Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnoarchaeological data from British Columbia, Canada and Cyprus to illustrate how identity, landscape and the nonhuman world are interwoven through he embodied act of moving.

Paper long abstract:

It is through movement that we know the world and (re)construct our place in it - our social landscapes. This paper focuses on the dialogic relationship among the embodied experience of walking and cultural identity. As Lee and Ingold (2006: 73) state, walking is an experience "in which environment shifts and imprints on the body, and is at the same time affected by it".

Walking is only one part of a much larger, complex engagement that requires awareness of the dialogue amongst human and the nonhuman world and an ability to adjust to their ever shifting interactions. It is through such shifts that cultural identities emerge and reflect back.

I use two case studies to illustrate how identity, landscape and the nonhuman world are interwoven through he embodied act of moving. The first draws on ethnoarchaeological data from a five day high school trek in southwestern British Columbia. The 'Harrison Hike' has influenced how generations of students come to understand their place in this unfamiliar landscape and their own social worlds.

The second draws on community based heritage work in a rural Cypriot village where people's lives were once entangled with/in the forest and its resources. Under British Colonial administration the forest was delimited and their access restricted. Here the practice of walking forest pathways is part of 'heritage-making' - confirming and recreating cultural practices, fostering a renewed sense of pride in their silenced past to carry with them into the future.