Conservation of Cave-dwelling Village using Cultural Landscape Gene Theory

Located in the northern part of the Loess Plateau, Wudinghe river basin is part of the Longshan culture and is a transitional zone from the northern nomadic areas to the farming area of central regions. Under influences of an environmental concept known as “oneness of nature and man”, the Cave Dwelling which is seen as a building taking root in the earth becomes a principal architectural form in Wudinghe river basin. In the meantime, with the characteristics of warm in winter and cool in summer, the economical cave dwelling could be built and developed generation by generation alone with some environmental factors such as being dry and rainless, cold winters and rare timbers. However, with the pace of modernization development becoming faster, cave dwellings are rapidly replaced by or disappear following which is the vanishing of regional culture in Wudinghe river basin. How to conserve the traditional Cave Dwelling village is one of the hot topic for cultural heritage conservation in term of both theory and practice. In this chapter, the author treats the concepts of Cultural Landscape Gene theory as breakthrough points to analyze landscape characteristics of cave dwelling village in Wudinghe river basin and explore cultural values which are implied in those village landscapes of Wudinghe river basin. According to the Cultural Landscape Gene Theory, it is deemed that there exists a cultural factor which is not only different from other cultural landscapes but also can be inherited from generation to generation. The Cultural Landscape Gene of cave dwelling village can be divided into five types from material to intangible, as well as from macro-scale to micro-scale. By means of detailed field investigation and literature study, the five Genes of cave dwelling village in Wudinghe river basin are proposed, such as natural gene, cultural gene, spatial gene, material gene, and intangible gene. This study can be implemented for the Cave-dwelling village cultural landscape conservation.