Resumo
Natural Parks in the mountains of Asturias and León (North of Spain) have been primarily considered (and managed) as ‘natural landscapes’. Preserving wildlife, emphasising the beauty of the uplands, and promoting their ecological values for tourism and education have been the main goals for regional administrations during the last decades. However, these landscapes are the result of human-environment interactions throughout time as archaeological research and palaeoenvironmental studies have shown. After the introduction of agriculture and, the effort deployed by local communities in agrarian production transformed the image of these areas through history. Nevertheless, educational narratives, tourism marketing discourses and public governance practise in the Natural Parks still sustain the ‘nature-culture divide’: Natural Sciences are often responsible for constructing these narratives, in contrast with Humanities or Social Sciences which are not well integrated within the ‘naturalistic’ approach. In addition, different regulations affect how the landscape is managed, emphasising its cultural or natural aspects, often in isolation from each other. This can create tensions between the diverse (and sometimes contradictory) interests of different stakeholders. Rural families inhabiting Natural Parks find themselves in the middle of this discursive battle, being marginalised from the policy-making levels and used by political parties or private interests according to their own agendas. Can we as landscape archaeologists help to suture this conflict? This is one of the main goals of our archaeological research in the Western area of the Cantabrian Mountains. Based on several case studies comprised by the Natural Parks of Babia-Luna (León), Somiedu (Asturias) and Las Ubiñas-La Mesa (Asturias) we are exploring the long-term landscape biographies in upland common-lands. In this way, we can emphasise human agency in the making of cultural landscapes and provide reasons that support local rural communities’ claims to be involved in land-use and cultural landscape management around their villages.