“Dežela” is a name given to a predominantly flat area between Radovljica and Žirovnica, the Sava Dolinka River, and the foothills of the Karavanke mountain range. The harmonious rural landscape, with all its natural and cultural features, represents a distinctive identity of the wider Upper Gorenjska region, within which the noble phenomenon of the “Slovene Parnassus” has developed in millennia of activity. Due to a general lack of suitable actions that would help raise awareness of the importance of preserving an authentic environment and its heritage, the local population does not perceive the remainder of a still preserved authentic area as a value on which their quality of life and economic development depend and on which they will increasingly continue to depend in the future. Consequentially, there have been many inappropriate and reckless invasions in the area of “Dežela.” These invasions permanently erase and impoverish its unique topographic and heritage diversity. The latter has developed in this area through lengthy geological and historical periods. In “Dežela,” we can identify at least three millennia of archaeologically verifiable human activity.
Modern archaeology no longer concerns itself with strictly limited research of individual archaeological themes but introduces a holistic heritological approach to its processes. Archaeological findings are merely a part of the information that enables a comprehensive view of an area of research. The attitude of the local population toward their environment is crucial for the proper conservation and protection of a cultural landscape. The people must understand their cultural heritage as one of the pivotal components in assuring a quality living environment, and they must perceive it as a value. In the long term, the inclusion of the public in all levels of archaeological proceedings and heritage management is the only path to maintaining and protecting the cultural landscape and its heritage. The thesis addresses, among other things, questions of including the public in the processes of cultural landscape preservation from the viewpoint of public archaeology, and it combines them with modern archaeology and heritology.
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