RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The Kirk Street Agents' House, Lowell, Massachusetts: Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Historic Landscape
JF Landscape Journal
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 143
OP 155
DO 10.3368/lj.12.2.143
VO 12
IS 2
A1 Gerald K. Kelso
YR 1993
UL http://lj.uwpress.org/content/12/2/143.abstract
AB Most historical landscape studies are based on documents, photographs, and analysis of the present vegetation on the study site. Such landscape histories are rarely complete and are usually confined to the formal, public portions of residential settings. Multidisciplinary landscape studies involving paleobotanical research can yield significant information about the nature of the vegetation and human land-use practices in utilitarian plots and small or private spaces for which data are not otherwise available. Such studies can alsojqll gaps in the documentary and photographic record by providing a continuous register of changes in the kind and relative density of vegetation on a plot and can provide ground cover details not evident in historical photographs. The application of the multidisciplinary approach is illustrated here in a study of the 19th and 20th century landscape at the Kirk Street agents' house, Lowell, Massachusetts.