Beyond the Action - a contextual introduction This paper reflects a line of thought that became increasingly central to COST A27 as it proceeded. One of the successes of LANDMARKS was the manner in which its participants’ conceptualisation of landscape has grown and expanded during its course. One example, reaching a maturity of discussion in the closing conference in Iceland, has been the attention paid to the social role of landscape, and to landscape as a bridge between past and future. Landscape came to be recognised during the Action not merely as the result of historical processes, but additionally, and perhaps mainly, as a contemporary social construction that is permanently changing, and that is both plural and personal. Research on historic landscape is a present-day issue that illuminates the future; landscape connects pasts and futures.