Excavation to storytelling: Perspectives from archaeological heritagescapes in Sweden

Recent research has revealed that interdisciplinary work combining archaeological and heritage practice continues to be limited by enduring assumptions separating the two fields. Traditional structures and institutional barriers make it difficult to break away from what is expected in order to explore what is possible in what archaeologists and heritage practitioners ‘do’. Though archaeologists play an integral role in the discovery and interpretation of the past—providing the foundation for the heritage-making process, there is often a gap between scientific dissemination of archaeological findings and the interpretation and communication of these findings as heritage. We therefore position storytelling as a key to bridging the divide between archaeological and heritage practice. Offering perspectives from archaeological and heritage practices in Sweden, we argue that a renewed focus on storytelling creates more dynamic and collaborative pathways to interpret, communicate and experience archaeological heritagescapes

A heritagescape in the Appalachians: When a tornado came to Kinzua

Deep in the mountains near the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania, USA lay the twisted ruins of the Kinzua Bridge, once an important transportation link and landmark for the region’s identity and heritage. Once the bridge fell out of use in the late 1950s, the Kinzua Bridge State Park was created to promote tourism and highlight the region’s history and exceptional natural landscapes. Yet, tragedy struck in 2003 when a rare tornado tore through the valley and knocked over 11 of the bridge’s 20 towers. A new heritagescape was then created around the ruined bridge with various hiking trails, a visitor center, and a transparent “Sky Walk” over the remaining parts of the bridge. Set within a wider discussion of the development of heritagescapes, we position the Kinzua Bridge State Park as a unique example of a landscape transformed by different use values over time. As heritagescapes are intrinsically linked with nature, we also show how natural disasters and climate change can play a significant role in the heritage-making process and that creative adaptations can be viewed as an acceptance and recognition of the natural processes of time while still acknowledging the affective and emotional dimensions embedded in heritagescape

High tech or high touch? Heritage encounters and the power of presence

In this article, I challenge the increasing emphasis on digital technologies to enhance encounters with the past in heritage landscapes. Beginning with a memory from my childhood, I conceptualise presence as being there and review recent approaches in heritage studies that highlight the wide range of benefits derived from embodied experiences in heritage places including reinforcing feelings of wellbeing and ontological security. Outlining enduring limitations of high-tech digital heritage tools, particularly the lack of critical perspectives assessing the ethical and methodological challenges of employing them in heritage landscapes, I argue there is a recurring theme of grasping for presence. Drawing on fieldwork in four heritage sites associated with the Viking Age in Sweden and Germany, I suggest a renewed focus on ‘high touch’ will encourage more meaningful, multisensory encounters within the fabric of the heritage landscape. As our lives become increasingly high tech, I return to the foundational values and motivations of being there in heritage places, concluding that heritage landscapes serve as important spaces of interaction where past, present, and future imaginaries can be negotiated beyond the reach of the digital world

Dead Landscapes – and how to make them live

Certain deadening forces including disneyfication, museumization, and the standardization of heritagescapes have led to the loss of embodied, lived experiences. In an effort to (re)enchant how these landscapes are developed, managed, and encountered, a new landscape model is introduced that combines the more practical components of heritage management (locale and story) with strategies that explore the emotional and affective dimensions of phenomenological landscape experience (presence). Within landscape geography, the model provides a more concise methodology for landscape analysis. Bringing together often opposing perspectives, the model helps to peel back the different material, symbolic, and affective layers of landscapes. Within heritage and tourism studies, the model provides a vital stepping stone between theory and practice, and it serves as an accessible and replicable tool to study the complexity of the visitor experience and the different dimensions of historical landscapes. Applying the model in four sites associated with the Viking Age reveals the desire for more multisensory, hands-on, and individualized encounters with heritagescapes. This illuminates the need to thwart the deadening forces and reawaken the lived experience in landscapes of the past and present

Learning by feeling: excursions into the affective landscape

Learning by doing has become a common phrase in the scholarship of teaching and learning as research continues to emphasize the benefits of active student engagement in higher education. Instead of passive vessels to be filled with information, students become the architects of their own education. While traditional ways of teaching focus on what students should learn, there is now more interest in how they should learn. With the emotional turn in geography, research has increasingly focused on the lived experience and the emotional and affective dimensions of space and place. However, the question often remains as to how to bring such research into an active learning environment that extends beyond the classroom. Instead of learning by doing, learning by feeling is presented as a new way of teaching emotional geographies. Student projects from two courses in landscape geography reveal how excursions into the affective landscape help students explore emotional geographies through more creative, reflective, affective, and active learning assessment strategies

Presence in affective heritagescapes: Connecting theory to practice

A recent shift in tourism studies has focused on the emotional, affective, embodied, and performative dimensions of heritage landscape experience. However, such research often struggles to transform theoretical and conceptual discussions into practical and applicable terms that can be effectively implemented by site managers. The concept of presence is therefore proposed to identify emotional and affective dimensions of heritage landscapes through an embodied, observational, and collaborative approach. Inspired by landscape phenomenology, I share how my own embodied encounter in the Viking Age site of Birka in Sweden prompted further observations and reflections on the existing site experience to confirm that certain areas of the landscape have been largely unexplored for their affective and emotional potential. Practical strategies to utilize these new dimensions emerge from focus groups and interviews with site managers, re-enactors, and tour guides. I conclude that a more collaborative study of presence grounded in embodied and observational encounters provides a useful stepping stone to transform theoretical and conceptual discussions of emotion and affect into more practical heritage management strategies

Where are the storytellers? : A quest to (re)enchant geography through writing as method

The standardization of writing styles and formats and the use of jargon in the social sciences have had considerable consequences on the quality of academic work. Due to the emphasis on method, theory, and empirical rigor, creativity, personal narrative, and storytelling no longer play a large role in academic writing. Addressing the growing concern for researchers losing their sense of self, the suppression of emotional reflection, the inaccessibility of jargon-filled work to the public, and the overall deterioration of writing quality, this paper argues for a renewed focus on teaching writing as a foundational qualitative method in the social sciences. Using creative writing examples by students from a graduate course in landscape geography, I suggest strategies for teaching, practicing, and reflecting on writing as method. Addressing the significance of creative and reflective writing earlier on in higher education will help young academics foster their own narrative voices, and will ultimately contribute to more interesting, accessible, and affective research that (re)enchants geography and other fields in the social sciences