Landscapes Under Pressure: Theory and Practice of Cultural Heritage Research and Preservation

ISBN-13: 9780387284606 / Angielski / Twarda / 2006 / 259 str.

Ludomir Lozny

Opis

LUDOMIR R. LOZNY Hunter College This book has a long history. In December 1998 I organized a two-day international symposium at Hunter College, New York to discuss issues related to research and preservation of cultural landscapes. The symposium was sponsored by a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and co-sponsored by the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization and the Department of Anthropology, Hunter College, CUNY, New York. Several scholars from the USA and Europe accepted my invitation to participate. Problems discussed oscillated around the idea of cultural landscapes and issues related to identifying, researching and preserving cultural landscapes. Among most frequently asked questions were: What constitutes cultural landscapes? How do we recognize cultural landscapes? How do we define cultural landscapes? The concept of cultural landscape has been discussed by human geographers, historians, archaeologists, environmentalists, pres- vationists, etc. The consensus was that cultural landscapes are multivocal and incorporate elements which are generally classified in two groups: tangible empirical evidence of human behavior, and intangible, not always recognized symbolic meanings. It is worth keeping in mind that in addition to all material evidence, the most appealing identification of cultural landscapes (or places) includes memories and variety of meanings. Landscapes under Pressure presents ideas and pragmatics applied to research and preservation of tangible manifestations of cultural landscapes, but it also points out the significance of their nonmaterial elements. The approach to investigate and preserve cultural resources is known as culture resource management (CRM)."

Spis treści

Theory.- Place, Problem, and People: Issues in Interdisciplinary Cooperation.- Place, Historical Ecology and Cultural Landscape: New Directions for Applied Archaeology.- The Colonial Southwest: Pueblo Landscapes and Spanish Shared and Separate Landscapes.- A New Landscape for Cultural Heritage Management: Characterisation as a Management Tool.- The Idea of the Site: History, Heritage, and Locality in Community Archaeology.- Methodology and Practice.- Changing Places: A Cultural Geography of Nineteenth-Century Zuni, New Mexico.- Envisioning Future Landscapes in the Environmentally Sensitive Areas of Scotland: An Introduction.- Critical Data for Understanding Early Central European Farmers.- Alternative Archaeologies of the Cold War: The Preliminary Results of Fieldwork at the Greenham and Nevada Peace Camps.- Archaeological Practice in Large Transportation-Related Corridors: The I-270 Archaeological Mitigation Project.- Legal, Economic and Political Constrains of Cultural Heritage Preservation Programs.- Private Sector Archaeology: Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?.- Protection, Maintenance and Enhancement of Cultural Landscapes in Changing Social, Political and Economical Reality in Poland.- Cultural Heritage Preservation and the Legal System With Specific Reference to Landscapes.

Blurb

There is a growing realization that human intent and activity are not easily separated from natural forces in the shaping of landscapes. The pervasive Western dichotomy of culture and nature has proved to be a poor basis for scientific research and long-term environmental management. Humans have been major factors in environmental change for thousands of years using fire, intensive hunting and a wide range of agricultural strategies to transform most ecosystems on the earth long before the Industrial Revolution. All these activites contribute to the making of cultural landscapes which incorporate elements generally classified in two groups: tangible empirical evidence of human behavior, and intangible, symbolic meanings.

This book investigates the newly emerging scope of interests and project agendas to investigate and preserve cultural landscapes. It presents the historic, archaeological, ethnographic, and environmental traditions of cultural landscape study and the attempts to reconstruct and analyze the complex processes of cultural changes through prehistoric and historic times.

The "guiding light" of the book is that the fullest understanding of a cultural landscape will materialize through interdisciplinary cooperation, which should involve an ecological approach with historical ecology as the guiding tool, applied archaeology, and environmental planning. The book addresses issues of interest to policymakers-makers and planners and those who investigate cultural landscapes.