Connecting highlands and lowlands – Towards a holistic approach to upland and lowland symbiosis in the past, present and for the future

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liza Zogib.

The small Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan is in itself a high land. However within the country there exist many unarticulated highland-lowland dynamics and dichotomies: economic power of the lowlands versus spiritual power of the highlands; modernization and opening of the lowlands versus tradition and closure of the highlands, and so forth. Establishing the right balance between these and others is critical as the country opens up into the 21st Century. This presentation will discuss some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aphrodite Sorotou.

In the European Landscape Convention ‘landscape’ means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors. This view approaches landscape as an integrated and integrating concept, requiring a holistic approach to the investigation, protection, management, and planning of space, consistent with the objective of sustainable development. Landscapes are dynamic socio-ecological systems emerging from long-term historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kalliopi Stara. Rigas Tsiakiris.

In various parts of the world local societies have effectively maintained mature groves through religious rules. A network of such sacred groves characterize the mountainous cultural landscapes of Epirus. These serve as protective wood belts above villages or form groups of veteran trees around churches. Except of settlements protection against natural hazards as also aesthetic functions, these locally-adapted management systems could regulate the use of natural resources for the community....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Felipe Rojas.

For the inhabitants of Bronze and Iron Age Anatolia, nearly every feature in the landscape was a god: rivers and springs, trees and rocks, lakes and mountains—mountains above all. Kings in Hattusas swore oaths by them. Luwian rulers claimed mountains as their own with conspicuous rock-cut reliefs and inscriptions. According to ancient sources, a mountain was among the earliest Lydian kings; that very mountain once acted as judge in a musical duel between Apollo and Pan! But how did people in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Rutz.

Textual sources from southern Iraq’s early historical periods constitute a surprisingly rich body of material for exploring highland-lowland interactions in ancient southwest Asia. Cuneiform inscriptions typically convey only one perspective on these interactions, namely, that of the elite inhabitants of city-states and territorial polities of the southern Mesopotamian alluvium. However, these decidedly one-sided representations were hardly monolithic, and in this paper I explore the various...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Hammer.

In Turkey and other mountainous parts of Eurasia, archaeologists have primarily targeted lowland sites for investigation, leaving highland areas relatively unexplored. Drawing on ethnography of twentieth-century tribes, scholars have assumed that mobile pastoralists were one of the major agents connecting lowlands and highlands in all post-Neolithic periods. However, little data has been collected on such people or on mobility practices. In this paper I briefly review empirical evidence for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stamos Abatis.

"On the move" is a pan-Mediterranean project on transhumance implemented by the Mediterranean Consortium on Nature and Culture. As part of this project, I have produced a documentary that illustrates the life and experiences of transhumant pastoralists in Northern? Pindos, Greece. The seasonal movement of these people with their flocks from the valleys to the alpine meadows of Pindos, although a practice currently in decline, has for centuries been the backbone of the economy of Greece and many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aimee Plourde. Elizabeth Arkush.

The florescence of the pre-Columbian Andean cultural sphere presents a classic, almost trite counter example to the development of highland-lowland relations seen in other areas. Far from marginal, the highlands are where the Inca empire emerged, following the earlier Wari and Tiwanaku states. However, highland-lowland relations were complex and varied; urban societies also developed independently on the Pacific coast, while eastern Amazonian lowlands were often cast as marginal and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Toby Wilkinson.

From an archaeological point of view, interconnectivity between highlands and lowlands of the ancient Near East is undeniable. The differential distribution of natural resources (particularly metals and precious stones which are sourced predominantly in highland regions), and the evidence for circulation of these resources from at least the Neolithic, is the most obvious sign of this interdependence. Too often, however, our models of this interdependence have tended to create abstract zones –...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Glatz.

The Middle East and surrounding areas are among the most mountainous regions of the world, where a combination of material and written records provides a unique opportunity to explore highland-lowland interaction in the distant past and over the long-term. This includes issues of relevance to current efforts to document, preserve and protect mountain regions and ways of life, such as the movement of people, goods and ideas, the environmental and resource contexts and consequences of such...