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"The future of the past"

Sustainable Evaluation of Cultural Landscape Potentials in Marginal Areas
Interdisciplinary Forum, Schöningen Castle, October 9^th - 11^th, 2002

In the first half of the 1990s, an ancient hunters camp, boasting the worlds oldest completely preserved hunting weapons of prehistoric man, was discovered in the open-pit coal mine in Schöningen. This exceptional archaeological find was to date the scientific highlight of the long term archaeological study "Archaeological Study Program in the Helmstedter Brown-Coal Area" ("Archäologische Schwerpunktuntersuchungen im Helmstedter Braunkohlerevier"), which was started in 1983 by the State Authority for the Preservation of Historic Monuments (Landesamtes für Denkmalpflege). With the pressing infrastructural problems in the former border district with East Germany, which are intensified by the successive degeneration of the brown-coal mining industry, questions concerning the future use of post-mining landscapes as possible tourism and recreation areas are arising at both communal and district level.

The multi-disciplinary conference, to which experts from the areas of urban and landscape development, applied, historical geography, and cultural and tourism management from all over Germany have been invited, aims at discussing the chances, possibilities and perspectives of sustainable conversion of former industrial and rural border areas.