Time, Space, and the Geographic Past: A Prospectus for Historical Geography

Abstract

As THE GEOGRAPHY of the United States has changed dramatically over the course of the past half century, so too has American academic geography developed anew. Not only has the factual content of the field changed but, more important, the basic viewpoints of geography and the analytical tools of the discipline have evolved. New questions are being asked. How does man perceive his environment and thus define resource alternatives? How do resource perceptions change with time? Given environmental management responses, how do men distribute themselves and their activities in earth space, and how do these distributions change? How does human spatial behavior relate to social interaction? In large measure the principal thrust of academic geography remains the discovery of spatial order as geographers analyze spatial relationships developed between phenomena distributed in earth space; but this modern-day geographical exploration has come to embrace the particular consideration of academic history as well.1 Geographers are no longer content to study spatial relationship in its static sense but are focusing increasingly on spatial change through time. Accordingly, geographers are expanding their concern with time as well as with space.2 It is my intent in this essay to review briefly the orientation of human