Ethnophysiography of arid lands: Categories for landscape features

How do people understand their environment? How do they remember it? How do they communicate this knowledge to others? These questions all address abilities that are essential to human existence. The environment maybe thought of as a continuum, populated by objects of various sizes, and shaped and maintained by various processes, some small, some large, some close, and some distant. Ethnoecologists have studied many aspects of local knowledge of the environment, but much of this work has concentrated on elements of the proximity, such as plants and animals, while the larger and more distant components of the environment have received less attention. The proximity of course is extremely important, but the landscape, composed of places to stand, to live, and to find resources, also is absolutely fundamental, and we believe that the landscape needs its own ethnoscience...