The Landscapes, Cultures and Heritage Values of Abandoned Mining Sites

Artículo

Autores: Cano Sanchiz, J. M.; Wang, D.
Revista: Landscape Architecture
Número: 29.4
Año: 2022
Páginas: 67-76

Corta Atalaya (Huelva, Spain), once the largest open-pit exploitation in Europe (Figure 1)

 
ABSTRACT:  Mining is one of the oldest human activities and, together with the associated production of metals, it has often been considered a major agent of civilisation and national development. As a global activity, the footprints of the extractive industry are to be found everywhere in the world, especially as abandoned mining sites. In this article, we understand the mining landscape in a double sense. On one hand, as a material document that can inform us about the mining culture and its evolution. On the other hand, as a complex multi-temporal site shaped jointly by nature and humans. Based on this double perception, this paper has two aims. 1) To read the landscape as a palimpsest that can show how mining activities and the remains of the mining past shape human groups and cultures. 2) To critically discuss the features and values of these landscapes as heritage in service of the contemporary society. In doing so, we combine perspectives of archaeology, ethnography and industrial heritage studies to consider several examples from different types (metallic and non-metallic mining, underground and open-pit mining), chronologies (ancient, modern and contemporary) and geographies (almost every continent in the globe). Our main conclusion is that, despite the singularities of each case, it is possible to define the landscapes of abandoned mining operations and its specific cultures as territories of globalisation that embody a series of heritage values, such as ecological, theoretical, technological, economic, historical, pedagogical, aesthetic, social and human ones. 
KEYWORDS: Industrial heritage; mining landscape; mining culture; mining heritage; globalisation.

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