ABSTRACT
It goes almost without saying that landscape plays an important role in how the past is remembered. The huge literature on place—specific portions of landscapes entwined with personal experiences and historical narratives—tells through theoretical inquiries, and richly textured and culturally and historically anchored accounts, of the power of places to provoke and evoke memories (e.g., Basso 1996; Bender 1998; Casey 1987; Clifford 1997; Jackson 1994; Lippard 1997; Lowenthal 1985; Schama 1995, to name a few). Place, then, is personal and political; indeed, placemaking, the social practices of constructing place and inscribing memories, does not necessarily require particular skills or special sensibilities. Questions about what happened here (or there), how it was formed, who was involved, and why it should matter can often be answered more or less spontaneously, alone or with others, or with varying degrees of interest and enthusiasm (Basso 1996:5; Lippard 1997:7). Although anyone can be a placemaker and places lurk everywhere, on the familiar and proverbial beaten paths as well as off them, the process is never entirely simple. What is remembered about a particular place is triggered, guided, and constrained, largely by visual “landmarks” but also by verbal accounts and other sensory stimuli (e.g., Bender 2001; Ingold 1993; Tilley 1994; Witmore 2006). These images of place are reshaped and reinterpreted, sometimes by placemakers who selectively seek to cultivate certain responses and, therefore, attempt to define for others what should be remembered and how it should be remembered.
