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Come Into the 'Tent Room'
- Article from:
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The Washington Post
- Article date:
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September 14, 2001
- Author:
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Copyright informationCopyright 2001 The Washington Post. This material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Sometimes material possessions are worth more than their weight in
gold.
Whether aware of it or not, people attach value and other
intangible qualities to inanimate objects and places. Thus, material
culture and cultural landscapes -- bounded areas that reflect and
shape people's values, ideas, beliefs, and customs -- have much to
teach us about people, society, and the world as a whole.
Pierce F. Lewis, an American studies and cultural landscape
scholar, describes cultural landscapes as "our unwitting
autobiography, reflecting our tastes, our values, and our ideas, in
tangible, visible form. We rarely think of a landscape that way, and
so the cultural record we have 'written' in the ...