Ethnophysiography

This chapter provides an overview of recent progress in the research field of ethnophysiography. It provides a summary of two case studies, one with the Yindjibarndi people from northwestern Australia, and the other with the Diné from southwestern United States of America. The main findings to date from these studies are that most basic terms for landscape features in each of these languages do not have a one-to-one equivalence with any landscape term in English. The findings point to key research issues in the way to which landscape is referred to in different languages. To facilitate this transdisciplinary research, an initial descriptive model is presented, which includes key observed differences in the way languages treat landscape and also a set of factors which might be considered as possible reasons for such differences.