Essentially Cultural: Perspectives on Landscape from Europe

Abstract

This paper offers a perspective on cultural landscape from a European viewpoint and from the background of an archaeologist grounded in heritage practice. The perspective is illustrated in the British method of historic landscape characterization and the work of the CHeriScape network investigating the synergy between landscape and heritage. It is framed not by UNESCO World Heritage documents but by the Florence European Landscape Convention (ELC) and the Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Faro Convention). Together these conventions posit new ways of using the concept of landscape in its most essential cultural form as one of the most significant ways in which people construct place-based identities and understand their interactions with each other and the environment. Landscape can help society address major global challenges such as climate change, numerous forms of globalization, and social change in order to move towards more culturally-sensitive and sustainable practices.