Research On The Determination Of Shaxi Ancient Town's Value From The Angle Of The Correlation Between Its Spatial Characteristics And Historical Function

As a special historical heritage,ancient town has gone through time's extraction and carving,and has become a precious historical treasure.In the long course of history,ancient town has left many spatial characteristics,which directly reflects its value.Because of ancient town's distinctive settlement form,it is neither as exquisite as village,nor as solemn as city.It is the carrier of past flourishing commodity economy.Protecting this ancient gift is an important part of China's historical heritage protection work.However,some protection practices have made the ancient town lost its ancient characteristics.One of the reasons for this phenomenon is the superficial evaluation of ancient's value.Traditional method of ancient town's value determination evaluates all ancient towns with the same scale,which may lead to inaccurate evaluation.The determination of historical value is the foundation of the ancient town protection,and the determination should be made on case-by-case basis.With the increasing recognition of the importance of the ancient towns protection in China,it is urgent to develop an innovative approach to protect ancient towns.This study aims to overcome the weaknesses of traditional evaluation method,and seeks to come up an innovative way to determine ancient town's historical value from the angle of the correlation and interaction between ancient town's spatial characteristics and historical function.The paper mainly consists three sections.Firstly,based on the weaknesses of traditional method,the paper proposes an innovative approach to determine Shaxi ancient town's historical value.The approach mainly includes building a regional platform and specifically weighing Shaxi ancient town.This lays the foundation for method development.Secondly,the paper conducts research on Shaxi region's background,which foreshadows ancient town's spatial formation mechanism and its corresponding spatial patterns from its geographical,economical,historical,cultural and socio-political aspects.This section emphasizes the narrative logic between historical function and spatial characteristics.Then,this paper takes Shaxi town as a case study,and starts the analysis with analyzing its spatial characteristics.By putting Shaxi in the regional platform and conductiong comparisons studies and analysis,shaxi's historical values are being determined.Understanding its historical space from different levels allows the paper to capture Shaxi ancient town's spatial characteristics.Furthermore,in order to determine its role in regional level,the paper analyzes the distinctiveness of Shaxi ' s geography,economy,culture,history and political development reflected by its spatial characteristics through literature review,comparative analysis and some other research methods.Shaxi ancient town's unique historical values are thus being extracted.According to Shaxi's spatial characteristics' distinctiveness,the importance of its historical function and the strength of the correlation between space and historical functions,the paper gives classification for Shaxi's historical value.The most representative historical values of Shaxi ancient town are Shaxi's unique “ olive island” spatial characteristic,and its role as the most prosperous town among the Southeast region.On the next level,is its role as a crucial carrier of connecting regional market,and its unique spatial characteristics formed by the custom of living by the riverside.As for the more common historical value for Shaxi is its dependence on traditional culture.Finally,in order to propose protection strategies,the paper takes Shaxi's historical value as the core of the analysis,together with "town of qipu”?"cultural centre" and "poetic dwelling" protection theme,clarifies its spatial hierarchy and value conception.Hopefully this article could assist the determination of ancient town's historical value,and provide a reference for future protection practice.