Italy (The map is made by the Italian scientific and technical com- ( ) “ the nineteenth century, the so-called Franciscean Ca- mittee coordinator arch. Elisa Trani for the WHL UNESCO Brda Collio Cuei Paesaggio culturale Transfrontaliero terrazzato” project dastre reports that are detailed and comprehensive de- and approved by the Slovenian scientific and technical committee). scriptions of the land plots, is analysed. The survey will show that in the first half of the nineteenth century com- pared to the twentieth century, there were significant ratio that was typical before WWI is rare. The only plants differences between cultivation methods and crops on that coexist alongside the vine, albeit with a certain dis- equally classified land plots. This is a question that any tance, are olive trees and fruit trees, which are grown on research that compares the cultural landscape in the past the edges of plots, longer banks or in plantations. and nowadays must answer. The cultural terraces of the Gorica Hills have been documented since the Roman times. In fact, archaeolo- gical excavations on the Mejnik hill in Gonjače have 2 The region and the terraces of the proven the existence of cultural terraces as early as in the third to fourth century AD [28]. In the year 238, the Gorica Hills Roman writer Herodianus described the hills of our pro- vince as planted in unequal distances and with vines that The Gorica Hills region is predominantly situated in Slo- swirl across the hills creating a joyful spectacle that venia with a smaller proportion lying in Italy (Figure 1).As makes the entire area seem to be decorated with crowns early as the late Middle Ages, a border crossed its western made of leaves [29,30]. The production of wine and olive part which divided it up to World War I (WWI)[24]. oil during the Roman period is further proved by the ar- During the New Ages the Gorica Hills were a border chaeological site of Borg near Neblo, which dates back to area between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Venetian the first century AD. The site was once a brickmaking fa- Republic [25]. The Gorica Hills region belongs to the cul- cility that produced not only tegulae but also amphoras tural landscapes of the Mediterranean hills and consists that were sold locally for storing wine and perhaps also oil of a soft flysch [26]. It is characterised by an intricate [31]. Winegrowing, vines and cellars are mentioned in nu- mosaic of forests, agricultural landscape patterns and merous medieval documents from the fourteenth and fif- built-up areas. The area’s dramatic terrain makes it even teenth centuries. One such document from the year 1321 more diverse and different from the agricultural land- states that Saint Martin’s monastery in Cividale had two scapes of the plains and the vast cultivated areas that vineyards on the hill of St Florian and one cellar nearby result from intensive farming [25]. The Gorica Hills have San Floriano del Collio – Števerjan [32]. Within the juris- been synonymous for a cultivated hilly landscape since diction exchange between the Colloredo nobility and the the Middle Ages [26,27]. In fact, the region has been char- della Torre family, an interesting map of the central Gorica acterised by a mixed cultivation of vineyards, fruit trees Hills was created in 1604 [33].Themap’s author frequently and sowing land plots situated on terraces as well as fields. wrote the term ronchi on the hills surrounding Dobrovo, Because of a partially mechanised cultivation, nowadays Biljana and Vedrijan, which historically documents the the cultivated areas situated on hills and in plains are fact that in the seventeenth century the hilly areas of characterised by monoculture, i.e. vines, fruit trees, olive the Gorica Hills were predominantly covered by terraces. trees and less frequently crops. The mixed cultivational Given the terrain’ssurface(steep inclinations) and its 1394 Tanja Gomiršek Figure 2: The landscape of Gorica hills today (photo collection ZTKMŠ, author Damijan Simčič). morphological composition (flysch base), any other form to this day (Figure 2). Their specific nature has induced the of cultivated landscape on this hilly landscape is not pos- field team of the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum (SEM) sible. The term ronco is also used to describe the plots on to carry out a thorough documentation after World War II the hills in the Theresian Cadastre that was created in 1751 (WWII).