Axioms For Reading The Landscape

Cultural landscapes are everywhere in our world today whether we are aware of them or not. Before we can look at the cultural landscape if the city of New Kensington, we must understand what they are and what we can learn from them through observation. Cultural landscapes are defined as the places we, humans, live. A cultural landscape is the cultural properties that represent the combined works of nature and man. Other definitions include a geographic area, including both cultural and natural resources and the wildlife or domestic animals there, associated with a historic event, activity, or person or exhibiting other cultural or aesthetic values.
We can learn many things from studying our own cultural landscapes and the cultural landscapes of others around the world. In a paper named Axioms for Reading the Landscape written by Pierce K Lewis, he talks about what we can learn from studying cultural landscapes and breaks them down into what he calls seven axioms. The first axiom Lewis mentions is using the landscape …show more content…
The fort was built by Continental army troops in 1777 at the mouth of Pucketa Creek as a rally point for army scouts who would patrol the region for hostile American Indians. The fort was operational until 1793. In 2013 a developer by the name of Harvey Booth, after purchasing a lot on which the fort stood, started to try and uncover myths about some treasure Fort Crawford may have had at the time it collapsed in 1793. Booth found nothing but musket balls and dozens of arrowheads. The land is currently vacant but has the potential to be developed if someone wishes to do so. In that area there is a small monument to the old fort giving and explanation of what it was (see picture 1). There was also an elementary school built not more than a block from the old fort site that I went to as a child that had adopted the name Fort Crawford Elementary School. The school is currently