Human conceptions of landscape have influenced the shaping of landscapes as much as landscape configurations have modelled human perceptions. In this article a new theoretical approach to long-term cumulative landscape change is tested on the Garraf Massif (Baix Llobregat, north-eastern Spain). Thanks to its ancient occupation, physical character and location near to the city of Barcelona, the area provides a good illustration of how humaninduced landscape change has shaped new, and sometimes conflicting, landscape perceptions. These perceptions then play an equally active role in altering the previously ‘inherited landscape’in a long-term cyclical process that can be studied through the combined use of historical, palaeoenvironmental and archaeological records.