ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors explain how they approach their study of and interpretation of historic sites within the fields of cultural landscape studies and cultural geography. They provide a list of terms and definitions they routinely use to communicate their findings. Material culture is the tangible product of a culture that “embraces those segments of human learning which provide a person with plans, methods, and reasons for producing things that can be seen or touched”. The authors ask questions and approach interpretation with frameworks typical to cultural landscape studies and cultural geography, the methods for determining the death, harvest, or construction date of a timber sample are the same regardless of how the results are interpreted by various disciplines. Scholars have described how landscape has a myriad of meanings ranging from a scenic view to a place or location. Cultural landscapes, and the buildings contained within, have layers of history that dendrochronology can isolate and date.
