Cultural landscape resources evaluation steps

Addressing these essential questions of what, when, where, who, and why, will involve these following steps, identification and documentation of cultural landscape resources, assessment of landscape characteristics, and an analysis and evaluation. And the first step is identification and documentation of cultural landscape resources, in other words, identify the type of cultural landscape and its setting, document the landscape history. And this can be fun, because it covers the description of the site or the landscape history based on research of archival primary and secondary sources. Primary sources such as journals, diaries, private and public records, family archives, photographs, newspapers, historic clowns and maps. And you start to unravel in information, second resources of books and reports or other similar material.

What you are doing is developing an understanding of what we call the historic context of the landscape. Step two is assessment of landscape characteristics. So once the background identification and documentation has been completed, it’s possible to address the task of assessment of the particular characteristics of the landscape. For this, you need a comprehensive system for organizing presentation of information on landscape characteristics, values and significance. Because cultural landscapes are a montage, in other words, a buildup, a series of layers through time. And these layers are created by human intervention over time. And the natural forces that have shaped the physical landscape.

Here is a list of the kind of things that the tumor you might look for, land use and activities, patterns resulting from periods of landscape making, cultural traditions, natural elements. These are what we call the processes involved in landscape making, how the overall landscape are evolved, and then look at individual components. There’s an example of these. I show you this landscape characteristics for rural landscapes. If you’re doing a rural landscape study, these could be the things that you might be looking for. And these come from a document from which is now 20 years old, from the US National Park Service.

And these are the process you look at land-uses and activities, patterns of special organization, natural systems, and human responses, and then cultural traditions. What’s the history of cultural traditions in the area? Have different groups of people that they come in and be involved? Within these overall patterns, you then start to look at these individual components, cluster arrangements, that’s clusters of buildings, circulation, the roads, path, canals, rivers, have they been used or are they useful as far by humans for stop circulation? What’s the topography, and how has that influenced the western landscape looks, what’s the vegetation? Is there any natural vegetation or is it all farmland? You need to look at the boundaries and ownership, buildings and structures, views and vistas.

What are the views through there in the visitors? What kind of overall feeling do you get of the area? And then small-scale elements, what are the small scale? In a rural landscape, what small elements can you see? Maybe small or something like that amongst the rice patties? And then you also need to be aware of archaeological sites. And are they surface archaeology or subsurface archaeology? The process in looking at an urban, the street form and spatial proportions; relationship between landscape space and built form; architectural styles; historic periods of building development related to meanings and symbolism in special patterns, including community through time and their values, their ideologies. What kind of built form is there?

The more foliage is just kind of architecture. Has it changed through times? What are the cultural traditions leading to the forms and patterns and architectural styles? How have natural elements influenced the layout in an urban area? And then individual components, components like the style of buildings and structures, materials, colors, textures, building traditions, vegetation, paving materials, street furniture, Is these kinds of things? An important and useful tool for handling large areas is the subdivision of a steady area into what we call landscape character units. On the scale of the units will vary according to the landscape. It’s use an activity. Landscape character units are not units based on physical criteria or visual catchment zone.

Rather they are defined by landscape patterns informed by historical settlement daughter essential to an understanding of landscape making. You have to look at the landscape and see where the boundaries of these landscape character units are. We will come back to this in a moment. Then we go to the next section. Step three, analysis and evaluation. This is the stage of fully understanding a cultural landscape through its inherent cultural values, and establishing its significance as a guide to conservation and future sustainable use. Historical documentation, field survey, and assessment of the forces that have created the landscape form, will form the basis for understanding cultural values. So this is the important status of fully understanding a cultural landscape.

The following factors applied to each landscape character unit need to be addressed, analyze the inherent values.

Here is an analysis of such things as aesthetic, historic, scientific, social, and spiritual values. Evaluate cultural significance, and this involves synthesizing all the information that you’ve got from research and analysis of values to develop a clear statement of how and why the landscape is valued. And this leads to development of a statement of significance for each landscape character unit, and then an overall one for the overall study area. And the statement should set out the following. A cultural heritage values represented in the landscape, who holds these values, how important they are to the groups that are involved. The total significant statement is really not just a statement of what and why.

Why is it important in a statement of cultural signals? Don’t just describe the landscaping you’ve already done that. Try to summarize why it’s important. What is significant element?