The significance of cart-ruts in ancient landscapes

Abstract

Value does not reside immanently 'inside' cultural items or properties received from the past, but is ascribed to them by social processes. It is therefore essential to determine 'value' not only in financial terms, but more importantly on 'the kinds of social value that the subject under consideration represent.' Consequently, the value of cultural heritage assets is compared with other social and economic values, and may be defined as the meaning that people apply to something in terms of their understanding of the object under consideration. Different people apply different values according to their own specific criteria that may be different from those of others. In the past-archaeology was of interest to treasure hunters and antiquarians for its yield of ancient treasures and objets d'art for collections, as investment or for trade. Certain communities value ancient sites and artefacts for their association with their ancestral past, where the emphasis is on people rather than artefacts. Societies regard archaeological sites that have monumentality as symbols of association and identity in memory of some event or person. While in other instances it is not only the artefact, ancestors, or the monument that have value, but the sense of place, where the landscape is considered as having value, and this has lately been the objective of the European Landscape Convention. At a more micro level of landscape protection, and of great relevance to the study of cart-ruts, is the recent Recommendation on Conservation of the Geological Heritage and Areas of Special Geological Interest, which promotes geology as an archive of the planet's history, and as the evidence of the passage of time and natural and cultural transformations.