This is the author's postprint version of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in the International Journal of Heritage Studies, Volume 11, Number 4 (2005), pp. 269-288. Available online at http://www.informaworld.comIn the context of recent media, governmental, academic and popular attention and enthusiasm for debates surrounding the construction and meaning of the British countryside, this paper outlines the potential for oral history to make a contribution. Working in Devon, the authors outline how an oral history methodology can engage with the fields of landscape archaeology and heritage studies. As well as augmenting and supporting more traditional approaches to landscape, oral history techniques can be used to challenge and destabilise existing knowledge, thereby moving the process of 'democratisation' in knowledge construction of the rural landscape from practices of scientific 'complicity' towards one of critical engagement
