Historic Cultural Landscapes Research Articles

Scottish upland forests: History lessons for the future

This paper sets out to show how historical and cultural land-use in the Scottish Highlands has influenced the development, distribution, structure and composition of upland forests. It challenges the widely accepted Victorian perception of a Highland “wilderness”, with an alternative view of a more populated pastoral landscape that prevailed prior to the Highland clearances. There is evidence that from the 11th century, the Scottish uplands were occupied by people who were managing the land and the vegetation to meet the needs of their pastoral way of life. The breeding and movement of livestock was essential to that way of life, and can be traced back as far as historical records exist. The evidence shows that this pastoral lifestyle, which involved seasonal transhumance, was practiced right across Scotland. It is therefore unlikely that any surviving remnant woodland in the uplands has escaped the influence of grazing management at some point in its history. Three case study areas are examined. These areas have been chosen to illustrate variants of historic transhumance and agriculture; known in Scotland as the shieling system. Cultural, historical and biological records from the three case study areas are related to the surviving woodland remnants. Historic place names have been investigated to give an indication of previous land-use and vegetation. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques have been used to make comparisons between open woodlands on historic maps with present day canopy cover. Within the case study areas, the remnants of historic cultural landscapes with associated vegetation, large open-grown veteran trees and species-rich upland pastures, are related to their historical land-use origins. This paper suggests that consideration of these historical origins can help inform a better understanding of Scotland's landscape heritage and ecology, and should be taken into account in the planning and management of future landscape restoration in the Scottish Highlands.

False, cheap and degraded: when history, economy and environment collided at Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Great Smoky Mountains National Park was created in 1934 after decades of popular activism. The National Park Service initially planned to restore wildness to all formerly settled lands through the process of secondary succession, but did not in a valley in the northwest corner of the park, Cades Cove. Transforming the 1200-ha agricultural setting into forest would have eliminated the visual charm highly prized by the tourists who had long come there. Additionally, experts promoted the preservation of Cades Cove's historic–cultural landscape because they falsely perceived the local culture to be a relic of the past. The Park Service acceded, but its commitment to historic preservation was tempered by a concern to minimize its expenses. Consequently, an agricultural permit system was adopted in 1945, which allowed modern farmers to operate on the historic landscape, keeping it open. This cheap method kept open the beautiful vistas of Cades Cove. Unfortunately, the agency's commitment to beauty and economy led to decades of ecological degradation, including water pollution and species extirpation. Only in the last two decades, has park management moved away from its focus on a low-cost, attractive landscape to embrace one that is also ecologically healthy, and thus more sustainable.

Origin and temporal development of macro‐scale vegetation patterns in the cultural landscape of Denmark

Summary 1 Since the introduction of agriculture, 4000 bc, the Danish region has witnessed a change from almost complete woodland cover to the landscapes present at ad 1800 that were dominated by heathland, cultivated areas, grassland or patchy woodland. We used a combination of pollen records and landscape data to identify the timing and major pathways of this land‐cover transformation. 2 Pollen assemblages dated to about ad 1800 were collected from 20 Danish lakes with a median size of 26 ha. Fossil pollen records for the interval 4500 bc − ad 1800 were compiled from 11 of these 20 sites and divided into 11 time units corresponding to major archaeological periods. 3 Land cover around the 20 sites was digitized from historical maps, dating from the same period as the pollen assemblages. Percentage cover of woodland, heathland, wetland and agricultural land within 2‐ and 5‐km radii were calculated (calculations were also made within 10‐ and 20‐km radii for woodland). Environmental data within 5 km of each site were collected from soil, geological and topographical maps. 4 The ad 1800 pollen assemblages formed three clusters characterized by either a dominance (> 20%) of Calluna (group A), a dominance (> 10%) of Fagus (group B) and a dominance of Poaceae with Fagus < 10% and Calluna < 20% (group C). Respectively, these clusters correspond well to sites where heathland is the dominant land cover, where it has a strong woodland element and where agricultural land is dominant with little, if any, woodland or heathland. 5 Direct and indirect ordinations suggest that the main variation in the pollen assemblages from the 20 sites is related to gradients in soil clay content and in the degree of landscape openness. Land‐cover data from within a 2‐km radius account for almost as much of the variation in pollen data as do land‐cover data from within a 5‐km radius. 6 Indirect ordinations of ad 1800 samples with the fossil records as passive samples reveal that long‐term records from cluster B sites (the ‘1800 woodland type’) show little landscape variation through time. Samples from cluster C sites (the ‘1800 agricultural area type’) show the same starting point as cluster B but their development diverge to more open landscapes. Cluster A sites (the ‘1800 heathland type’) either develop directly from rather wooded landscapes to heathland or by heathland expansion after initial development towards landscapes producing cluster C type pollen assemblages. 7 Chord distances between the ad 1800 sample and the (pre)historic samples at 10 long‐term sites strongly suggest that the between‐site variation in land‐cover characteristic of the early 19th century was already in existence by 1000 bc. Direct ordination of the fossil samples using woodland cover at ad 1800 as an environmental variable and soil clay content as a covariable also indicates that the macro‐scale land‐cover patterns of the historical cultural landscape in Denmark has been present for more than 3000 years.

Making Women's History Visible in the Urban Landscape

THE POWER OF PLACE, a non‐profit corporation founded by the author, sponsored public history projects focused on women of color in the historic cultural landscapes in Los Angeles. Between 1984 and 1991, teams of historians and artists worked to commemorate an African American midwife's homestead and a hall used by Latina garment workers as part of a larger itinerary of downtown labor history. [Historic Preservation, Community Organizing, Memory, Public Space, Women, Labor History]

Community by design: contemporary problems—historic resolve

Today, in parts of the United States, rapidly expanding decentralized growth is spreading a homogenous form across the landscape and destroying multiple layers of cultural history in its wake. In many places new development completely replaces the old and erases the opportunity for the community to retain an integrity and richness that only places containing a layering of old and new can have. Lost are the opportunities for the community to preserve the character and texture of the past, maintain a cultural heritage, and retain those particular features that can distinguish one community from another. History can be of use to rapidly growing communities in at least two ways: It can provide lessons that will help communities deal with the difficult problems of today, and the landscape itself—full of the historical artifacts of the past of the community should be considered in the design of communities. This paper will develop lessons from those two uses of history that will be helpful for designers and planners working in the landscape today. Those lessons will be specifically applied in one of the emerging edge cities on the outer fringe of the sphere of urban growth surrounding New York—the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. The era of rapid change today is not the first. During the late nineteenth century another type of homogenous development quickly altered great portions of the existing landscape. Landscape architects and urban planners like Horace Cleveland argued that new communities should have a heritage and should be carefully grounded in the landscape that existed prior to development. From that approach we can derive three basic lessons still applicable in the era of rapid change today: The need for greater landscape understanding, the importance of leaving a heritage for future generations, and the value of education and interpretation. If the lessons of Cleveland were applied in the Lehigh Valley, this nationally significant historic cultural landscape might be embraced as the fabric upon which to build the emerging community. The many eras and themes of the tangible past of the region would first need to be carefully studied and assessed—that landscape understanding forming a base from which to make planning decisions. As development continues remains of the past might be intentionally incorporated into the new community providing residents with greater richness and the experience of both past and present in their daily lives.

Historic cultural landscapes and emerging heritage values: and Australian perspective

Abstract The theme of the paper is the emergence in Australia of the recognition that rural cultural landscapes are important historical documents and form a significant part of Australia's cultural heritage. Attention is drawn to the special niche occupied by the pastoral landscapes of southeastern Australia through the historical construction of an Australian landscape identity in art and literature. An overview is given of the need to conserve exemplars of Australian rural cultural landscapes and of initiatives by government agencies and community groups such as the National Trust of Australia in cultural landscape conservation within a framework provided by Australian ICOMOS Guidelines to the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance (Burra Charter).

House Types in Tanzania: A Century of Change

The spatial analysis of cultural change is the focus of this study. The house types in Tanzania and changes in their spatial distribution for the century between I860 and 1965 provide an important indicator of changing cultural variations on a country—wide scale. The housing oj Tanzanians is more likely to reflect their cultural traditions than houses in the industrialized areas of the world because the overwhelming proportion of the people build their own houses. Approximately 100 references from European explorers, anthropologists and governmental records, as well as extensive personal observations in the early 1960s are used to reconstruct the spatial pattern of house types in three general time periods. The house types of some groups have changed in response to cultural contacts resulting from movements of people and ideas. House type analysis based on the systematic use of a wide variety of sources enables the spatial patterns of historical cultural landscapes to be reconstructed and trends identifie...