Landscape Mythology

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Landscape mythology and anthropology of landscape (Landschaftsmythologie, Landschaftsethnologie) are terms for a field of study advocated since about 1990 by Kurt Derungs (born 1962 in St. Gallen). Derungs describes the field as an interdisciplinary approach to landscape combining archaeology, ethnology and mythology. Derungs interprets landscape features in terms of "totemism, shamanism and matriarchal mythology," claiming that his approach qualifies as neither esotericism nor as positivism but as a "sound alternative" to both. His interpretations are strongly influenced by the hypothesis of a matriarchal structure of society and a cult of the Great Goddess in Neolithic Europe, and he associates megalithic monuments and elements of traditional fairy tales with these ideas.