Agricultural Landscapes as World Heritage: Raised Field Agriculture in Bolivia and Peru

Abstract

A      agrarian landscapes of the past and present, I am concerned about the low value placed on cultural landscapes by national and international agencies charged with promoting, protecting, and managing cultural heritage in the developing world.My research in Bolivia and Peru focuses on a particular class of unappreciated cultural landscape, the mundane, traditional agricultural landscape (Fig. 1). 1 It is difficult to convince governments, international development agencies, conservation groups, funding institutions, and my archaeology colleagues that this class of cultural heritage is important and worthy of attention.In contrast to cultural landscapes associated with traditional monuments, important buildings, archaeological sites, and sacred natural features, the very characteristics of agricultural landscapes work against their receiving attention and protection.Most traditional agricultural landscapes are (1) cultural, in that they "exist by virtue of . . .being perceived, experienced, and contextualized by people" (Ashmore and Knapp 1991:1); ( 2) large scale, usually covering entire regions; (3) without clear boundaries; (4) products of a long historical trajectory (Denevan 2001; Piperno and Pearsall 1998); (5) heterogeneous (Crumley 1994), resilient (McGlade 1999), engineered (Lansing 1991), and highly patterned (Erickson 1996); (6) increasingly "contested" (Bender 1998); (7) dynamic,

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