Living Landscapes: Story, Practice, and Stewardship Across Time

Session Hosting Format: 
in-person session
Organizer(s): 
  • M. Berry, Seed Cultural and Environmental Heritage
  • J. Barteaux, Seed Cultural and Environmental Heritage
  • N. Risdon, Seed Cultural and Environmental Heritage
Session Description (300 word max): 

People have always made, inhabited, and cared for a place through story, practice, and relationship. This conference session examines how meaning is embedded in landscapes and how those meanings are recognized, extracted, interpreted, and cared for over time. Drawing on archaeological and historical examples and highlighting spaces that reflect dynamic lifeways and diverse forms of symbolic expression, the session explores how narratives are materially and immaterially inscribed, engaged through archaeological and community-based research, and interpreted and protected through dynamic and unique ways long after their creation. The session moves across scales, from specific sites to expansive cultural landscapes, foregrounding both community and Indigenous ways of knowing as essential frameworks for understanding archaeological signatures, place-making and stewardship. Rather than approaching landscapes as static backdrops or bounded sites, the session invites contributions that emphasize place as relational, living, and continually renewed through practice, memory, and responsibility.