Understanding Placemaking Practices in Sacred Landscapes for the Conservation of Heritage: Insights from Jeevant Braj, India

Rohan Chaturvedi

Abstract

Sacred landscapes represent layered heritage where material structures, ritual practices, collective memory, and performative traditions together shape spatial identity. However, contemporary development pressures and fragmented conservation approaches often reduce such landscapes to stand-alone monuments, overlooking their lived, performative, and narrative dimensions. Nevertheless, such sacred landscapes do still exist. In this context, this paper examines placemaking in sacred landscapes in Braj region in India as a process rooted in the ritual geography and the everyday practices. The research adopts a qualitative case study approach focused on the Braj region, in Indi. Data collection integrates archival research drawing on historical maps and Puranic and Bhakti texts. It also engages spatial documentation and mapping of key sites, pilgrimage routes, and settlement patterns along with ethnographic observations of rituals, festivals, and performative practices. These are enriched by the oral histories obtained through interviews with community members. A comparative review of published academic studies on other pilgrimage landscapes is used to contextualize the findings. The study finds that placemaking in Braj manifests as a continuum in which geography precedes and shapes sacred identity through ritual activation, performance, and narrative transmission. Temples function not as isolated monuments but as nodes within a living cultural landscape. It concludes that in Braj, geography is the primary anchor of placemaking and that rituals and performances act as placemaking practices. The settlement and the everyday life afford the sacred space, although this vernacular placemaking systems are vulnerable and face an existential threat. The paper therefore proposes a conceptual framework for heritage practices that promote participation, ritual continuity and spatial storytelling, offering pathways for integrating contemporary interventions in order to sustain cultural resonance and community life.

Keywords:

Sacred Landscapes, Living Heritage, Placemaking, Ritual Geography, Collective Memory, Braj, India

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