Introduction

This chapter considers “cultural mapping” as an ethnographic method. Like many anthropological ideas (and indeed the concept of “culture” itself), this methodology has achieved wider utility. UNESCO (2009)makes use of it, as do many local community projects. There are now cultural mapping “toolkits” available, and newsletters and websites designed to assist people in employing these. Here, however, we are concerned with cultural mapping as a scientific method for the systematic collection of social data.

Cultural mapping explores people’s historical and contemporary relationships with local environments. It entails “going walkabout” with informants in the places that they consider to be important, and collecting social, historical and ecological data in situ. It observes that places not only reflect the physical materialization of cultural beliefs and values, they are also a repository and a practical mnemonic of information. Thus the process is simultaneously an exercise allowing the collection of basic site and area-specific data; a participatory and observational exercise focused on people’s interactions with places; a process of elicitation, enabling informants to articulate the cultural landscapes and territorially situated ethnohistories embedded in a physical topography; and a collaborative process through which cultural representations of the area are composed. Interviewing informants “in place” draws on both experiential and abstract forms of knowledge, and the use of “walkabouts” provides a relaxed and productive context for interviews.