ABSTRACT
In many landscapes today, biological diversity is the ecological and cultural legacy of millennial interactions between land use practices and always changing environmental conditions. Thus, landscapes must be seen as heterogeneous, shaped through interacting different temporal and spatial scales. In our contribution we conceptualise biocultural heritage as space-time heterarchies, the endless results of repeated feedback between land use as human ecological process and the response of the ecosystems themselves. We provide the example of the olive intercropping landscape from a rural area of inner Sicily (Cozzo del Lampo hill, Villarosa), and we explore the potential of our conceptualisation for landscape heritage management. The discussion is centred on the acknowledgement of the “ecological function” played by place-based communities, as a key grounding step for the re-appropriation of our ecological engagement with landscape and place.
