Fairclough, G.J. 2002: Chapter 3: Archaeologists and the European Landscape Convention, in Fairclough and Rippon Eds., Europe’s Cultural Landscape: archaeologists and the management

IntroductionThe previous paper has provided an authoritative accountof the genesis, philosophy and objectives of the FlorenceConvention. This paper now considers howarchaeologists can engage with the Convention and withthe concept of landscape that it enshrines in public policy.This engagement can operate both in terms of workingwith others to understand the landscape and ofencouraging policies that ensure the long-termpreservation of landscape’s historic and archaeologicalcharacter.

The Convention establishes the principle that all ofEurope’s landscape is a common cultural resource, andthat an important aim of European policy is to maintain thelandscape’s diversity for reasons of local and regionalidentity, and for economic and social health. Underlyingthe philosophy and agenda of the Convention are twovery powerful inter-related ideas (Priore forthcoming):

• landscape belongs to everyday life, as part of everycitizen’s culture, heritage and environment, and mustbe democratised both in terms of identifying why it isvaluable and deciding how it is used and;

• landscape is a cultural construct composed of manydifferent ways of understanding and appreciation.Not all of these ways are ‘scientific’, objective ormaterial. Many are personal, individual andsubjective, or reflect intangible aspects of theenvironment.

Both ideas present challenges to archaeologists.

In terms of the first idea, archaeology’s history as adeveloping discipline has been one of increasing scientificrigour and specialisation, a trajectory that without carecould take us away from close democratic engagementwith the population. Furthermore, archaeologists havetaught themselves to be concerned with detail and fact,

whereas dealing with landscape often requires theopposite skills. Archaeologists often work at a landscapescale, but often their interest manifests itself as a conceptof past landscapes, and with an environmental, positivistslant, whereas the Convention requires everyone to thinkin terms of the present landscape. What archaeologistsbring to this debate is the ability to explain that landscapein archaeological (sensu latto) terms, is a very complicatedartefact with a long history. Thus archaeology may needto adapt to some degree as it engages with theoperationalisation of the Convention and this might notbe easy.

On the other hand, archaeologists are already verywell placed to work within the framework of the Convention.The definition of what constitutes archaeology’s field ofstudy has expanded so that it embraces all material cultureof every date and type, and this breadth of interest findssome of its most natural expressions in the concept oflandscape. Their discipline has already taught them theability to work at a variety of scales, which is crucial whenlooking at landscape. Most importantly, it has taught thevalue of inter-disciplinary co-operation. Archaeologistsreadily recognise the interaction between different aspectsof the environment, to understand for example the waythat ecology has been shaped by human action even ashumans have worked within natural constraints.Archaeologists are accustomed to working alongside otherworkers who have different values and methods, and toborrow theories, techniques and perspectives from otherdisciplines.

Most of all, archaeologists, by their own self-definitionas a discipline of thought, are concerned with three of themost important aspects of landscape, dimensions that

3: Archaeologists and the European Landscape Convention

Graham Fairclough

Abstract: The European Landscape Convention offers a new, robust framework for bringing landscape and itsarchaeological aspects into the mainstream of European heritage and social policy. This paper offers an archaeologist’spreliminary perspective on the Convention, and considers the character of the archaeological dimensions of the landscapeas it is defined by the Convention. Finally, referring to seminars on cultural landscape organised at EAA conferences in1999 and 2000, it summarises current debates amongst archaeologists about the landscape and its management, thussetting the scene for the main part of the volume.

other disciplines cannot as readily contribute:

• understanding change through time, notably acrosslong periods;

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• recognising the role of human agency in landscapecreation, acting through social processes at thecollective rather than the individual level;

• spatial patterning and relationship: the totalconnection, often in unexpected ways, of everythingwithin landscape, including the connection betweenthe ‘natural’ and the cultural.

‘Landscape’ as envisaged by the Convention is,therefore, already a central field of study andunderstanding for archaeologists, whose discipline hasprepared them very well in some ways and less so in others.The Convention clearly refers to the human made aspectof the European landscape. Archaeologists ought thereforeto be major participants, in every country, in all the differentapproaches that the Convention will be put into practice.

At present, however, archaeologists are not wellrepresented at discussions about the Convention. Out ofthe 14 of the 22 signatory countries present at the firstCouncil of Europe’s first Convention conference inNovember 2001, only one or two countries wererepresented by experts from the country’s cultural heritageorganisations, the remainder asking their Nature,Environmental or Countryside agencies and departmentsto take the lead. Without greater archaeologicalinvolvement, Europe’s concept of cultural landscape, andthe landscape of the future, may well be a rather shallowreflection of recent history, myth and assumed traditions.It is one of the intentions of this volume to underline theneed for archaeologists to make positive contributions tothe implementation of the Convention.

Archaeological perspectives on the EuropeanLandscape ConventionArchaeologists were instrumental in some of theConvention’s early stages, such as the 1992 WorldHeritage definition of cultural landscapes and the 1995Council of Europe Recommendation 95/9 on CulturalLandscape Areas (Council of Europe, 1995). There is alsoa great deal of groundbreaking work at national and locallevel, much of which is described in other papers in thisvolume. For this paper, England can stand as an exampleof some of this work: the English approach to countrysidecharacter that has influenced the drafting of theConvention (Countryside Commission 1996; 1998;Countryside Agency 1999; Fairclough et al. 1999) and theAtlas of Rural Settlement (Roberts & Wrathmell 2000).

For archaeological heritage management, the key pointof the Convention is that it calls for coverage of all thelandscape, irrespective of whether it is rural, peri-urban orurban, or regardless of any particular perceived quality.This moves decisively away from the aesthetic of speciallandscapes, and from the process of selecting and tryingto preserve only special areas, to the exclusion anddetriment of the remainder of the landscape (Priore

In doing this, the Convention, published in 2000, hadmoved far from its original intentions. In the early stagesof discussions about a convention, the objective was stillthe old-fashioned approach of choosing the best parts ofthe landscape on one set of criteria or the other (usuallyconcerned with appearance or beauty), and creating a listor register. It is not very clear where a selective approachwould have left the rest of the landscape, but it is likelythat the majority of the cultural landscape, beyond thespecial areas, would have been neglected and undervalued,and subject to little protection or consideration. It canperhaps be predicted that the criteria would have privilegedthose areas closest to their supposed ‘natural origin’, orwith relatively little obvious modern change. Time-depthand the contribution of long-term change to landscapewould have been ignored, as perhaps would certain typesof human change (industrial landscapes would perhapshave been largely excluded, for example).

Similar ideas and subsequent changing perspectiveswere evident in the early 1990s, in the first drafts of thedocument that became the 1995 Council of EuropeRecommendation 95/9. The original aim was to define andlist ‘Heritage Landscape Sites’ rather than to promote thewhole landscape (Darvill 1993). The final version of theRecommendation (Council of Europe 2000) moved someway from this as far as the concept of ‘cultural landscapeareas’, but still not quite as comprehensively as wasneeded, which the European Landscape Convention hasremedied.

Recent history in the UK demonstrates why thisbroadening of view was necessary. The response of theconservation movement after 1945 to wholesale landscapeand farming change was a withdrawal into relatively smallprotected areas such as National Parks or so-called Areasof Outstanding Natural Beauty. This approach tried topreserve untouched reserves, but it failed because thereserves were too small, cut off from their contexts, theywere no longer purely natural ecosystems and could notbe managed properly in isolation from their surroundings.

Even successfully preserved resources lost theircontext as the rest of the world changed regardless, usuallywith too little control or care. The ecological reservoirs inthe wider countryside from which reserves could bereplenished were impoverished, common species of wildlifedeclined into rarity and the reserves lost the meaning thattheir surroundings once provided. The selective approachbegan to fail in popular consciousness as people beganto demand that the landscapes on their doorsteps werealso looked after, as well as the special areas that theymight rarely or never visit. Archaeologists in Britain atleast will recognise these failings from the way in whichthe wider archaeological resource has been eroded whileattention and resources have been devoted to protectinga relatively small number of special monuments (Fairclough

forthcoming; Déjeant-Pons this volume). 1999).

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Archaeologists and the European Landscape Convention

In contrast, the recent direction of archaeologicalheritage management (now supported by the Convention)has been to move away from only a concern for theindividual monument. The move was, first, to an interestin the setting of monuments (and their ‘archaeologicallandscape’), and then further to the wider landscape andits historical and archaeological dimension, whether site-based, monument oriented or not. This latter approach isclosely aligned to the European Landscape Convention’sposition, with its emphasis on the concept of varyinglandscape character, formed from the sum of all its differentattributes, including the cultural heritage.

This is a particularly noteworthy aspect of theConvention’s view of landscape. Its very simple definitionsays that ‘landscape’ is:

an area, as perceived by people, whose characteris the result of the action and interaction of naturaland/or human factors

It is particularly significant how this definition, throughits use of words like ‘action’ and ‘human factors’,emphasises the historical and cultural dimension oflandscape. The definition is a pointer to the vast literature

of landscape archaeology that emphasises the role ofhuman agencies, of people and of historic social andeconomic processes, in the past in creating today’slandscape.

This simple definition is amplified by a reminder thatcultural landscape exists everywhere. The Conventionexpects any country adopting it to agree that the culturallandscape covers the ‘entire territory’ of the country. Theconcept therefore relates not just to natural and rural areas(to which previous ecological or aesthetic perspectivestended to gravitate) but also to urban and peri-urban areas,and thus to areas more obviously (but not necessarilymore extensively) altered by human activities. Culturallandscape includes not just land but water, whether inlandor marine; most important, given the predilection for muchpast landscape conservation to focus on beautiful places,or supposed untouched ‘wilderness’, the Convention aimsto include everyday or degraded landscapes, as well asany that might be considered outstanding.

The simplicity of the definition is one its strengths,allowing it to be fully inclusive and all embracing. It alsomeans, however, that there is a risk that without dialoguesbetween different disciplines (without sharing

Fig. 3.1: A modern ‘landscape of leisure’, taking advantage of natural features but created by, and for, specific human activities,Trentio, Italy. Photo: Graham Fairclough.

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understandings and appreciation) the simplicity coulddisguise very difference approaches. It would be possiblefor each discipline or interest group or country toimplement the Convention while thinking of landscapeonly in natural or aesthetic terms without noticing hownarrow that view might be. Most of the national delegatesat the first Council of Europe Conference for SignatoryStates came from environmental and nature conservationagencies or government departments; there was very littlerepresentation of any historic or archaeologicalperspectives. Another role for EAC members is thus toensure that the importance to landscape of archaeologicalheritage is made clear to decision-makers.

Reference to archaeology in the European LandscapeConvention may not be explicit. The Conventiondeliberately abstains from singling out any one of the manydisciplines that need to work together if landscape is to becomprehensively understood and valued. But archaeologycan and should be read as being implicitly included in theConvention. The text shows that the preservation oflandscapes also includes archaeology as one of manyaspects of landscape. Not only visible archaeologicalremains are part of today’s landscape, but also those whichare buried in the sub-soil or in deposits of coastal andinland waters. These offer a great opportunity forpreserving the archaeological heritage. Again, theConvention shows the fundamental need to approach thecultural landscape in a multi-disciplinary way.

It is of course today’s landscape that is under scrutinyin the Convention, and the definition therefore points ustowards the crucial issues of survival, visibility andprotection. It asks us to identify which of the many aspectsof the material culture of the past few thousand years stillsurvive in the current landscape not just recognisably toexperts but influentially to everyone’s perception, thuscreating landscape’s cultural rather than naturaldimension. It raises the question of how the past can beprotected within today’s landscape and passed on tofuture generations. This is why the Convention shouldform a major component of the EAC’s concerns forarchaeological heritage management. Protecting thelandscape will of course also protect archaeological sites,but the main value of the Convention for archaeologicalheritage managers is that it gives opportunities to protectall aspects of the environment’s material heritage.

Defining the archaeological significance of culturallandscape, and discovering and explaining long-termchange, continuity and time-depth, is an archaeologicaltask. Archaeologists understand the present landscapethrough longer-term narratives and explanations. Such atime-based understanding is essential for the sustainableprotection, management and planning of culturallandscapes (see Castro et al. this volume) and theparticipation of archaeologists is necessary if thearchaeology of cultural landscape is to be part of European

landscape policies. A discussion about the culturallandscape needs also to be a discussion about how newdevelopments in landscape conservation could make adifference to the preservation and protection of thearchaeological heritage itself. Indeed, archaeologists’ useof a current landscape perspective might change aspectsof the practice of archaeology itself. This volumedemonstrates that the Convention’s implementation willbe flawed without the involvement of archaeologists.

Archaeologists of course are only some of the peoplewho perceive landscapes. Almost everyone, consciouslyor not, creates a perception of their own landscape, froman infinite number of perspectives, not least the personal.This is an area again in which archaeologists have longhad an interest, and the boundaries between archaeologyand anthropology for example are fluid (Ucko & Layton1999, with its suggestive subtitle ‘Shaping yourlandscape’). It is, however, a difficult, contested, area towhich archaeology has perhaps not fully adapted, andGwyn, and Lee (this volume), describe two possible waysto approach this central aspect of cultural landscape.

A second significant aspect of the definition that needsto be recognised and acted upon lies in the phrase‘perceived by people’. This refers to a human, subjectiveresponse to landscape and to the archaeological heritagethat it contains. ‘Landscape’ is not ‘environment’: it existsonly when imagined, or interpreted – only when value,significance and meaning is attached to sites, deposits,buildings, hedges or any other built or human-modifiedaspect of the environment. This underlines the importanceof an archaeological approach, because of archaeologists’familiarity with model-building and narrative-creation, andbecause of our long experience of using material remainsto tell stories about the past, and through it, about thepresent. Therefore archaeologists can contribute to theConvention’s desire to foster public awareness, interestand concern, and to establish and promote best practicethrough a European Landscape Prize awarded to localauthorities.

Finally, the goal of this volume is to ensure that thearchaeological heritage in the landscape is dealt withproperly by sustainable planning and development. Theclear policies and approaches to landscape protection andconservation that the Convention calls for, and the generalprinciples that it promotes to secure the protection,sustainable management and sound landuse planning oflandscape, need to be archaeologically sensitive. All ofthis will help to define and reinforce local identity, one ofthe Convention’s starting points. The archaeologicalheritage should be at the centre of this endeavour as well.

The archaeology of cultural landscapeLandscape issues have been a concern of European andinternational policy for some time, but with a relativelylow level of recognition of archaeological and historical

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depth. Landscape’s main champions to date have beennature conservationists, geographers and landscapearchitects (eg IUCN 1994; ICOMOS-Deutschland 1993;Ryszkowki et al. 1996; Bennett 1996; Hajós 1999). TheEuropean Environment Agency’s guidance for collectingdata for the agency’s state of the environment report forthe Environment Ministers’ conference in Kiev in May2003, for example, has nothing about archaeology in itschapter on Landscape or throughout the report (Wright &Russel 2001).

The idea of landscape as being primarily natural hastherefore dominated important documents such as theCouncil of Europe’s Pan-European Biological andLandscape Diversity Strategy (Sofia October 1995). Forexample, the IUCN defines many categories of ProtectedAreas ranging from areas maintained as strict wildernessto managed resource areas (IUCN 1994). Almost all of thecategories focus more or less exclusively on naturalecosystems, some of the principal exceptions being areassuch as the very un-natural cultural landscapes ofEngland’s National Parks (fig.3.2). The IUCN’s overalldefinition is of areas ‘especially dedicated to the protectionof biological diversity, and of natural and associatedcultural resources’: the italics are mine, to emphasise thesecondary role that culture plays in the definition. Noneof the category definitions mention cultural orarchaeological resources explicitly.

Some Protected Areas aim to preserve cultural as wellas natural attributes, but most are focussed solely onnatural value, sometimes to the extent of excluding modernhuman intrusion (eg biosphere reserves) and implicitly atleast of excluding recognition of past human intrusionand landuse. The guiding principle of some ProtectedAreas philosophy and heritage management is to preventfurther human change, and they often reject or overlookthe impact of past human change.

For example, statements such as ‘England was once awell forested country, but now only 7% of the land surfaceis covered by woodland and forest’ (FNNP 1993) are notuncommon. Note particularly the use of the word ‘once’:more than a thousand years has passed in most of England(and over 3000 years in some regions) since there wasextensive forest, and in that long period the landscapehas been re-written and re-made several times (eg Roberts& Wrathmell 2000). Yet still there is a feeling amongecologists and landscape architects that woodland loss isa recent phenomenon that can easily be reversed (fig.3.3).It is as if the current distribution and extent of woodland isregarded as some sort of natural accident - the product ofcarelessness rather than the result of centuries consciousdecisions, of human agency not environmental determinant(Fairclough 1999).

Thinking about cultural landscape needs to be muchmore sophisticated. Understanding will only really be

enhanced when we persuade everyone to recognise thatthere is a longer and broader history of the landscapethan that revealed by historical documents of the past fewcenturies. Additionally, the landscape may look naturalbut everywhere it has been crudely or subtly modified bypeople; whilst we could explain human action in the pastpurely in terms of environmental factors it is just as oftenthe case that people have imposed cultural patterns onnature. Bio-diversity as we now value it in Europe is asmuch a cultural as a natural phenomenon, either by actionor calculated passivity. Most of all, archaeology shouldtry to persuade people that all of this culture in thelandscape can often still be seen or appreciated and that itsurvives in many different ways as material culture, asheritage, the results of human environmental change tobe enjoyed and learnt from.

Indeed, surely we need to celebrate change as perhapsthe most dominant attribute and characteristic of thecultural landscape. In some ways, it can be argued thathuman change is more important in forming ‘landscape’than geology or climate. Geology and climate determinethe environment, but they do not determine ‘landscape’because landscape is a social and cultural construct thatuses things created in the past in physical terms but iscreated in the present in terms of ideas and perceptions.The concept of nature itself is of course a culturallyconstructed idea, existing only in opposition to(agri)culture. There have been many commendableattempts to bring together cultural (ie archaeological orhistorical) and natural (ie ecological and aesthetic)approaches to landscape, for example, in the discipline oflandscape ecology, but they remain rare (eg Selman 1994).

In other words, it is crucial that the role of people inthe past – that is, of people and the passage of time – isnot under-valued during implementation of the EuropeanLandscape Convention. This is precisely whatarchaeologists can add to the concept of landscape.

Furthermore, landscape cannot only be viewed in termsof the tensions between nature and culture, as if the morenatural a landscape was, the more important it is.Landscape is by definition a human, cultural creation. It isborn of past human modification of the environment, andmore importantly it only becomes landscape rather thanenvironment when filtered through human perception andinterpretation. Landscape is about viewpoints, in all sensesof the word. Archaeology of the site-based kind tends tofocus almost exclusively on the cultural, as does landscapearchaeology. This rather misses an important point, thatcultural landscape enshrines both culture and nature, notjust in terms of understanding, but also in terms of valuing.

Nor should age really be seen as a pre-condition for alandscape to be considered significant, any more then‘natural-ness’. ‘Natural’ landscapes, undamaged andancient landscapes, or ‘wilderness’ areas are not inherently

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more important than the recently changed or the new. It isperfectly feasible for very recent, highly modified andaltered landscapes to be valuable and historicallysignificant, such as, some of the large-scale prairies ofpost-1950 farming and other CAP-inspired agriculturalintensification; even, perhaps, the landscape associatedwith collectivisation in Eastern Europe, 19th-centuryindustrial landscapes and 20th-century military landscapes.

The creation of such landscapes cannot only be seenin terms of loss, although they do cause loss of course,particularly of archaeological remains and deposits (whichis why landscape change needs to be monitored, managedand mitigated as does any other form of development).They can also be seen as gains: as the creation of newlandscape types, as new layers in the archaeologicalcultural sequence. They will be studied by futurearchaeologists, but they can also be studied byarchaeologists now: the social processes andanthropology of the later 20th century can be as legitimatea subject for archaeologists as the Bronze Age (and notnecessarily more alien or opaque). All these are issuesthat lie at the heart of the landscape debate and that sitcomfortably with the practice of archaeology and theinterests of archaeologists – an acceptance and interest

in change and its mechanisms; a reluctance to romanticisethe past or to denigrate recent change, a wish to studyand to learn (and then often to destroy through excavation)as well as to protect.

All of this should put archaeologists, who work dailywith the concept of landscape change (usually in the past,but not necessarily only in a distant past, and perhapseven in the future, as Castro et al. paper, this volume,shows), firmly in the centre of the cultural landscape debateand moves to mange the landscape sustainably. More tothe point, it promotes a mindset that regards culturallandscape management as being mainly about managingrather than preventing change (Fairclough forthcoming2002). This volume considers variations on this theme.

Unfortunately, the word landscape is in danger ofbecoming devalued to the point of worthlessness. It is inalmost constant use, both within archaeology andfar-and-wide. We read in newspapers of the ‘politicallandscape’ within which politicians work, or we talk aboutthe emotional landscape of a novel or a film. Without beingdistracted into a discussion about definition, we canrecognise the fact that the word now carries a bewilderingarray of meanings even in archaeological circles, where it

Fig.3.2: An early 20th-century reservoir, Langdendale, Derbyshire, itself now valued for its landscape quality, has truncated earlierlandscapes. Photo: Graham Fairclough.

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is sometimes used merely to denote that an excavation orsurvey project covers a large area of ground. Use of theterm nearly always involves a broadening of perspective,from a place or site to its wider context. ‘Landscapearchaeology’ is usually related to settlement archaeology,to locate settlements in a broader economic, topographicand conceptual frame.

Broadly speaking, archaeologists approach landscapein two different ways, and both are represented in thisvolume. Both are necessary and appropriate to theinterests of archaeologists, and on their own neither allowus to do our full job; the most successful archaeologicallandscape work combines both. It is important also to statethat neither approach replaces any other archaeologicalapproaches – we are looking here at extending thetraditional sphere of archaeology, and complementingsite-based work or the study of below ground deposits.

The first of the two approaches that archaeology takesat landscape scale is landscape history, which seeks tounderstand the countryside in some former state, forexample by recreating the Bronze Age landscape, or (amore recent development of archaeology) through earlierpeoples’ eyes and minds, the cosmography of landscape.The second approach regards the landscape, that is today’scountryside (or townscape) seen through people’sperceptions, as being a single complex artefact with a longhistory of change and continuity. It uses archaeologicalmethods and perceptions to understand it. It is thisapproach that is closest to the idea of cultural landscape,and which fits easily into a number of fields within whicharchaeologists are operating as the concept of ‘applied

archaeology’ (or socially-embedded’ archaeology) findswider acceptance. These include heritage conservation(archaeological or cultural resources management) andcountryside and ecological management (each with theirown analysis of the landscape). Community involvementin the local construction of what is significant (using thehistoric landscape to help build and sustain localcommunity identity and sense of place) is also veryimportant, and an area in which archaeologists wouldhelpfully work more.

The increasing number of connections between thesefields is one of the things that have brought culturallandscape onto the political and social agenda in the last10 years or so.

The concept of cultural landscape brings togetherboth natural and human factors and reflects theinteractions between people and their natural environmentover space and time. This includes the living componentof the landscape, whether through biodiversity andsemi-natural features, or whether through ‘cultural’ issuessuch as human life-styles, land-using processes, customand tradition. Living features such as hedges forming partof historic field systems, or the distributions and patternof ancient managed woodland, or even the patterns ofland cover at regional scale, are all part of our evidence forlandscape history, just as much as other archaeologicalresource, such as buried deposits or artefacts, or any othersource of evidence such a historic maps. Understandingcultural landscape also needs an appreciation of the

Fig. 3.3: An English rural landscape at Edlingham, Northumberland; the extent of woodland is largely the product of human factorssuch as the presence of hedgerows, settlements and railway embankments rather than environmentally determined. Photo: GrahamFairclough.

historic processes that have shaped the environment.

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Cultural landscape is where archaeology, geography,history and anthropology can join together and build linksto biodiversity, ecology and artistic/associative views ofthe world. One of the challenges is to bring together allthese professions and the interests they represent, becauseland owners and managers see only a single landscapewhen they are planning their activities, and it is feltnecessary to ensure that their monolithic viewencompasses archaeology as an integral part of thecultural landscape. The European Landscape Conventionoffers one avenue for doing this, the views and practice ofarchaeologists offers another.

What archaeologists think about culturallandscapeThere have been many recent conferences to explore botharchaeological landscape and cultural landscape, andsessions on landscape have become de rigeur at most bigarchaeological conferences. Of particular relevance to thepresent volume, however, have been some recent sessionsat The European Association of Archaeologists (EAA)conferences. In particular, two seminars have beenorganised by Jan-Kees Hagers and myself as part of theprogramme of EAA conferences in Bournemouth (1999)and Lisbon (2000). These had the specific aim of bringingtogether archaeologists in several different Europeancountries to compare and contrast their approaches andexperiences when dealing with the landscape as definedin the European Landscape Convention. Versions of someof the papers given then are included in the present volume.

A third session at the 2001 EAA conference inEsslingen organised by Dirk Meier and Charles Mountwent on to present ongoing work. This included notablywork within and related to the Culture 2000 programme‘European Pathways to the Cultural Landscape’ (see Kraut,Nord Paullson, Darlington, and Ermischer this volume,www.pcl-eu.de) and InterReg EU projects such asLANCEWAD (Vollmer et al. 2001).

The Bournemouth and Lisbon conferences highlightedparticularly the role of archaeologists in landscape work.Their efforts to preserve the cultural landscape exist withvarying degrees of conviction and clarity in different partsof Europe. It is widely accepted that visible remains andeven buried archaeological remains from the past givehistorical depth to the present landscape and thuscontribute to its quality and identity. In some quarters,however, the most important concept that the wholelandscape itself is an archaeological monument that needsto be treated as such, is only just starting to becomewidespread.

The two EAA conferences attempted to broadendebate. They were very well attended, with participantsfrom about 20 different European countries, although witha northern European bias. There was lively discussion,which the EAC now hopes to take forward on a much

broader front. In taking up the issues laid out in this volume,the EAC can realistically enlarge the debate about thearchaeology of the landscape to the whole of Europe. Widerdebate will encourage archaeology’s integration into theheritage management of the landscape as a whole, thecloser engagement of archaeology with cultural landscapeissues, and the flowering of co-operation with workers inthe field from other disciplines. EAC’s decision to promotethe issue of cultural landscape as a legitimate, indeedpotentially central, aspect of archaeology andarchaeological heritage management is particularly timelyin the first year of the promotion of the EuropeanLandscape Convention.

Given that the modern landscape almost everywherein Europe is humanly-created or has been greatly modified,archaeologists as stated earlier could play a fundamentalrole in the identification, characterisation and protectionof the cultural landscape. The historic dimension of thelandscape should motivate us to accept this role and topromote the appreciation, and management of the presentlandscape rather than only seeking to understand the past.To play this role it is necessary to broaden our view fromthe material and the physical to include the ‘living’component.

Here lies a fundamental problem: the long-standinginstitutional separation between disciplines which existsin many European countries, perhaps symbolised inheritage management terms by the range of governmentdepartments and ministries across which responsibilityfor the landscape’s use and management are spread. Whilstarchaeology is usually the business of the culture ministry,the historic geographical elements of landscape, the ‘living’components of the landscape mentioned earlier, are usuallytreated separately as part of the ‘green environment’ andare included in agriculture, nature conservation andlandscape policies. These values are not claimed as partof the archaeological resource by archaeologists in everycountry, although the reasons for different perspectivesare varied and sometimes country-specific.

It seems, therefore, necessary not only to broaden ourview from the material to the living, but also to promoteactively the integration of disciplines and the necessityfor discipline-crossing, integrated approaches and policies.Recent work in the Netherlands (Hallewas and Beusekomthis volume) is a perfect example of such an integratingprocess, which actually started at the beginning of the1970s, but never found enough support to be implementeduntil very recently.

One of the main aims of this volume is to discuss,think and talk about what archaeologists can bring to thestudy, appreciation and protection of the cultural landscapeparticularly now that the Convention has placed it sostrongly on the political and social agenda. Approachesdiffer considerably from country to country. This is partly

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as a result of the different ways in which archaeology as adiscipline has evolved across Europe. But it is often alsoa consequence of national policies, existing legislationand division of responsibilities.

Fundamental questions come to mind, such as whetherarchaeologists should approach the landscape holisticallyand integrally, regarding the whole landscape as anarchaeological resource, keeping in mind that this couldlead to conflicts of interests with other disciplines. Or,alternatively, whether archaeologists should define theirresponsibility as being restricted to conventionallyarchaeological aspects of the landscape heritage and tothe process of studying, describing and assessing thelandscape – to produce the best possible information andknowledge for others to use to take decisions about thelandscape’s future?

It can be claimed that because archaeologists arefamiliar with long-term change, and understand why thelandscape has evolved as it has, they are among the bestplaced people to take a lead role in shaping the landscapeof tomorrow. There is of course a further advantage for agrowing and maturing profession in expanding its field ofactivity, especially into an area that will embed us morefirmly into society.

Another basic aim of this volume is to establish a higherlevel of debate amongst archaeologists about culturallandscape. It is therefore perhaps useful to end thisintroductory paper by showing both the diversity and theunanimity of opinion among the profession, as anintroduction to the present volume, which after all isdesigned to illuminate what Europe’s archaeologists arealready thinking and doing about the cultural landscape.

The following picture is drawn mainly fromwide-ranging and lively discussions that took place duringCultural Landscapes sessions at the Bournemouth andLisbon conferences of the European Association ofArchaeologists in 1999 and 2000. It reflects some of thereal and growing interest within the profession inlandscape, building on, but travelling far beyond,traditional methods of landscape archaeology. It isorganised in a simple set of headings; particularlynoticeable is that much of the discussion took identificationand understanding for granted and moved on to moredifficult areas such as intangible character, and ways toachieve the sustainable management of something whichis ever-changing and dynamic. It will be obvious how manyof the issues raised are central concerns and aspirationsof the European Landscape Convention.

Emotions and feelings: the intangible and the personalThere was a lot of agreement among archaeologists at thesessions that the idea of cultural landscape provides anopportunity, indeed a requirement, to take into account arange of intangible attributes. In particular, the strong

personal element of the people living in the area should becentral, even though this might be difficult to measure.Peoples’ feelings about the landscape and its meaning,their emotional involvement in it, are as important in theirway as the material aspects of a landscape. Such attitudestend not to be part of the European archaeologicallandscape tradition in the same way as they are inindigenous contexts in Australia or Canada, for example,but they surely have a part to play.

It is widely felt by archaeologists that current landscapemethodologies are largely ‘top-down’, if not bureaucratic,automatic or mechanistic, and concerned with scientificand expert views. There is a feeling that the appropriatearchaeological methodologies for doing this have not yetbeen worked out. Visits to cultural landscapes (eg thoseput forward for World Heritage designation) can revealthe very strong, emotive and intuitive feelings that thepeople living in these places have for their landscapecharacter. The term lieu de memoire perhaps encapsulatesthis, as does the word ‘place’: that an essential ingredientof a cultural landscape must be the strong personalelement, something that cannot be measured.

Awareness and participation of the communityArising from this is the need to involve people in definingthe cultural aspects of landscape. This includes both thosewho live in an area and those who may visit or in someother way have a stake in its future. People should begiven easy opportunities to contribute to information andunderstanding about an area of cultural landscape.Archaeologists should consider how their informationcould best be used to assist local communities in beingaware of the character of their community’s landscape,and to raise awareness of its history. This is the startingpoint to finding ways to look after it and to enhance it.Examples of how to do this include initiatives designed toidentify local distinctiveness, for example throughparticipation in spatial planning. Webpage-maps and freeliterature (for example, distributed house by house) couldstart discussion.

Discussions across the profession have begun toidentify a few emerging examples of good – if immature –practice in these areas. Landscape character assessmentwork in Britain is beginning to involve local communityconsultation. This is in its infancy however, and still rathertop-down, with experts defining character first and onlythen asking for local views. But it is starting to create aconnection between what the ‘experts’ are trying to doand what communities are seeking for their ownlandscapes. In the Netherlands, where national governmentcannot implement spatial plans without consulting localpeople, inventorisation in Zuid-Holland was alwayschecked locally in the community. This participation wasmutual, and allowed everybody to come up with proposals.

Wider consultation and participation is starting tobecome more common, for example with World Heritage

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management plans and nominations, as on Hadrian’s Wallin England, where the process of participation brought alarge number of farming, community and land-owninggroups together constructively for almost the first time.Drawing up designations such as National Parks is alsobecoming more participatory, for example in Sciente, inItaly, where talking to everybody from the community wastremendously successful, and created real participation.Much progress is also being made in Wales, as DavidGwyn’s paper, in this volume, shows.

Participation is of course two-way. It can also helpwith informing local communities about the character oftheir landscapes, for example in relation to other areas.With initiatives like local distinctiveness, what sort ofimpressions are we getting back to communities, we shouldbe raising awareness of the importance of the character ofthat community and in that way perhaps enhancing waysof looking after it.

In England, Historic Landscape Characterisation onGIS (Fairclough, Lambrick & Hopkins this volume) willshortly be available on local authority web-sites, linked toparish areas, and will be available to schools and librariesthrough this relatively new route. It is also hoped thatanother English project, in the Peak District, will experimentwith creating a series of community areas with informationabout the character of each community published in aformat that encourages local debate and re-writing.Lancashire HLC is finding a new audience through aEuropean project (www.pcl-eu.de; see Darlington thisvolume).

The Ename project in Flanders every four monthsdistributes 20,000 free copies of a journal to local houses,thus involving local people in the project. There is also atrend in the Netherlands to investigate what people arethinking about nature and cultural history. This addsquestions on cultural issues to public opinion surveys, toallow people to indicate what they think is important. Thisis followed by multi-criteria analysis of how differentexperts valued different aspects of cultural history.

Archaeological sites in the landscape and theirmanagementThe ways in which the identification and management ofthe cultural landscape and of historic landscape characterwill help to protect individual sites and monuments (theconventional archaeological resource) needs furtherthought and research.

In Cornwall, in south-west England, the first historiclandscape characterisation map produced is now usedroutinely in development control (Herring 1998). It is usedfor example to assess the routes of proposed pipelines, orthe location of housing development. This helps to placesuch developments into areas of least potential or poorpreservation, or to steer development into areas where

landscape changes would have a less detrimental impact.It is also starting to be used as a predictive tool, explainingwhere archaeological sites are most likely to exist, andwhat their level of survival might be.

Part of environmental conservation and managementA landscape-scale approach will allow archaeologicalresource management to be more readily seen as an integralpart of overall, mainstream environmental concerns. As aplanning instrument, for example, it will make relations withother disciplines stronger. Ecologists, landscape architectsand planners for example, will be given something thatthey find easier to understand than ‘hard’ archaeologyand something that is more familiar territory to them. InEngland, historic landscape characterisation wasconsciously invented to use the same language aslandscape architects.

What kind of instruments and methods should bedeveloped? At present, a practical process of conservationhas not yet been defined. We know how to analyse thelandscape, but we are less sure of what to do with theresults apart from using them in the spatial planningprocess. Modern Geographic Information Systems makegeneralised time depth analysis possible, but detailedinformation is sometimes still missing, and it is not clearhow detailed information can be communicated to plannersand others. It is also important that the limits of theinformation are understood by users, and that landscapeassessments are kept up to date. The maps always containa certain state of archaeological knowledge, for example,which must affect how they are used.

EvaluationUnderstanding a cultural landscape archaeologically, anddefining its historic landscape character, requires manyapproaches: deciding what makes up landscape character,understanding the history of an area, appreciating the fullextent of its archaeology, plotting the distribution of itselements and defining the types of elements. Is thisenough? Can such an understanding, constantly changingas it will, be fed directly into decisions about landmanagement and landuse? Or is another stage needed,one of evaluation, to single out particular areas for specialtreatment, or to guide priorities for limited resources ofexpertise and funds?

There are deep differences of opinion amongpractitioners on this topic, within individual countries aswell as across Europe. Some intentionally do not doevaluations and others do very explicitly. The timing andpurpose of evaluation also varies. Practice in somecountries, whether through political pressure orprofessional choice, requires explicit advance evaluationof areas of landscape (eg The Netherlands or Denmark);elsewhere (for example the character-based approach inEngland) there is more emphasis on differentiating valueonly when assessing the impact of specific proposed

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change. A country’s approach will inevitably reflect thenationally-specific character of its planning andconservation laws, and the stage that the development ofideas and resources has reached.

The European Landscape Convention is again relevanthere. It clearly promotes the conservation of all areas oflandscape, the everyday and ordinary as well as the special,on the democratic grounds that all landscape is the settingfor someone’s life, and on the environmental grounds thatsustainable landuse is a necessary goal everywhere. Thiswould argue against evaluating landscapes in order topick out special areas for special treatment compared tothe rest, yet of course there are still real issues of prioritiesand targets for conservation. From some perspectivescertain areas can be seen to be more importantarchaeologically than others. Nevertheless, selective toolsare primitive and the European Landscape Conventionholds out the hope of more sophisticated, inclusive andwider-ranging approaches.

Characterisation work also defines types of landscapeand their distribution. This needs to be able to help withpro-active planning. A first need here is to inform thoseworking in planning departments who are notarchaeologists. There is one strong school of thoughtthat insists that planners should be given answers – toldwhat is more valuable and what its quality’s are and whatcan we do with it. Conversely, however, historic landscapecharacter exists everywhere, differentiating one area fromanother. It is perhaps its total character that deservesprotection, and an equally strong school of thought arguestherefore that planners, for example, should merely beafforded access to better information about the wholeresource, and given help in using it wisely as and when itis needed, rather than being ‘spoon-fed’ simplifiedselections of the ‘best’ bits.

In Britain, a distinction is now being drawn, notably inlandscape assessment and elsewhere in generalarchaeological resource management, betweencharacterisation and decision making. It is at the later stagethat evaluation seems most useful, but this is evaluationagainst a whole range of attributes, using information fromexisting characterisation studies to measure characteragainst impact everywhere not just in pre-selected areas.Such contributions by archaeologists to decision makingneeds to be not just at the development control stage butearlier, when strategic spatial plans are being drawn up fordemocratic acceptance by communities and government.

Using the historic landscape characterisation map inCornwall has changed the way the planners think. Fewerof them now want selected areas defined by red lines asbeing important; instead they recognise that everythinghas some value and significance to a community or toindividuals, and that it is that significance everywherethat needs consideration. The map opened planners’ eyes

to why local distinctiveness was of value, provided themwith a framework to support more detailed localconservation work and provided a further level ofexplanation about the character of an area. It therefore hasa role in raising awareness, among people as well asplanners. Previously official-planning maps had shownsmall parts of the Cornish landscape as being culturallyimportant, but had ignored the rest, including areas wheremost people lived. Changing this round really changespeoples’ minds and ideas.

Living landscapeThere is a particular difficulty with protecting or preservinglandscape character where the activities that created it –notably traditional types of farming and landuse – nolonger take place. Is it possible to find surrogate or proxyforms of land management to maintain aspects of characterand appearance when a landscape cannot be managed‘naturally’? When the economy of communities collapse,their landscape will change. Can we justify managing alandscape artificially, for example by European subsidy, tomaintain it as it is?

More broadly, it is felt by most archaeologists that theidea of cultural landscape has the concept of change (inthe future as well as in the past) at its very heart. The ideathat there are any landscapes where time has stood still,and history has ended, is very strange. No landscape,whether urban or rural, has stopped its evolution, nolandscape is relict: it is all continuing and ongoing; even ifthe environment (the physical part of ‘landscape’) is static,people’s reactions to it will change (see the recent interestin preserving Cold War landscapes such as the Berlin Wallfragments or the cruise missile shelters at USAF GreenhamCommon). The decision that each generation, includingarchaeologists has to make, is what will happen next tothe landscape, and how it will be managed or changed.

What archaeologists can bring to the debate aboutthe future of landscapes is their understanding of whathas happened in the past and why a landscape is as it is.This is a necessary prelude to thinking about how it shouldevolve in future. Issues such as long-term settlementlocation, or the complex sequence of successive landscapere-planning through time that are often still legible in thefield, or the rate of change, are all accessible through theanalysis of time-depth by landscape characterisation. Thisprovides a first step towards looking at where changemight be directed in the future. Many archaeologistssuggest that this way of looking at landscape could helpus with the move from a reactive to a proactive system ofplanning. It also makes it easier to bring together in debateall of the different groups who want to manage thelandscape.

There was general agreement at the conferences thatthe most difficult challenge to protecting culturallandscape lie in the disappearance of the established

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management activities that created landscape character(eg Szpanowski this volume). Can ‘traditional’ activity bereplaced by ‘artificial’ management, for example by puttingsheep onto a hill to graze it, not for the economic value butto have nice pretty hills, or by continuing to coppiceancient woodland long after the commercial justificationhas gone. When do we accept that historic processeshave stopped, and recognise that we need to create a newenvironment with new character? In some parts of Europe(including southern France, Spain and Portugal, thewestern Isles of Scotland, upland England and Wales) theproblem of disappearing farming is, or threatens, to changethe character of cultural landscape severely (fig3.4). Oneanswer is for European farming subsidies to be targetedon environmental benefits not production (eg Ty Gofal inWales, the Stewardship agri-environmental programmesin England, Foley this volume), but for how long and towhat degree? Do farmers want that sort of job? How willculture, as opposed to landscape, alter? Perhaps we cankeep abandoned landscapes but not the communities to

In short, why are we trying to preserve landscape? Isit for the biodiversity and ecology (if so, what happens tothe most humanly changed areas such as industriallandscapes?), is it to keep those areas that are thought bythe majority to be beautiful? Are we trying to protect andmaintain the ‘traditional’ activities that made the currentlandscape what it is (in which case, what happens to earlier,older layers of the landscape)? Or are we concerned toprotect the end product of those activities, in which casewe can use artificial means to do this – grass cutting byhand not by sheep. What happens when agriculture andfarming in a region stops? How do we use theunderstanding of the cultural landscape that we arestarting to gain as archaeologists? What are we going todo next?

This volume does not of course answer any of thesequestions, but through case studies and accounts ofexperience it offers a few signposts for the first part of thejourney, signposts to follow with the map of the EuropeanLandscape Convention in our hand.

ReferencesCouncil of Europe 1995: Recommendation R(95)9 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on the integrated conservation of

cultural landscape areas as part of landscape policies. Council of Europe, Strasbourg.Council of Europe 2000: European Landscape Convention. European Treaty Series No. 176. Council of Europe, Strasbourg.

Fig.3.4: Alentejo, Portugal, this ‘natural’ landscape has in fact been a highly managed wood-pasture over many centuries. It may bechanged entirely in character by the disappearance of traditional farming methods, or by flooding behind dams. Photo: GrahamFairclough.

protect them.

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Countryside Agency 1999: The Countryside Character of England, volume 4 East Midlands (CA10), volume 5 West Midlands(CA11), volume 6 The East (CA12), volume 7 South East (CA13), vol 8 South West (CA14). Countryside Agency,Cheltenham.

Countryside Commission 1996: Views From the Past - Historic Landscape Character in the English Countryside, CCW4. CountrysideCommission, Cheltenham.

Countryside Commission 1998: The Countryside Character of England, vol 1 North East (CCP535), vol 2 North West (CCP536), vol3 Yorkshire and the Humber (CCP537). Countryside Commission, Cheltenham.

Darvill, T. 1993: Heritage Landscape Sites – an introduction to the work of the Group of Experts, in ICOMOS-Deutschland 1993,pp 27–29

Fairclough, G J, 1999b: Protecting the Cultural Landscape - national designations and local character in Grenville, J, 1999, 27–39Fairclough, G. J., Lambrick, G. & McNab, A. 1999: Yesterday’s World, Tomorrow’s Landscape - the English Heritage Historic

Landscape Project 1992–94. English Heritage, London.Fairclough, G.J., forthcoming (2002): Cultural landscape, sustainability and living with change? in the proceedings of the US/

ICOMOS 4th International Symposium, Managing Change: sustainable approaches to the conservation of the builtenvironment, April 5–8, 2001, Philadelphia.

FNNP (Federation of Nature and National Parks of Europe) 1993: Loving them to death?: sustainable tourism in Europe’s Natureand National Parks. FNNP, Grafernau.

Grenville, J. (ed) 1999: Managing the Historic Rural Environment. Routledge and English Heritage, London.Hajós, G. (ed.) 1999: Denkmal – Ensemble – Kulturlandschaft am Beispiel Wachau. Beiträge Internationales Symposion vom 12. bis

15. Oktober 1998 Dürnstein (Österreich), Wien.Herring, P. 1998: Cornwall’s Historic Landscape. Presenting a method of historic landscape character assessment. Cornwall Archaeology

Unit and English Heritage, Cornwall County Council, Truro.ICOMOS-Deutschland 1993: Historische Kulturlandschaften, Deutschen Nationalkommittee von ICOMOS, Hefte des Deutsches

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Areas, IUCN (World Conservation Union), Gland.Priore, R. forthcoming: The European Landscape Convention, in proceedings of the International Conference “Europe, a Common

Heritage - The Cultural Landscape” held in Oxford on 3-5 May 2000, organised by ICOMOS-UK in co-operation withthe University of Oxford, National Trust.

Roberts, BK & Wrathmell, S, 2000: An Atlas of Rural Settlement in England. English Heritage, London.Ryszkowki, L, Pearson, G & Balazy, S (eds) 1996: Landscape Diversity: a chance for the rural community to achieve a sustainable

future (second Pan European seminar on rural landscape, Poznan 25-30 September 1995) (Research Centre for Agriculturaland Forest Environment and the Polish Academy of Science).

Selman, P. 1994: The Ecology and Management of Cultural Landscapes (proceedings of an IALE UK conference at Cheltenham 1993published - Landscape Issues vol 11 No 1).

Ucko, P.J. & Layton, R. 1999: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape: Shaping your landscape (eds). One WorldArchaeology 30 (papers from the 1994 World Archaeology Congress, New Delhi). Routledge, London.

Wright, K., & Russel, C. 2001: Data collection guidelines for the Kiev Report, Technical report no. 66. European EnvironmentalAgency, Copenhagen (http://reports.eea.eu.int/technical_report_2001_66/en).

A significant part of this paper, notably sections 3 and 4, is derived from earlier unpublished drafts co-written by myselfand Jan-Kees Hagers as part of the two EAA conference sessions on ‘Archaeologists and the cultural Landscape’organised by us at the 1999 and 2000 EAA conferences.

Fairclough, G.J. 2002: Chapter 3: Archaeologists and the European Landscape Convention, in Fairclough and Rippon Eds., Europe’s Cultural Landscape: archaeologists and the management

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