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Carl Sauer (1889–1975), a contemporary of Maitland, professor of geography at the University of Berkeley and one of the leading figures in the development of historical geography, further disseminated Meitzen’s work and promoted the idea of “a picture of the former cultural landscape concealed behind the present one”, which could be read by anyone with the right keys (Sauer and Leighly 1963, p. 367).

The idea of the palimpsest is helpful as a metaphor for understanding the coexistence of new and ancient forms in a landscape. The French geographer Paul Vidal de La Blache used the term in the sense of an accumulation:

Big industry has upset conditions in central and western Europe during the last century. A thousand years of history had made […] erasures on the record of populationssss1 [original: Ce peuplement s’offrait déjà comme un palimpseste sur lequel dix siècles d’histoire avaient inscrit bien des ratures]. Draining of marshes and clearing of forests were continually adding new touches to the original background. […] But when the industrial age began, it gave birth to a whole new set of human establishments. And yet, the primitive core of the population can still be discovered. On positive evidence it can be stated that men, here as elsewhere, persisted in assembling in certain places rather than in others. (Vidal de La Blache 1926, pp. 61–62, our italics)