ABSTRACT
Recent decades have seen a steady rise in the use, exploitation and conflict within the cultural landscapes of Europe. Much of this is a consequence of the development of modern market systems, increasing land-use conflicts, and an exponential growth in mass tourism, as western society experiences an unprecedented increase both in disposable income and in leisure time. The mobility and insatiable curiosity that have accompanied this latter exercise in ‘cultural’ consumption must be treated, not with cynical censure, but with realistic proactive schemes. The commercial marketing of historical landscapes throughout Europe is by now an irreversible phenomenon, as is the desire to ‘curate’ them, as witnessed by the construction of archaeological parks, ecomuseums and the creation of ‘reserves’; the construction of a new species of landscape is afoot-a new partitioning (legally sanctioned by the Malta Convention) in which cultural/historical spaces are separated out from the wider context of the living landscape and packaged for consumption (Bender 1992; Kolen 1995). The real problem with such schemes is that they tend to reflect official views of the past and, more contentiously, a single knowable past (cf. Lowenthal 1985).
