ABSTRACT
Lanzarote is one of the Canary Islands, the volcanic archipelago in the eastern Atlantic Ocean off the coast of north-west Africa. This chapter seeks to provide an archaeological and historical perspective on this transformation and to reconstruct medieval and later landscapes lost beneath the lava, tephra falls and pyroclastic flows of the 18th century. Finally, ethnography may provide another useful avenue of research. Even if the catastrophic events occurred so far back in time that no eyewitnesses or their accounts survive, oral traditions, cultural and symbolic representations, rites and beliefs related to space or events may still preserve some information. In the historical and traditional accounts, however, the seemingly ‘blank’ landscape of the north-western part of Lanzarote is usually avoided altogether or else referred to only in the most general terms.
