Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial Heritage and Archaeology (PhD)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Social Sciences

Advisor 1

Don Lafreniere

Committee Member 1

Sarah Fayen Scarlett

Committee Member 2

Mark Alan Rhodes II

Committee Member 3

Marla Miller

Abstract

Understanding the complexity of the industrial heritage landscape and working towards its holistic representation are long standing challenges for heritage practitioners and scholars alike. This dissertation focuses on addressing a gap in industrial heritage scholarship by addressing the question; can the integration of spatial narratives and deep mapping theory and practice improve upon the practice of public discourse in industrial heritage? Community heritage narratives are an important intangible aspect of the industrial heritage landscape that forms a discursive relationship with authorized heritage sources. Influencing this discourse can alter contemporary power relations that intertwine modern issues with perceptions of the past. For this reason, creating space for the voices of others in the broader heritage dialogue is extremely important. Deep maps offer a space to work towards more holistic representations of industrial heritage landscapes as well as a unique place for more equitable discourse on industrial heritage to occur. Their ability to illustrate and link data relationships across time and space make them a unique space to represent the complex multilayered industrial heritage landscape. Weaving together theories and methods from an interdisciplinary body of scholarship, this work develops a new model that works to incorporate both the unique depths at which stakeholders can engage with a project while also illustrating how spatial narratives can be used as tool to facilitate their engagement in industrial heritage discourse on deep mapping platforms. It then practically assesses the value of this model by applying it to a well-established deep mapping project to reflect on past public engagement programming, develop a new engagement plan, and measure the efficacy of that plan in increasing both the depth and breadth of engagement with the deep map. Finally, this work investigates how spatial storytelling and deep mapping methods, and practice can be integrated with traditional interpretation methods to create robust interpretations of industrial heritage landscapes in a manner that creates avenues for people to discursively engage with the landscape’s representation.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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