Ways of Being: Hittite Empire and Its Borderlands in Late Bronze Age Anatolia and Northern Syria

In this paper, I take identity as a characteristic of empire in its periphery, denoting the totality of: 1) the imperial strategies an empire pursues in different regions, 2) the index of empire in each region, and 3) local responses to imperialism. My case study is the Hittite Empire, which dominated parts of what is now modern Turkey and northern Syria between the seventeenth and twelfth centuries BCE, and its borderlands. To investigate the identities of the Hittite imperial system, I explore the totality of the second millennium BCE in two regions. First, I explore imperial dynamics and responses in the Ilgın Plain in inner southwestern Turkey through a study of the material collected by the Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project since 2010. Second, I explore the identity of the Hittite Empire in the city of Emar in northern Syria by a thorough study of the textual and archaeological material unearthed by the Emar Expedition. In both cases, I argue that the manifestations of the Hittite Empire were mainly conditioned by the pre-Hittite trajectories of these regions. The strategies that the administration chose to use in different borderlands sought to identify what was important locally, with the Hittite Empire integrating itself into networks that were already established as manifestations of power, instead of replacing them with new ones.

Levers of family firms’ resilience in times of crisis

Although the academic literature argues that family firms are more resilient than non-family firms, the reasons for this presumed superiority are still not clearly identified. In addition, while family firms are a significant component of the economic landscape, research has evidenced variations in this organizational form such that some family firms seem to be more resilient than others. The following reflection will seek to provide some elements of analysis of the resilience of these companies in times of crisis.

Why Do UNESCO Biosphere Reserves Get Less Recognition than National Parks? A Landscape Research Perspective on Protected Area Narratives in Germany

This paper explores how landscape research can contribute to our understanding of why integrated protected area concepts like biosphere reserves get less recognition than national parks. In this regard, we analysed policy documents and online communication of biosphere reserves and national parks, conducted qualitative interviews with conservation professionals and volunteers as well as participant observation in order to identify and compare narratives that guide the communication and perception of both protected area categories. The results show how national parks offer a clear interpretation of space by building on landscape stereotypes and creating landscape legibility and experience-ability through touristification. National Parks also experience conflicts about proper management and combine a variety of goals, often including regional development. Nevertheless, their narrative is unambiguous and powerful. Biosphere reserves, on the other hand, have an image problem that is essentially due to the difficulty of communicating their objectives. They confront the difficult task of creating a vision that combines development and conservation while integrating contrarious landscape stereotypes. We argue for a fundamental engagement with protected area narratives, as this improves understanding of protected areas’ transformative potential.

Exploring Linear Earthworks across Time and Space – Introducing the ‘Monumentality and Landscape: Linear Earthworks in Britain’ Project

Linear earthworks of a monumental character are an enigmatic part of the British landscape. Research in Britain suggests that such features range in date from the early 1st millennium BC to the Early Middle Ages. While the roles of these monuments in past societies cannot be understated, they remain a relatively under-researched phenomenon. This article introduces the Leverhulme Trust-funded ‘Monumentality and Landscape: Linear Earthworks in Britain’ project, which aims to provide a comparative study of linear earthworks focusing on those dating to the Iron Age and early medieval period. This contribution reviews our approach and shares preliminary results from the project’s first year, identifying wider implications for the study of linear earthworks.

MAPPING MULTI-SCALED LANDSCAPE TYPOLOGY OF LANG SON PROVINCE

The landscape of a territory is generated by natural components, and it is also influenced by human activities. The complexity of factors making up landscape and the relationship between them with humans has created a diverse and complex differentiation of landscape in Lang Son province. Three factors reflecting typical characteristics of Lang Son landscape: Digital Elevation Model (DEM), soil, and land cover have been selected in this study. The concept of multiscaled landscape classification based on the European Landscape Convention (ELC) is applied for combining the holistic with parametric approaches and combining typological with multi-scaled landscape classifications. A number of possible combinations between 9 land cover variables, 9 soil combination variables, and 5 topographic variables have yielded 40 landscape units for Lang Son province. The obtained results are basic documents for contributing to modern and practical landscape research on the one hand, and to territory planning for sustainable development of Lang Son on the other hand.

Integrated Framework of Rural Landscape Research: Based on the Global Perspective

Context In recent years, the important value of rural landscape has been highlighted in tourism, cultural heritage, ecology and other fields, rural landscape research (RLR) has been paid more and more attention by researchers, with the deepening of research, RLR has the characteristics of diversity and complexity.Objectives To understand the development trend of RLR in the past 20 years, the distribution of research power, research hotspots and frontal research, to comb through the relevant results of RLR, to analyze the progress of RLR, and finally to integrate the main contents of RLR in a framework.Methods 735 related literatures were selected from the WoS Core Collection Database, and the papers on RLR from 1992 to 2020 were quantitatively data mined and qualitatively summarized by using Bibliometrics and VOSviwer software for mapping and analysis.Results (1) The number of papers on RLR increased from 1992 to 2020, during which it gradually became a hotspot research field that attracted increasing global attention. (2) From the research strength, Europe has a great influence in RLR, and has issued a series of conventions and protection policies, making its rural landscape become a model of modern rural development. There is little international cooperation and exchange in RLR, which is not conducive to the development of disciplines. Landscape & Urban Planning journals fit the theme of RLR. (3) The five hotspots of RLR are: rural cultural landscape and rural development; rural tourism landscape, the matching of landscape value and landscape perception; urban-rural interaction, land use change and landscape pattern conflict; change of ecosystem service value; rural landscape planning, protection and management.Conclusions RLR has developed from a study based on geography and ecology to a comprehensive research direction combining multidisciplinary and multi-methods of social and economic development, culture and other elements. At present, RLR covers the ecological landscape, production landscape, tourism landscape and cultural landscape of rural landscape system, changes from static pattern of rural landscape to dynamic evolution process, urban-rural interaction, ecosystem service and multifunctional landscape trade-off, and changes from single dimension to multi-dimensional in research paradigm, and combines “3S” technology and various landscape ecological model software. From the perspective of multidisciplinary research, from the perspective of rural landscape system, the correlation and mechanism between rural landscape multifunctionality, and dynamic monitoring and trend simulation, help to clarify the rural landscape multi-functional trade-off ideas and paths to guide the sustainable development of rural areas.