On December 15th the Relics of Nature team hosted a session at Edinburgh TAG titled “More-than” approaches in heritagescapes of the Anthropocene: The environmental ethics of heritage“.
Due to the ongoing rail strikes across the UK, we held a hybrid session with several presenters joining us on zoom. We covered a wide range of interesting questions exploring environmental ethics within heritage studies from both theoretical and case-based approaches. Presentations included investigations of the cultural and ontological values that define heritage, the role of natural heritage in archaeological practice, heritage ‘futures’ and multi-species research, UNESCO and natural heritage preservation and management, the role of nature in cultural landscapes, an array of creative methodologies, and theoretical contributions including new materialist, phenomenological, and more-than-representational approaches. Thank you to all presenters, to Emma Waterton for a brilliant discussion, and to the 50+ participants who joined us in Edinburgh.
The summary of presentations can be found below and the abstracts can be downloaded here.
What kind of environment do archaeologists understand?
John Carman, University of Birmingham
Landscape archaeology in black and white
Jonathan Last, Historic England
Bewilderment: A more-than-human environmental ethic in heritage studies
Katherine Burlingame, University of Oslo
Adaptive heritage: Reuse, release and reciprocity
Caitlyn DeSilvey, University of Exeter
Dead Isle
Alex Boyd, Northumbria University and Lesley McFadyen, Birkbeck, University of London
Lines of rupture, lines of flight (Pegwell Bay 2022)
Lara Band, University of the Highlands and Islands
Past as possibility: Considering the role of prehistoric archaeology in the promotion of ecological awareness
Claire Nolan, University College Cork
New heritage ethics: Beyond stewardship preservation
Andreas Pantazatos, University of Cambridge
Session Discussant
Emma Waterton, University of York
Relics of Nature 