‘A land history of men’: The intersection of geomorphology, culture and heritage in Cornwall, southwest England

Applied Geography 42 (2013) 186e194

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‘A land history of men’: The intersection of geomorphology, culture and heritage in Cornwall, southwest England Jasper Knight a, *, Stephan Harrison b a b

School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Wits, 2050 Johannesburg, South Africa College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn TR10 9EZ, UK

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Landscape Palimpsest Heritage Archaeology Anticipatory history Climate change

Relationships between landscape-scale geomorphology and aspects of the human environment (including heritage and material cultures) are best examined in landscapes with a strong geomorphological imprint of past climatic and environmental changes, and where human activity has been present for a long period of time. In Cornwall, southwest England, a strong geomorphological signature is imparted by weathering of granite bedrock under cold Quaternary climates, and a strong cultural and heritage imprint is manifested in material and nonmaterial ways through archaeology, art, literature and folklore, and is illustrated in this paper through examples of Bodmin Moor (north Cornwall) and West Penwith (west Cornwall). Landscapes of Bodmin Moor include wide valleys with underfit rivers and upland summits with prominent tors, resulting from granite weathering and slope processes during the Tertiary and Quaternary. Pollen records show how human activity has changed on the moor over time, with a peak of settlement during the Bronze Age, and expansion of grazing into the Iron Age. Daphne du Maurier’s novels, set on or adjacent to Bodmin Moor, emphasize the moor’s relationship to unstable and intense human emotions and crises. In West Penwith, which is geomorphological similar to Bodmin Moor, geomorphologyeculture relations are demonstrated in different ways but through a similar sense of place and regional identity. The St Ives School of early 20th Century art, including the local artist Peter Lanyon and the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, draws inspiration from the local land and seascapes. The oral traditions and folklore of Zennor emphasize the importance of witchcraft and superstition that are in part founded on the wildness of upland summits and stormy coastline. Across West Penwith, tin mining and the mining trade exerted a strong impact on regional socioeconomic and cultural development from the Bronze Age until the end of the 19th Century, seen through settlement patterns, scientific innovation and Nonconformism. Today these geomorphologyeculture relations are memorialized in the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Interrelationships between landscape-scale geomorphology and the development of material and nonmaterial expressions of human activity are demonstrated in many areas of the world where different cultural expressions have developed over millennial time scales (Caseldine & Turney, 2010; Fowler, 2004), and where palimpsests of human activity have been preserved differentially in the landscape (Bailey, 2007). These relationships are also well demonstrated in landscapes in which there are strong physical properties and processes that have exerted an influence on the * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ27 117176508. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Knight), stephan.harrison@ exeter.ac.uk (S. Harrison). 0143-6228/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2013.03.020

physical make-up of the landscape and the provision of its resources. This is because resource provision, including fresh water, fertile agricultural land and routeways for trade and transport, has strongly influenced subsequent processes and spatial patterns of human development. Correspondence between the provision of these geological and landscape resources and patterns of human activity (as can be seen through spatial and temporal patterns of archaeological sites, settlements and road/trading networks) has been commonly noted throughout the British Isles in which the geological imprints of glacial erosion and deposition during the last Ice Age (culminating around 15,000 years before present (BP)) are particularly strong (Knight, 2000, 2001). More subtly, landscape patterns are also influenced by the provision of mineral resources that have been exploited over time periods long enough to be imprinted on patterns of successive cultures; and to have material

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and nonmaterial expressions that can be retained, recognized and reimagined in today’s landscapes. These are the information sources from which aspects of material and nonmaterial heritage can be constructed in the present day, and have resonance, meaning and significance that link notions of ‘heritage’ to the past. In the British Isles, regional cultural identity and cultural and landscape ‘heritage’ can be expressed in both material and nonmaterial ways. The multiple identities and cultural/landscape heritage of Cornwall, southwest England, have been articulated in many varied ways over millennial time scales (Westland, 1997). These modern(ist) cultural expressions draw from and complement the structure and properties of the surrounding landscape of Cornwall, including its archaeology, ecology, field patterns, geomorphology, topography and geology (Harvey, 2000; Herring, 2009; Laviolette, 2003; Trower, 2009), and are a product of longer-term cultural and landscape changes in Cornwall during the last 2500 years. The interplay between different physical and human factors of the Cornish landscape over time demonstrates a questioning and reimaging of these relationships and a more conscious or deliberate move towards memorialization of iconic landscapes as constructed expressions of a notional ‘heritage’ (Cocks, 2010; Harvey, 2001; Laviolette & Baird, 2011). The importance of such memorialization is made clear by consideration of the future potential impacts of environmental and climatic change on both the physical landscape and the sustainability of cultural heritage in the light of such changes. This ‘anticipatory history’ involves a negotiation between past and present, between physical and human environmental processes, and the consideration of whose histories can or should be told, and how (DeSilvey, Naylor, & Sackett, 2011). This emergent theme in landscape and heritage conservation helps frame the discussions presented in this paper. This paper argues that greater consideration of landscape geomorphological properties and history can deepen our understanding of landscapeecultural relationships and how successive episodes of cultural and heritage manufacture draw from landscape geomorphology. In order to explore these interrelationships with reference to landscapes that have important cultural resonance and sense of heritage today, and which are valued from different cultural perspectives or through different media, this paper discusses the example of Cornwall, southwest England. The Cornwall landscape is considered distinctive from that of adjacent areas, both physically and culturally (Westland, 1997). Importantly, the material and nonmaterial expressions of cultural difference and cultural evolution are shown in today’s landscapes, which allows for a metaanalysis of these cultural expressions, informed by a detailed understanding of the physical properties and evolution of the landscapes of which they are part. This meta-analysis therefore draws forth a more nuanced understanding of landscapeecultural relationships that can inform on the context and derivation of today’s heritage industries in Cornwall (e.g. Cocks, 2010; Laviolette & Baird, 2011; Robb, 1998) and their trajectories in an uncertain future world (DeSilvey, 2012). The aims of this paper are to describe, using two regional examples, relationships between landscape-scale geomorphology, culture and heritage. The regions chosen (Bodmin Moor and West Penwith; Fig. 1) are landscapes that have very strong cultural expressions, developed in particular over the last 100 years through painting, sculpture, literature, oral tradition, design/architecture and technology, but which are set within longer-term patterns of cultural expression including religion, agriculture and archaeology (e.g. Tilley, Hamilton, Harrison, & Anderson, 2000). In detail, this paper (1) describes the geological and geomorphological background of west Cornwall and their evolution particularly during the Tertiary and Quaternary; and (2) outlines

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Fig. 1. (A) Map of Cornwall, southwest England, showing the locations of study areas at Bodmin Moor and west Penwith, and the locations of places named in the text. Gardens named in the text are (1) Trebah, (2) Heligan, (3) Trengwainton, (4) Trewidden. (B) Detail of the west Penwith region with locations named in the text.

the general properties of the culture and heritage of Cornwall. This provides the context for then examining (3) interrelationships between landscape, heritage and culture using examples from Bodmin Moor and West Penwith. (4) The physical and cultural properties of these areas are then critically examined with respect to the ‘heritage industry’ of west Cornwall, and the role of landscape geomorphology in generating, promoting and sustaining this heritage. In this way, the properties of and relationships between geomorphology and cultures of the past are brought into contemporary focus that may help them survive into the future. Geology and physical geography of Cornwall and their implications for human activity The geologic and geomorphic evolution of Cornwall has taken place in several distinct phases and associated with distinctive geologic, climatic and geomorphic conditions and processes that have different spatial as well as temporal expressions. This means that the Cornish landscape is a palimpsest of different physical landscape elements, some of which are entirely relict, some are still

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Fig. 2. Illustration of palimpsest landscapes in west Penwith. Identified elements (and their approximate ages) are: A: granite bedrock (270 million years BP), B: Miocene cliffline and raised beach formed during warm climatic period (23e5.3 million years BP), C: tor formed by Quaternary periglacial weathering (15,000 years BP), D: deforestation (Bronze AgeeMedieval), E: archeological features (Bronze AgeeMedieval), F: settlement patterns (Medieval), G: mining infrastructure (16the19th Centuries), H: field patterns (17th Centuryecontemporary), I: road patterns (Medievalecontemporary), J: vegetation/landscape management (contemporary), K: action of present-day physical processes such as coastal erosion (contemporary).

evolving but at rates very much slower than in the past, and some are very active today (Fig. 2). Regional-scale landscape geomorphology is strongly controlled by the underlying geology (Everard, 1977), including granite batholiths that outcrop at several locations throughout Devon and Cornwall (Selwood, Durrance, & Bristow, 1998). In west Cornwall, individual granite outcrops are relatively resilient and tend to have a higher elevation than surrounding areas which are composed of softer metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. In addition, granite tends to weather into a rounded, low-relief, undulating landscape (Williams, Ternan, & Kent, 1986). The granite batholiths were emplaced around 270e290 million years BP, shortly followed by a period of mineralization in which circulating hot fluids resulting from granite emplacement caused the formation of metalliferous mineral deposits in the surrounding country rocks (Selwood et al., 1998). These deposits include minerals rich in tin, copper, lead, zinc, iron, silver and arsenic (Jackson, Willis-Richards, Manning, & Sams, 1989). Enhanced subsurface weathering of feldspar minerals within the granite by these hot fluids also resulted in formation of massive kaolinite (china clay) deposits (Bray & Spooner, 1983; Exley, 1976). Both tin and china clay mining, in particular between the 18the 20th Centuries, has exerted a profound and pervasive control on socioeconomic and cultural development of the Cornish landscape (Trower, 2009; Westland, 1997). Climate changes during the Tertiary (65e2.6 million years BP) and Quaternary periods (2.6 millione10,000 years BP) resulted in significant changes in sea level and land surface processes which impacted directly on landscape geomorphology. Warm climates during the Tertiary were associated with periods of deep subsurface weathering of the granite, thereby weakening its structure and loosening individual mineral grains and larger blocks from rockhead (Walsh, Atkinson, Boulter, & Shakesby, 1987). Evidence for warm climate conditions during the late Pliocene (5.3e2.6 million years BP) is seen by the presence of unique thermophilous faunal remains at St Erth, west Cornwall (Mitchell et al., 1973). Warm climate conditions during the Miocene (23e5.3 million years BP) is shown by the presence of multiple sets of high-level flat surfaces, interpreted as wave-cut marine platforms, along the north coast of

west Cornwall (Everard, 1977; Walsh et al., 1987). The highest platform (at 131 m in elevation) is laterally continuous along the coastal fringe of the north coast, extends up to 4 km in land, and is backed by a fossil cliffline that can be clearly recognized in today’s landscape (Fig. 2). Although Cornwall was not glaciated by the British ice sheet during the Quaternary period, it was strongly affected by multiple phases of cold-climate weathering (Harrison & Keen, 2005). Evidence for this comes from the exhumation of granite tors, seen throughout southwest England (Linton, 1955; Scourse, 1987), and from enhanced downslope movement of loose surface sediments under solifluction processes. This latter process is shown by the presence of stratified valley-fills located around Cornwall coastal lowlands (e.g. Knight, 2005; Scourse, 1996). Radiometric dating of organic materials interbedded with these valley-fills shows that solifluction was episodic between around 35,000e12,000 years BP (Scourse, 1996). Regionally-extensive wind-blown sediments (loess) are dated by the luminescence technique to around 15,000 years BP, and show that the environment during the last glaciation was cold and dry (Ealey & James, 2011). By comparison, climate and environmental changes during the present Holocene have had limited landscape impact, except in the formation of coastal sand dunes and sand bodies within estuaries, which are important locally but which do not feature in the two regions discussed in this paper. However, disposal and river reworking of anthropogenic mining spoil has had a profound impact on river and estuary sedimentation patterns and water quality (Pirrie et al., 2002; Yim, 1981). These geologic and geomorphic landscape properties have strongly influenced patterns and processes of human activity, and development of culture and, over long time scales. The culture and heritage of Cornwall The material evidence for human occupation in the Cornish landscape comes from the presence of archaeological features (mainly forts, dolmens, standing and inscribed stones), patterns of past and present-day settlements and transport routes, and patterns of land-use and ecosystems. The episodic nature of changes in land surface processes and shifting processes and patterns of human activity since around 6000 years BP (e.g. Caseldine, 1980; Gearey, Charman, & Kent, 2000a; Maltby & Caseldine, 1982) has meant that associated periods of cultural change have also been episodic, with periods of rapid environmental and cultural change tending to take place coevally, which provides the context for a better understanding of the temporalities of landscapeecultural relationships (Massey, 2006; Tilley, 2004a, p. 244). Although human occupation in southwest England is dated from 44,200 to 41,500 years BP (Higham et al., 2011), lithic and palynological evidence from Cornwall suggests widespread lowland occupation from the Neolithic (around 6000e4500 years BP) onwards, and a concentration of Bronze Age activity in upland areas, which is the time period in which most extensive deforestation and land surface change took place (Caseldine, 1980; Maltby & Caseldine, 1982). Exploitation of mineral resources has very profoundly shaped the landscape and sociocultural histories of Cornwall (Orange, 2008). From the Roman period (around 2000 year BP) onwards, mining and export of tin, copper and other metals has linked Cornwall and its culture to the wider world, with production peaking in the 1850se1870s. Before the 17th Century, surficial ore deposits and placer deposits of water-transported tin within rivers (‘tin streaming’) were extensively worked. This resulted in landscapescale changes in geomorphological patterns and sediment supply, as overburden in and adjacent to river courses was moved, forming large and extensive mounds known as burrows. Washing of this overburden into rivers resulted in enhanced river sediment yield,

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the infilling of tidal channels, and altered estuary and coastal environments as tidal patterns and ecosystems responded to this increased sediment supply (Pirrie & Camm, 1999). Later modification of river courses to drive waterwheels and as a resource for steam power has meant that many river valleys that have been affected by mining are now underfit and geomorphically relict. River courses were also canalized in some places (e.g. Copperhouse canal at Hayle, Par canal) and hillsides engineered to accommodate railways. There are no estimates of the volume of material moved by mining in Cornwall but surface mine waste/burrows covers around 4888 ha of the county (Selwood et al., 1998), and extracting one tonne of tin-streamed ore was estimated to produce 4000e 5000 tonnes of waste sediment (Pirrie et al., 2002). Interest in ideas of culture, heritage and their relationships to landscape was most strongly developed in Cornwall during the 19th Century, and today’s interest in Cornish regional heritage and the Cornish landscape as heritage has its origins in this period (Harvey, 2001; Herring, 2009; Naylor, 2003). During the mid-19th Century (Naylor, 2003), new railways (brought to Cornwall between 1859 and 1867), telegraph communications (submarine telegraph cables making landfall at Porthcurno, west Cornwall, from 1870) and rising middle-class wealth from the mining industries contributed to an important period in the reimagining and reconfiguration of Cornish culture and elements of its material expression in the landscape. This included remaking/reconfiguring some archaeological features in the field, such as the Giant’s Quoit, near Camborne, which had its capstone re-erected; rebuilding of a cist within a round barrow at Rillaton, near Liskeard; and realignment of Mên-an-Tol holed stone, near St Ives. Other activities included development of municipal buildings, townscapes and gardens, in particular in Newquay, Truro, Falmouth and Penzance; landscaping and development of important country-house estates and subtropical gardens at Trengwainton, Trewidden, Trebah and Heligan; reshaping of urban landscapes by building of terraced miners’ cottages in rapidly-growing towns such as Camborne and Redruth (Cocks, 2010); renewed interest in myth, legend and the occult, including the purported Court of King Arthur at Tintagel, north Cornwall (Busby & Laviolette, 2012), in particular after the publication of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem cycle Idylls of the King (1856e1885); and the ‘Anglicanization’ of Cornish activities and attitudes that did not fit with prevailing Victorian and imperial mores, as bowdlerized in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance (1879). Elements of this Victorian resurgence of interest in Cornwall are discussed by Robb (1998), Naylor (2003), Busby and Meethan (2008), and Trower (2012). An outcome of these changes, arising from the increased economic power of mining towards the end of the 19th Century, was development of a strong Cornish regional identity, sense of economic and cultural purpose (Busby & Meethan, 2008). This is seen through an increased interest at this time in the Cornish language; founding of educational institutions (e.g. Royal Geological Society, Penzance, 1814; Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro, 1818; Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, Falmouth, 1833); rapid spread of Methodism throughout miners’ communities (Brace, Bailey, & Harvey, 2006); and culture of invention and entrepreneurialism arising from the scientific and technical expertise required to exploit mineral resources, including pioneers such as Richard Trevithick (high-pressure steam engine), William Murdoch (gas lighting), Humphry Davy (safety lamp), and William Bickford (miners’ safety fuse). This emerging sense of Cornish identity and difference from the rest of England, developed from the 19th Century onwards, has resonance in contemporary relationships between landscape geomorphology, culture and heritage (Busby & Meethan, 2008).

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Case studies of geomorphologyeculture and heritage relationships in Cornwall Two examples from different regions of Cornwall are described in order to illustrate the range of material and nonmaterial cultural forms that are found in these landscapes, and the implications of these cultural forms for the construction of heritage. These regions are chosen because they are similar in terms of their bedrock geology and geomorphic development during the late Quaternary and Holocene, but have very different expressions of material and nonmaterial cultural landscape development, which are manifested in different ways and over different time periods. Bodmin Moor Bodmin Moor is an upland area (highest peak at 414 m elevation) in north Cornwall (Fig. 1), underlain by granite bedrock and associated with distinctive geomorphic and cultural landscape elements. Bedrock exposed on hill summits is usually weathered to form rounded tors whose shape is strongly controlled by bedrock joint patterns (Fig. 3A). Angular rock debris, termed clitter, resulting from a combination of cold-climate frost shattering during the Quaternary and Holocene subaerial weathering, is present over hill slopes (Fig. 3B). Summits are separated by wide valleys with underfit rivers. The physical presence of tors in the landscape, and their role in generating loose debris capable

Fig. 3. Photos of the landscapes of Bodmin Moor, north Cornwall. (A) tors with boulder debris (clitter), (B) broad and shallow valleys with clitter on hill slopes. Note the medieval field patterns on the far hillside.

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of moving downslope, has been argued to have been important controls on the selection, use and symbology of tor sites between the Neolithic and Bronze Age (Tilley, 1996; Tilley et al., 2000). For example, loose surface boulders were reused through processes of realignment, stacking/building and clearance, forming structures such as stone circles and standing stones that have resonance and meaning in the landscape. An important question is why particular stones were chosen to be moved whereas others were not, and therefore the ambiguity of such evidence both in terms of identifying cultural imprints and interpreting or deconstructing humanelandscape relationships (Tilley et al., 2000). Such landscapes have been termed ‘cryptic cultural landscapes’, where human impacts are important but without leaving a clear material expression (Macdonald & Macdonald, 2009). Human modification of a clitter-covered, tor summit has likely both material and nonmaterial significance because of the skyline location of tor summits and the expression of power, ownership and ceremony that this positioning conveys (Tilley, 1996, 2004b). Palynological evidence shows that Bodmin Moor started to be deforested around 6500 years BP during the Mesolithic (Gearey, Charman, & Kent, 2000b), in which dense oak and hazel woodland was replaced by lower-density alder and hazel. An initial period of deforestation and land-use change during the Mesolithic and early Neolithic was followed by a hiatus in the later Neolithic in which human activity was focused on lowland river valleys rather than on the moor itself (Maltby & Caseldine, 1982). During the Bronze Age, renewed upland activity took place, broadly corresponding to transition to a grassland environment around 4000 years BP (Gearey et al., 2000a), and evidence for the presence of hut structures and field systems at this time (Tilley, 1996). The timing of abandonment of this pastoral system is uncertain, but may not have taken place until the later Iron Age or RomanoBritish period (Gearey et al., 2000a). During the Medieval period, palynological evidence suggests continued deforestation and cereal cultivation (Gearey, West, & Charman, 1997). It is notable that this time period corresponds with renewed river sediment aggradation, resulting from tin streaming within and around the margins of upland areas in Devon and Cornwall (Thorndycraft, Pirrie, & Brown, 2004), but climatic factors and increased population pressure leading to moorland erosion are also likely factors. The palimpsest landscapes of Bodmin Moor, identified through archaeological and palynological evidence, show the changing structure, function and significance of the moor’s physical environment over millennial time scales. It is notable that the impacts and significance of human activity are marked by their absence rather than their presence: a treeless landscape with surface patterns of granite boulders that retain a memory of presence. This viewpoint of Bodmin Moor landscapes echoes some key themes in cultural geography that emphasize the palimpsest of memory, loss, remembrance and the preservation of fragmentary objects (e.g. DeSilvey, 2007; Laviolette, 2003). Bodmin Moor is also redolent of the imagination, which can be interpreted as the conjouring-up of past memories of place. Novelist Daphne du Maurier, living in nearby Fowey on the south coast of Cornwall, used the moor and Cornish coast as settings for parts of her novels, including Jamaica Inn (1936), Rebecca (1938) and Frenchman’s Creek (1941). The wildness, sense of darkness and foreboding associated with the moor, including the ‘granite sky’ in the opening of Jamaica Inn, are parallelled by the unstable and intense human emotions and crises described in the novels (Light, 1991). These psychosocial relationships between the physical environment and the imagination also bear resonance today in the mythology of the ‘Beast of Bodmin’, a large cat allegedly living wild on the moor.

West Penwith The West Penwith region is located west of St Ives and Penzance in extreme west Cornwall (Fig. 1). This region is underlain by the Land’s End granite whose emplacement was associated with mineralization in surrounding country rocks, in particular in the St Just area which was a centre of mining activity (Müller et al., 2006). Along the north coast between St Ives and St Just, granite tors are present on hill summits (Fig. 4), including Watch Croft, the highest peak in west Cornwall at 252 m elevation. A significant high-level Tertiary marine surface is present around this coastline (Fig. 2), which has been incised by narrow but deep and steep-sided river valleys (Everard, 1977) that terminate at steep, rocky cliffs. The West Penwith region has a similar geomorphological history to Bodmin Moor, but the absence of peat records has meant that Holocene ecological and climatic changes are poorly known (Caseldine, 1980). Granite uplands in West Penwith show ancient field patterns that vary in age from Iron Age to Medieval. Field boundaries are marked by Cornish hedges, which are wide, stonebuilt walls with loose earth infilling the wall cavity into which native small trees and shrubs grow (Rackham, 1986). A high concentration of archaeological sites of different ages including standing and inscribed stones, burial chambers and hillforts (Tilley & Bennett, 2001), and the preserved evidence for historic landscape patterns, has resulted in distinctive landscape types that reflect this geologic and anthropogenic inheritance (Herring, 2009). Historically-important tin mine sites at Levant, Botallack and Geevor are located in West Penwith (Fig. 1) and produced tin commercially from at least the 17th Century. By the 19th Century, workings at the Levant mine extended up to 1.5 km distance from pithead and 600 m depth under the sea bed. Continuous production from the last mine in the area, at Geevor, stopped in 1986. This mine site was reopened as a museum by Cornwall County Council in 1993, and is the largest preserved tin mining site in Europe (Fig. 5A). At Morvah, the Iron Age hillfort of Chûn Castle occupies a prominent landscape position. The hillfort is circular and comprised of two ditcherampart structures that enclose an elevated inner area in which walls of earlier huts have been found. It is likely that the outermost structure was built during the 2nde 3rd Centuries BC, and reoccupied several times to at least the 5the 6th Centuries AD. Three stone platforms located against the rampart walls within the structure were erected in the later 19th Century for open-air meetings held by Nonconformist preachers. The adjacent Chûn Quoit is a portal dolmen chamber tomb that,

Fig. 4. Photo of a typical tor summit in west Penwith.

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Fig. 6. Photo of Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture Dual Form (1965), outside the Guildhall in St Ives. (image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DSCN1791DualFormStIves. jpg).

Fig. 5. Photos of the landscapes of west Penwith, west Cornwall. (A) view of the pithead at Geevor mine, (B) Chûn Quoit.

unusually, retains its 3 m-wide capstone, and is dated to around 5400e4500 years BP (Fig. 5B). Mên-an-Tol, a holed stone set with two uprights, is also located in this area. Although the significance of the holed stone is uncertain, it is likely that the structure is originally Bronze Age but has probably been repositioned and the stones reused several times (Preston-Jones, 1993), believed most recently to have been during the 19th Century. Landscape geomorphology and archaeology in West Penwith have exerted a strong control on sense-of-place, the imagination, and regional identity, which is manifested in different material and nonmaterial ways. The St Ives School of early 20th Century art, including the local artists Arthur Caddick and Peter Lanyon, and the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, draws heavily from the local landscape. Hepworth, based in St Ives, drew inspiration from both Neolithic archaeological structures in the surrounding landscape and the forms and textures of granite tors, which can be seen clearly in the structure of important bronze pieces such as Rock Form (Porthcurno) (1964) and Family of Man (1970) (Fig. 6). However, Hepworth was also concerned that commentators should not over-interpret the modernist form of such pieces with respect to the physical environment of West Penwith (Causey, 2008). Lanyon’s landscape paintings, drawings and sculpture more clearly show the inspiration of the West Penwith tors, coastline and archaeological structures (Causey, 2006). Lanyon derived this knowledge through rockclimbing and gliding, viewing the landscape from different angles and in different weather, through which he was able to question the positionality of the human and built environments with respect to

the physical landscape (Crouch & Toogood, 1999). In an article called The Face of Penwith (1950), Lanyon vividly described the interconnecting landscapeehuman relationships of west Cornwall: ‘. the coastline emerges out of carns and bracken and cultivated greenland, revealing on its varied faces a sea history and a land history of men within and without and a commerce of man with the weather. Here, in a small stretch of headland, cove and Atlantic adventure the most distant histories are near the surface as if the final convulsion of rock upheaval and cold incision setting in a violent sandwich of strata had directed the hide and seek of celtic pattern.’ (Lanyon, 1950, p.43) A similar Celtic vision of West Penwith was also put forward by D.H. Lawrence in his novel Kangaroo (1923) following his experiences of living in the region in 1915e1917 (Westland, 2002). Lanyon argued that the ‘land history of men’ arises from and is interconnected with the supernatural and elemental forces of geology, ocean and weather, where ‘in commerce of man with granite and Atlantic the transitory is made immediate, each facet related elementally to the next as aspect and image of a whole’ (p.45). The West Penwith region has a rich history of folklore and superstition, in particular around Zennor, and was described by Hunt (1908). This includes stories of giants, fairies or piskies, mermaids, witches, demons and spectres, and traditions associated with hillforts and stones. Hunt (1908) described a number of different cultural interpretations of landscape features based around the supernatural; for example, how tors and stone structures were variously attributed to giants, Druidical altars, witches and fairies. Superstitions are also associated with these structures. For example, of Mên-an-Tol, Hunt (1908, p.176) said: ‘If scrofulous children are passed naked through the Mên-an-tol three times, and

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then drawn on the grass three times against the sun, it is felt by the faithful that much has been done towards insuring a speedy cure. Even men and women who have been afflicted with spinal diseases, or who have suffered from scrofulous taint, have been drawn through this magic stone, which all declare still retains its ancient virtues.’ (Italics in original.) It is likely that such folklore, oral traditions, superstition and belief in the presence of the supernatural are in part founded on the wildness, exposure and unpredictable weather of upland summits and adjacent north Cornwall coast (cf. Laviolette, 2003). Giants, fairies and witches are viewed as malevolent forces of untamed and primeval environments that are at work against vulnerable human subjects. Tilley and Bennett (2001) set these mystical relationships between external agents and human activity in a wider context, arguing that the landscape geomorphology of West Penwith was a resource-base used during the NeolithiceIron Age periods, when archaeological structures were built in the region, and where the elemental forces of the landscape were used as a metaphor for mystical and supernatural beliefs. Tilley and Bennett argued that the positioning, building and longevity of hillforts, cairns and other structures have a symbolic cultural value through their mimicry of natural landforms such as tors and cliffs. From this argument, it might be inferred that a sense of landscape heritage may arise from both the materiality of construction and the symbolic value of the context of this construction in the landscape. Thus, distinctions between the natural and built, nature and human activity, become blurred (e.g. Tilley et al., 2000). Discussion Landscape-scale geomorphology provides the backdrop for development of human activity and cultural practice over long time periods. The examples of Bodmin Moor and West Penwith illustrate changing and symbiotic landscapeehuman relationships since around 6000 years BP. These relationships highlight the spatiallyand temporally-variable nature of landscape and human changes, yielding a present-day landscape pattern that is a palimpsest of these physical and human (material and cultural) elements (Bailey, 2007; Wu, 2010). In detail, Bodmin Moor and West Penwith are exemplars of Cornish districts that have both a real (geographical and geomorphological) and imagined identity (e.g. Laviolette, 2003). Whilst the cultural processes contributing to Cornish identity have been often discussed (e.g. Busby & Laviolette, 2012), it is pertinent to note that the landscape geomorphological properties contributing to this/these identity/identities are usually considered to be immutable, almost metaphysical, and operating at a distance from and not interacting with the scope of landscape and heritage management. This viewpoint has been recently challenged through discussion of the effects of ongoing climate and environmental change on everyday cultural objects (cattlegrids, a harbour) and the ways in which these objects are framed by those who interact with them (DeSilvey, 2012; Leyshon & Geoghegan, 2012). This ‘anticipatory history’ has an outcome of bringing landscape change into focus, and using this sharpened view to construct a narrative of landscapeecultural relationships that can inform future landscape and heritage management (DeSilvey, 2012; DeSilvey et al., 2011). In so doing, uncertain futures, which thus impact on our views of the past, can be better problematized and enacted (Anderson, 2010). The concept of ‘anticipatory history’ can be considered with respect to issues of geomorphology, culture and heritage in Cornwall. The example of ‘Celtic-Arthuriana’ in the heritage industry at Tintagel can be used as a counterpoint to this ‘anticipatory history’. Orange and Laviolette (2010) described how different histories, cultures and identities are conflated at Tintagel, in which the presentation of ‘Celtic-Arthuriana’ is mediated by aspects of the physical environment, including the rocky coastline and ruined

castle. It is notable that visitors’ different sensory and emotional experiences, and presentation of the real and the (re)imagined, give rise to unsatisfactory and conflicting notions of heritage at this site (Robb, 1998). The concept of ‘anticipatory history’ could therefore be seen as a rejection of the memorialization of landscapes as constructed expressions of a notional and consensual ‘heritage’ (Cocks, 2010; Harvey, 2001; Laviolette & Baird, 2011). With this in mind, it is interesting to consider the ‘heritage’ and sociocultural themes of contemporary Cornwall, and to consider whether these themes better reflect the historicism of a ‘Celtic-Arthurian’ past or the imminence of ‘anticipatory history’. Contemporary views of the culture and heritage of Cornwall Relationships between the physical environment, culture, heritage and identity in Cornwall have long been discussed. Daphne du Maurier in her book Vanishing Cornwall (du Maurier, 1967) attributed the perceived loss of Cornish identity to an increase in tourism and to other outside economic and social forces. However, this viewpoint asserts that tourism necessarily dilutes notions of identity and heritage, whereas the opposite may be actually the case (Busby & Laviolette, 2012). Tourism contributed £1.076 bn/year to the Cornwall economy in 2008e10 (Cornwall Council, 2012). In recent surveys (2011) for the tourism body Visit Cornwall, 67% of respondents (n ¼ 1010) considered that the Cornish language was a positive cultural element of their visit experience, and 51% were aware of the local Cornish/Celtic culture (Cornwall Visitor Survey, 2011). Key to tourism as an industry has been the role of water sports and surfing (Laviolette, 2006), opening of the Eden Project’s enclosed artificial biomes (in 2001) near St Austell, and the Tate St Ives art gallery (in 1993). Whilst these may be considered to be looking forward towards an ‘anticipatory history’, including an emphasis at the Eden Project on biodiversity, sustainability and climate change, inscription of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape as a World Heritage Site (in 2006) could be argued to be looking backwards towards a memorialized past. This mining region was nominated by UNESCO as a Cultural Landscape under Category II of the Guidelines on the Inscription of Specific Types of Properties on the World Heritage List, namely, as an ‘organically evolved landscape’ in which the ‘relict (or fossil) landscape is one in which an evolutionary process came to an end at some time in the past.[but].. Its significant distinguishing features are. still visible in material form.’ Part of the justification for inscription comes through the built industrial archaeological heritage (Orange, 2008), including the presence of intact engine houses, beam engines, winding engines, pump engines, calciners, and associated infrastructure (canals, railways), settlements (miners’ villages, smallholdings, large houses and estates) and industries (foundries, smelters, engineering works) (Cocks, 2010). One consequence of this inscription is that it implies that contemporary landscape and human processes are perhaps incompatible with maintenance of a ‘relict landscape’, but that a landscape that is in ‘organic evolution’ should not discriminate against these contemporary processes. A recent development (November 2012) is that UNESCO has warned that the World Heritage Site designation could be at risk should renewed mining at South Crofty mine, near Camborne, take place. (The current high price of metals has meant that former mines could now be economically viable.) Thus, there is tension between past and present, between landscape geomorphic and cultural change, and how these elements can or should be reconciled in a present and future heritage of Cornwall (Anderson, 2010; Cocks, 2010). Contemporary views of the culture and heritage of Cornwall, and their origins in a Neolithic, or a ‘Celtic-Arthurian’, or a Victorian imperial past, mirror the geomorphological palimpsest that

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grounds these views in the Cornish landscape. It is therefore through the lens of the landscape that culture and heritage are glimpsed. Conclusions The landscapes of Cornwall, southwest England, are ideal for exploring relationships between landscape/geomorphology and culture/heritage because the physical geography and geology of this region has profoundly affected the processes and patterns of human activity e and how this activity has expression in the landscape e for at least the last 2500 years. Moreover, this expression is both material and nonmaterial, and forms part of an ongoing narrative of reinvention, rediscovery and reimagining that has made Cornwall and its peoples and cultures considered distinct from those of the rest of England. In particular, culture and heritage in Cornwall are best set within a landscape geomorphological context, because of the important economic role that geology (tin and china clay mining) and geomorphology (landscape and tourism) have played in Cornwall’s development in the past and present day (Westland, 1997). The consideration of landscape geomorphology has implications for present and future patterns, processes and values of Cornwall’s material and nonmaterial heritage. First, a greater understanding of climate change and landscape evolution of the past can better contextualize coeval human responses, including the construction of archaeological sites and their cultural meaning. Second, ongoing climate change will have uncertain impacts on landscape geomorphology and ecology, the preservation of heritage features, and the values and meanings that are ascribed to them by future generations (Leyshon & Geoghegan, 2012). This will pose problems for the sustainability of material heritage, as well as how nonmaterial cultures and narratives are negotiated in the light of these problems. References Anderson, B. (2010). Preemption, precaution, preparedness: anticipatory action and future geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(6), 777e798. Bailey, G. (2007). Time perspectives, palimpsests and the archaeology of time. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 26(2), 198e223. Brace, C., Bailey, A. R., & Harvey, D. C. (2006). Religion, place and space: a framework for investigating historical geographies of religious identities and communities. Progress in Human Geography, 30(1), 28e43. Bray, C. J., & Spooner, E. T. C. (1983). Sheeted vein Sn-W mineralization and greisenization associated with economic kaolinization, Goonbarrow china clay pit, St. Austell, Cornwall, England: geologic relationships and geochronology. Economic Geology, 78(6), 1064e1089. Busby, G., & Laviolette, P. (2012). Authenticating belief and identity: the visitor and Celtic Christianity in Cornwall. International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 2(2), 164e183. Busby, G., & Meethan, K. (2008). Cultural capital in Cornwall e heritage and the visitor. Cornish Studies, 16, 146e166. Caseldine, C. J. (1980). Environmental change in Cornwall during the last 13,000 years. Cornish Archaeology, 19, 3e17. Caseldine, C. J., & Turney, C. (2010). The bigger picture: towards integrating palaeoclimate and environmental data with a history of societal change. Journal of Quaternary Science, 25(1), 88e93. Causey, A. (2006). Peter Lanyon. Modernism and the land. London: Reaktion Books. Causey, A. (2008). Barbara Hepworth, prehistory and the Cornish landscape. Sculpture Journal, 17(2), 9e22. Cocks, A. (2010). Preservation of world heritage mining settlements in Cornwall. InProceedings of the institution of civil engineers, municipal engineer, 163 (pp. 169e178). Cornwall Council. (2012). TourismAvailable from http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/ default.aspx?page¼31866. last updated 12.07.12. Cornwall Visitor Survey. (2011). Final report, April 2012Available from http://www. visitcornwall.com/sites/default/files/generic_files/CVS%202011%20-%20FINAL% 20REPORT.pdf. accessed 30.10.12. Crouch, D., & Toogood, M. (1999). Everyday abstraction: geographical knowledge in the art of Peter Lanyon. Ecumene, 6(1), 72e89. DeSilvey, C. (2007). Salvage memory: constellating material histories on a hardscrabble homestead. Cultural Geographies, 14(3), 401e424.

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