Research On The Huangshi Mining And Metallurgical Cultural Landscapes

From the Stone Age,the Bronze Age,the Iron Age to the Industrial Age,human beings have conducted activities of mining and metallurgy with a vast range of industrial types and a large employing population for nearly four thousand years.Such activities that created a lot of material wealth and gave birth to various civilizations still influence human society in terms of politics,economics,culture and art,etc.In addition,many sites of mining and smelting,along with canals,wharf,railways and stations constructed for it,were retained around the world.Some ancient cities and modern cities even rose for the haulage and management.Therefore,it follows that all the material wealth and non-material wealth created by mining and metallurgical activities are an important part of human civilization.In China,since mineral resources are vital national resources,mining and metallurgy was written into classical annals of history as a core technology of civilization,such as in Shi Ji,Han shu,Yu Gong,etc.As a shining pearl in the industrial and cultural heritage corridor of the Yangtze River basin,the Huangshi mining and metallurgical heritages is one of the birthplaces of Chinese bronze culture,modern China's iron and steel industry as well as cement industry.Besides,the city of Huangshi is also the important industrial bases of raw materials and equipment manufacturing in the history of the People' s Republic of China so that it can be labelled as a well-known mining and metallurgical city.The city boasts 3,000 years' cultural accumulation with setting up factories as its foundation owing to the mines,which enables Huangshi to depend mutually on the word “mining and metallurgy” and to possess profound industrial heritage.At present,globalization and urbanization exert rapid and significant impact on the regional characteristics,and many industrial cities made transition to the post-industrial era,thus forming a game between industrial heritage and urban development.On the one hand,it is worth noting that the mining and metallurgical heritages of Huangshi don't equal the common industrial heritages of most cities.In a sense,one of the most important dominant factors of forming such mining and metallurgical resources-based city as Huangshi lies inthe development of mining and metallurgical activities,which is the kernel of them.The protection and development of mining and metallurgical resources are the key to such cities' transformation.On the other hand,mining and metallurgical heritages with largest amount of preservation and widest distribution are integral parts of the industrial and cultural heritages in the light of World Cultural Heritage List.Because of the distinct ways of mining and metallurgical activities,such heritages are significantly different from other industrial heritages like light and processing industrial heritages,reflecting in the regional systematicness and relevance of nature,space,industry,culture and organization and in the temporal accumulative and dynamic property of history and culture.However,although it has great research value to study mining and metallurgical heritages,specific definition and systemic researches are still absent in the current academic world.The present dissertation,coupled with mining and metallurgical characteristics of historical accumulation and regional relevance,conducted researches according to the technical pattern of “raising research questions—analyzing the questions—solving the questions”.It studied the integrity,systematicness,dynamicness and relevance of the Huangshi mining and metallurgical heritages from the perspective of cultural landscape and provided a new idea for protective development of regional cultural characteristics and progressive development of mining and metallurgical cities.The specific study is as follows:Firstly,the relation between the mining and metallurgical heritages and cultural landscapes is summarized.It is found that mining and metallurgical heritages possess regional relevance and historical accumulation,which reflect the features of cultural landscape of this region and the type classification of cultural landscapes.Moreover,the paper analyzes the mining and metallurgical heritages from the perspective of cultural landscape and discusses the definition,connotation,elements,structures and characteristics of mining and metallurgical cultural landscapes.Secondly,the vertical history formation and evolution of the Huangshi mining and metallurgical cultural landscapes are discussed.With the “birth”—“origin”—“rise” —“fall”of the Huangshi mining and metallurgical industry as the main parts to explore its forming history,to analyze its forming basis of geological conditions,geographical environments,political economy and social culture and to summarize the evolution law of it.Thirdly,the horizontal type division and characteristics of the Huangshi mining and metallurgical cultural landscapes are analyzed.According to classification of the industrial functions and of cultural characteristics,the Huangshi mining and metallurgical cultural landscapes can be divided into five categories: mining,smelting,transportation,derivatives and settlements.The material and non-material culture of each type unit and the characteristics of the inductive type unit are analyzed to make a summary for the overall spatial,industrial,political,cultural and aesthetic characteristics of the Huangshi mining and metallurgical cultural landscapes.Fourthly,the internal components and structures of the Huangshi mining and metallurgical cultural landscapes are analyzed.On the basis of the formation,evolution as well as type and characteristic analysis of the landscapes,the study refines three elements of it consisting of natural basement,material and non-material and the subject activities.In addition,it analyzes the structural forms of elemental permutation,involving four systemic substructures involving space,economics and politics and culture and further probes into the structural levels,structural scales and structural transformations of the Huangshi mining and metallurgical cultural landscape.Fifthly,the comprehensive value evaluation of the Huangshi mining and metallurgical cultural landscape is carried out,based on the protective developing goals and the value evaluation theory.On the one hand,integrated with the vertical formation and evolution,the horizontal types and features,as well as the internal elements and structures of the landscapes,this paper explores the contents of comprehensive value evaluation composed of protective value covering ontological value,cultural value,ecological value and social value,and developing value covering economic value.On the other hand,through a collection of questionnaires and an analysis of weight index,a model of comprehensive value evaluation is established upon the APH method and fuzzy mathematics method.Besides,combined with an analysis of survey samples,the results with three levels of unity,system and unit of the comprehensive value evaluation are obtainedSixthly,the protective development strategies for the mining and metallurgical culture landscapes in Huangshi are discussed.Combining the protective development theories of culture heritages with the formation,development,types,features,factors,structure and evaluation of mining and metallurgical culture landscapes in Huangshi,this paper,on theone hand,broadens the research range and builds conservation system and cognitive meaning at regional level with cultural heritage corridor;on the other hand,it also explores universal and targeted protective development strategies for mining and metallurgical culture landscapes in Huangshi at the overall,system and unit levels.Finally,the basic viewpoints is summarized and two innovative aspects are put forward as follows.In this paper,systematic analysis of mining and metallurgical heritages is made for the first time through the perspective of cultural landscapes.On the one hand,the concept of mining and metallurgical cultural landscapes is innovatively proposed,whose definition,connotation,elements,structures and characteristics are analyzed theoretically so as to broaden the research field of cultural landscapes;on the other hand,combining a deepened basic study on the Huangshi mining and metallurgical heritages,this paper puts forward an innovative research method composed of the vertical historical analysis,horizontal type analysis,internal structure analysis and comprehensive value evaluation of the Huangshi mining and metallurgical cultural landscapes.Furthermore,a protective development strategy is proposed,which corresponds to the renewal path of the cities with exhausted mining and metallurgical resources.