The Investigatory work and establishing of maritime cultural reserves : culture, nature and reserves

Since 1999 it has been possible for Swedish municipalities and the Swedish county administrative board to establish cultural reserves to protect particularly valuable cultural landscape. The protective character of the cultural reserve is supposed to be equivalent to the one found in nature reserves. The separation between the two protective forms have led to a marginalization of the protection of cultural landscape. This thesis has, using Posthumanist theory, studied the investigation process preceding the establishing of three maritime cultural reserves. The thesis also investigates if the general work with cultural landscape could benefit from a Posthumanist approach. To reach the purpose of this thesis, three research questions were formed: how does laws and conventions relate to Posthumanist theory, which values are highlighted in the process of investigating valuable landscapes and how does the practical work with investigating maritime cultural landscape manifest itself? The source material for the thesis consists of a study of documentation, laws and conventions. It also includes an interview study with informants at the Swedish heritage board, The Swedish National Maritime Museums and two persons responsible for the Cultural reserves at the municipality of Haninge and the Swedish county administrative board of Gävleborg. Research shows that the work with managing maritime cultural landscape and preservation would benefit from the use of a Posthumanist approach. The laws and guidelines that exists, based on euro-american definitions of what a valuable landscape is, limits the informants in their work to preserve all aspects of the landscape. Nature and culture are interlaced and cannot be separated. A landscape management system that acknowledge this and allows the public to be a part of the creation of cultural heritage, will lead to a more sustainable preservation. This document is a two years’ master´s thesis in Archive, Library and Museums studies