People, Space and Time: Understanding metaphors in Sustaining Cultural Landscapes in Australia and Zimbabwe

The project aims to use stories, folklore and legends to understand and explore the links between space, place and people. The research argues that traditional stories and folklore contain a significant part of a landscape’s biography and should therefore be explored to build a fuller understanding of cultural landscapes. It recognizes that language contains long-cultivated knowledge about a place and this knowledge can be useful in mapping cultural landscapes. When this language ceases to give words to describe the landscape it becomes vulnerable to negative action. The project there aims to capture these stories and explore how they can be used to sustain cultural landscapes and how these metaphors (folklore) can be used in archaeological research and heritage management. The project will utilize cultural landscapes in Australia (Uluru) and Zimbabwe (Great Zimbabwe). Using the Narrative Inquiry methodology the project will collect oral, written and visual narratives and explore their meanings beyond literal translations. It will thus focus on the experiences of people in the defined spaces selected over a period of time and these will be used to map and understand cultural landscapes in the same way that communities understand them. It thus highlights the social nature of cultural landscapes and the invisible and indivisible bond between people and places. The ultimate aim of the project is to re-define cultural heritage by refocusing attention on the immaterial elements of material culture and challenging traditional philosophies about time, objects spaces and cultural landscapes.