The cultural landscape characteristics of traditional villages in Southeast Guizhou: An analysis conducted on the basis of village names

Abstract There exists a strong correlation between place names and cultural landscapes, with traditional village cultural landscapes encompassing both tangible landscape elements and intangible cultural relationships that are highly summarized by village names. This paper employs place names as a means to investigate the distinctive characteristics of the cultural landscape in traditional villages located in southeast Guizhou. By classifying, collecting, and analyzing the place names of 415 traditional villages, the following findings were obtained: (1) The traditional village cultural landscapes exhibit prominent features of ethnic diversity. (2) The traditional village cultural landscapes resonate with the surrounding natural environment. (3) The traditional village cultural landscapes are abundant in historical and cultural structure information. Through semantic comprehension of place names and analysis of historical data, diverse interpretive approaches can be applied to comprehensively comprehend the intricacies inherent within the traditional village cultural landscape, thereby facilitating its scientific preservation and sustainable development.