About the Volume

The full potential of cultural landscapes in Asia remains largely unexplored as is reflected in the number of sitesinscribed under this category on the World Heritage list. The content for this publication on cultural landscapes inAsia is first of its kind, with a special focus on the Indian context to examine landscape linkages across nationalboundaries and to understand the synergy between nature and culture within and beyond the framework of UNESCO Operational Guidelines for World Heritage.

The articles covered in this book are an overview of cultural landscape typologies in India and beyond. They providean understanding of the attributes that characterise cultural landscapes in Asia region, their diversity and the cultural,social and economic processes that have shaped these landscapes, their genesis and their associations.
The book covers cultural landscape attributes and values in various manifestations and at multiple scales – local,national, regional and global.

The first section on ‘beyond borders’ covers cultural landscape sites beyond India to present an internationalperspective on cultural landscapes in the Asia region. The publication also attempts to identify typologies ofcultural landscapes in Asia and presents the negotiations between nature, culture and community with respect to themanagement of these sites thus focusing on new directions in the conservation of nature and culture.

Since this category is not yet fully studied in India, the challenge is to classify the typologies of cultural landscapesgiven the range and diversity of culture-nature adaptations across the country. The second section on documentingand understanding cultural landscapes is one such attempt where the experts present a range of types includingassociative, archaeological, relict, institutional, industrial, religious and bio-cultural landscapes.

Lastly, the challenge of protecting and managing these cultural landscapes with indigenous knowledge systems andaddressing issues of historic urban landscapes in the face of rapid urbanisation is elaborated through various articleson landscapes of rural and urban India.

 

Contents

About the Volume................................................................................................................................iii
Dr.MechtildRössler
Foreword................................................................................................................................................. v
Cultural Landscapes Beyond Borders
Turkey: Theory and Practice in Framing Landscape as a Bridge for Culture-Nature Sustainability
Ege Yildirim......................................................................................................................................01
Mount Kailash, the Transnational Landscape: A Nepalese perspective
Kai Weise...........................................................................................................................................11
Bhutan as a Cultural Landscape
Junko Mukai.....................................................................................................................................19
Tibet in India: The religious cultural landscape
Gayatri Hegde..................................................................................................................................29
Upper Mustang: Through a Cultural Landscape Framework
Neel Kamal Chapagain...................................................................................................................37
Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka: Mapping Nature Culture Values
Nuwan Abeywardana.....................................................................................................................45
The Korean Military Landscape
Doowon Cho.....................................................................................................................................55
Documenting and Understanding Cultural Landscape Typologies
Archaeological Landscape of Haryana
TejasGarge and Apurva Sinha......................................................................................................63
Associative Cultural Landscapes: A Discursive Engagement
Shweta Wagh....................................................................................................................................73
Military Landscapes of Land and Sea Frontiers of India
NupurProthi Khanna and Shikha Jain.........................................................................................83
The Eternal Sacredscape: Varanasi
Rana PB Singh .................................................................................................................................93
Living Ghats of Varanasi
Amita Sinha....................................................................................................................................101
The Picturesque Landscape: OontKadal in Dal Lake
Saima Iqbal and Ikra Syed............................................................................................................111
Industrial Landscape of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway
AishwaryaTipnis and Subra Kar................................................................................................117
Institutional Landscape of Tagore’s Abode, Shantiniketan
Amit Bhattacharya ........................................................................................................................125
Coastal Landscape of Pulicat Lagoon
Xavier Benedict...............................................................................................................................131
Cultural Identity and Spatial Transformtion of Kumbhakonam
Sowmya PS......................................................................................................................................135
Lithology and Mythology in the Sacred Region EkamraKshetra
Piyush Das .....................................................................................................................................141
Relict Landscapes: Rock shelters in the Lower Chambal valley
Richa Misra.....................................................................................................................................147
Bio-Cultural Landscapes: The case of Kutch
Neel Kamal Chapagain.................................................................................................................153
Managing Cultural Landscapes in India
Challenges for the Cultural Landscapes of Northeast India
Sonali Ghosh, Persis Farooqy, VB Mathur ................................................................................161
Managing the Mixed World Heritage Site: Khangchendzonga National Park
Dechen Lachungpa........................................................................................................................167
Monitoring Challenges in a Living Cultural Landscape: River island of Majuli
Somi Chatterjee..............................................................................................................................173
Management Challenges in Contested Landscapes: Ayodhya
Sarvesh Kumar and Rana P.B. Singh..........................................................................................181
The Mattanchery Heritage Zone
MonolitaChatterjee........................................................................................................................189
Amaravathi Heritage Town: Narratives from an Indian Ecomuseum Development
Amareswar Galla...........................................................................................................................195