This heritage study of the Lower Mississippi Delta region presents several concepts for preserving and presenting to visitors different combinations of heritage resources across the region. These combinations would help preserve for future generations the rich natural and cultural heritage of a truly unique region of the nation. Volume I of the study includes background information on the study area, legislative mandates, concepts, and management alternatives for conserving, managing, and using the heritage resources. Volume II contains cultural, natural, recreational, and economic resource overviews as well as lists of national historic landmarks and districts, national natural land marks, and data analysis on over 2,000 resources in the Delta. Together they create a base of information from which Congress can make decisions regarding future planning and implementation strategies related to heritage tourism in the Delta.

This heritage study of the Lower Mississippi Delta region presents several concepts for preserving and presenting to visitors different combinations of heritage resources across the region. These combinations would help preserve for future generations the rich natural and cultural heritage of a truly unique region of the nation. Volume I of the study includes background information on the study area, legislative mandates, concepts, and management alternatives for conserving, managing, and using the heritage resources. Volume II contains cultural, natural, recreational, and economic resource overviews as well as lists of national historic landmarks and districts, national natural land marks, and data analysis on over 2,000 resources in the Delta. Together they create a base of information from which Congress can make decisions regarding future planning and implementation strategies related to heritage tourism in the Delta.

This book mostly contains contributions by the invited lecturers at the 7th International Conference on Non-Destructive Testing and Micro-Analysis for the Diagnostics and Conservation of the Cultural and Environmental Heritage. The contributors have all been chosen for their individual reputations and the quality of their research, but also because

Inspired by the Arkansas Review’s “What Is the Delta?” series of articles, Defining the Delta collects fifteen essays from scholars in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities to describe and define this important region. Here are essays examining the Delta’s physical properties, boundaries, and climate from a geologist, archeologist, and environmental historian. The Delta is also viewed through the lens of the social sciences and humanities—historians, folklorists, and others studying the connection between the land and its people, in particular the importance of agriculture and the culture of the area, especially music, literature, and food. Every turn of the page reveals another way of seeing the seven-state region that is bisected by and dependent on the Mississippi River, suggesting ultimately that there are myriad ways of looking at, and defining, the Delta.