Search results

Natural resource extraction is perceived as a destructive aspect of human culture. This characterization is widespread, despite the activity having shaped relationships between communities and their environment to create entire sets of cultural values and expressions through settlement patterns, traditional skills and practices, innovation and technology, intangible cultural expressions, local economies and more. The cultural dimensions of natural resource extraction landscapes were discussed at the ICOMOS ADCOM Annual Symposium in La Plata, Argentina, in December 2018. The workshop included experts in cultural landscapes, sustainability, industrial archaeology and industrial heritage. This paper reports on these issues and deliberations focusing on World Heritage cultural landscapes of extraction.

The report considers a broad survey of the World Heritage List and sites on national Tentative Lists to identify those related to natural extraction sites and distinguishing between categories of relict vs. living, and between the types of natural resources being extracted.

The conclusion is that the World Heritage Committee has yet to address the living value of natural resource extraction. Furthermore, the workshop attendants concluded that there is a pressing need to do so in light of the type, nature and sustainability of these sites. As the source of materials for many outstanding sites on the World Heritage List and the decreasing availability of some resources, the question requires consideration to ensure the sustainable use and livelihood of communities.

The limitations are set by the general terms of the survey and the limited engagement of knowledgeable individuals.

The practical implications are related to guidance to review and analyse potential living cultural landscapes related to natural resource extraction.

There is no general discussion on this topic yet amongst professionals. The initiative of the workshop identified that gap and its related necessity to provide guidance.

THE usual methods for obtaining data on the hydrodynamic characteristics of flying boats during flight tests involve motion pictures of an instrument panel and records of oscillograph traces. The analysis of the photographic records is so time consuming that the results are not always available when needed, and in many cases more data are accumulated than is physically possible to analyse. In order to conserve manpower and to obtain directly usable data, new methods have been developed for making quantitative hydrodynamic flight tests. The test techniques were devised to relate, whenever possible, numerical values to sensations experienced by the pilot of a flying boat during take‐off and landing.