Past and present cultures perceive their natural landscape as an integral and vital component of their complex worlds, while particular landscape features and associated monuments built in selected locales become sacred and revered through stories, legends and rituals embedded in mundane and ceremonial events. The hyper-arid Har Tzuriaz area in the southern Negev, Israel, offers a case study of culture-geographic continuities over a chronologically cumulative archaeological sequence. The large set of well-preserved structures located adjacent to water sources, a massive escarpment and a major desert crossroads includes campsites, cult sites, rock-art sites, cairn fields and one desert kite (a large game trap). Cultural continuities and change can be traced from the sixth millennium bce through recent times, reflecting a dynamic system of meanings and interpretations of both the natural and the built landscape within one particular sacred area in the desert. These phenomena are exemplified in archaeological analyses of an open-air shrine, burial cairns, an isolated desert kite and a precise engraving of that kite dated 5000 years later, all in the general context of a dense concentration of surveyed sites.

过去和现在的文化将自然景观视为复杂世界不可或缺的重要组成部分，而在选定地点建造的特定景观特征和相关纪念碑通过嵌入平凡和仪式活动的故事、传说和仪式而变得神圣和受人尊敬。以色列内盖夫南部极度干旱的 Har Tzuriaz 地区为按时间顺序累积的考古序列提供了文化地理连续性的案例研究。一大片保存完好的建筑位于水源、巨大的悬崖和主要的沙漠十字路口附近，包括露营地、邪教遗址、岩石艺术遗址、石标场和一个沙漠风筝（一个大型游戏陷阱）。文化的连续性和变迁可以追溯到公元前六千年到近代，反映了沙漠中某一特定神圣区域内自然景观和建筑景观的动态意义和解释系统。这些现象在对露天神社、墓葬石标、孤立的沙漠风筝以及 5000 年后该风筝的精确雕刻的考古分析中得到了例证，所有这些都是在密集的调查地点的总体背景下进行的。