Role of agricultural practices in the formation of cultural landscapes: cultural determinants, commonalities and divergences in three continents

AGOSTINI, STELLA; CHATURVEDI, ANURADHA; KAPLAN DEPOLO, PAULINA; TOMASI, JORGE

Newcastle

Seminario; 10th International Seminar “Cultural Landscapes in the 21st Century”; 2005

Internacional Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

In the IXth Forum held in Buenos Aires a project was launched between all Universities of the Forum Unesco in order to evaluate the way for safeguarding vernacular heritage in the world. The strict connections of these buildings with culture and nature and it is in continual change in order to follow the development of agriculture shaped particular images of cultural landscape which, in the century, became important markers of local distinctiveness and hence contributors to the sense of identity of local community. Instead, in the last decades accession countries and world markets in the area of agriculture and food products, risks to make a globalisation on identity of people, erasing the cultural heritage and the identity of each country and people. In order to understand the values and their possibilities of protection, the study evaluates cultural factors related to traditional systems of utilization and enrichment of the environmental resource in the three continent. For each area analysed the paper shows the transformations and innovations in agricultural practices over the past 50 years & introduction of new typologies.