Date published: 30 Oct 2017
How to best manage our cultural heritage? This was a key question being asked at an international workshop that was held at the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) recently, as part of Durham University’s Resituating Europe's First Towns Project (REFIT).
Delegates from Britain, Spain, and France were able to identify more sustainable methods of managing cultural landscapes using a series of excellent case studies of landscape-scale Iron Age settlements, often covering hundreds of hectares, found in the Cotswolds, and as far afield as Burgundy, France and western Spain. This international perspective added great value to the discussions.
There was a recognised need to cater for the needs of farmers, wildlife groups, and other non-archaeological stakeholders, considering ways in which to improve relationships between different users of cultural landscapes in the development of future management strategies.
The outcomes of this work have far-reaching implications, not only for the preservation of the wider cultural landscape but also much closer to home in bringing forward this information to the teaching of our Environmental students here at the RAU.
Find out more about the REFIT project. For more information about our FdSc Environmental Conservation & Heritage Management course, please contact Ian.Grange@rau.ac.uk.