The DEEPSAL Project: Using the Past for Local Community Futures in Jordan

ABSTRACT

The Deep Past as a Social Asset in the Levant (DEEPSAL) project, conducted in 2015–16 by the Council for British Research in the Levant, examined two communities in southern Jordan, Beidha and Basta, who live near significant Neolithic archaeological sites. The project collected information on the communities’ current socioeconomic conditions, their relationship with local cultural heritage and how that cultural heritage currently benefits or hinders them. The information was used to inform nascent strategies to utilize the sites sustainably as development assets and suggest alternative strategies as necessary. The results showed that a tourism-based strategy is suitable for Beidha but there was a need to focus on basic business skills. For Basta a tourism-based strategy is currently unsuitable, and efforts should rather focus on supporting educational activities. The results of the project are presented here within the context of archaeology’s increasing interest to use archaeological resource to benefit local communities, and outlines lessons for that effort.     

A Review of Cultural Heritage Education in Turkish Schools (1962–2011)

Abstract

Cultural heritage preservation has formed a key component of Turkish Social Studies instruction since the curriculum first was introduced in the 1960s. In this article, we trace changes over time in the way cultural heritage has been presented to students in Turkey. For this study, Turkish Social Studies textbooks for fourth through seventh graders (ages 9–10 to 12–13) published from 1974 to 2011 were examined, including both their texts and illustrations concerning cultural heritage and the closely related topic of tourism. Over nearly four decades, the textbook presentation of cultural heritage has shifte­d from a national focus to a focus on world cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible. The textbooks illustrate the high value placed on monuments and artwork that demonstrate the accomplishments and progress of Anatolian civilizations, specifically, the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks. Notably, the textbooks emphasize the economic value of monuments and sites for tourism revenues.     

Editorial

Abstract

In April 1996, a single gunman killed 35 people at Port Arthur, Tasmania. A majority of these murders occurred inside the Broad Arrow Cafe, a structure related to commercial and tourist operations at this historic site. This paper considers the politics of heritage management for a place of recent human tragedy. How do Australians cope with this tragic site as survivors, as witnesses, as heritage managers, as local residents, as sympathetic nationals? Current debates on the future of the Broad Arrow Cafe provide some significant insight into the heritage of mourning: should such buildings be retained as monuments, should they be ceremonially removed to encourage a healing process, or should they be left to decay naturally? Through these debates, questions about the local, national and international nature of cultural heritage management have emerged. Whose interests are served by preserving sites of human suffering? What are the roles of artefacts, architecture and cultural landscapes in the memorialization of tragedy? Finally, there is discussion of some innovative suggestions from local and federal heritage authorities for preserving some physical testimony of the tragedy, while honouring the national and personal mourning process.     

The HMS Swift shipwreck: The development of underwater heritage protection in Argentina

Abstract

The aim of this article is to evaluate, with a critical perspective, the legal framework for heritage protection in Argentina, viewing it within an international context and focusing on the HMS Swift shipwreck – sunk in Puerto Deseado (Santa Cruz province) in 1770 – as a case study. Moreover, some initial proposals for a management plan are presented as a first step in thinking about the challenges of preserving underwater sites in Argentinian Patagonia.

Through this analysis some interesting points are outlined, including the reasons that make the Swift shipwreck a leading case in Argentina. It is the first interdisciplinary underwater archaeology project in the country comprising archaeologists who are also divers; it is supported by national authorities; and it is the first project of its kind to give underwater archaeologists experience in dealing with archaeological research and preservation in an environment of multiple conflicting interests.

The international relevance of the Swift case relies on the nature of underwater cultural heritage as an international resource. The project's history is located in an international setting, derived from ihternational trade and communication, in which many ships and their contents have been lost far from their origin or destination. At a national level the Swift is a wreck with significant historical and cultural value. It is in a unique state of preservation and its location near to the shore makes it highly accessible. Locally,HMS Swift will be relevant when Puerto Deseado's community starts to recognise it as a significant part of their own heritage and local people become involved in the preservation of the wreck.     

The significance of significance in cultural heritage studies: a role for cultural analogues in applied geography teaching

Abstract

This teaching exercise for increasing awareness of, and sensitivity to, issues in cultural heritage management addresses the significance attached to cultural icons associated with the past. The exercise uses representative places from the non‐indigenous Australian historical landscape as cultural analogues to introduce non‐indigenous Australian students to issues of indigenous cultural heritage. Assessment of student response suggests that the exercise serves its purpose in increasing awareness of both issues of cultural significance and difficulties in cultural heritage management.     

A cultural justice approach to popular music heritage in deindustrialising cities

ABSTRACT

Deindustrialisation contributes to significant transformations for local communities, including rising unemployment, poverty and urban decay. Following the ‘creative city’ phenomenon in cultural policy, deindustrialising cities across the globe have increasingly turned to arts, culture and heritage as strategies for economic diversification and urban renewal. This article considers the potential role that popular music heritage might play in revitalising cities grappling with industrial decline. Specifically, we outline how a ‘cultural justice approach’ can be used within critical heritage studies to assess the benefits and drawbacks of such heritage initiatives. Reflecting on examples from three deindustrialising cities – Wollongong, Australia; Detroit, USA; and Birmingham, UK – we analyse how popular music heritage can produce cultural justice outcomes in three key ways: practices of collection, preservation and archiving; curation, storytelling and heritage interpretation; and mobilising communities for collective action.     

Marginal or mainstream? Migrant centres as grassroots and official heritage

Abstract

Migrant heritage, as a grassroots practice seeking to commemorate pre- and post-war migrant communities and their contributions, emerged in Australia from the 1980s. Since that time, its appeal has continued to grow. It now receives, in some form, state sanction and is policed by the same state and national legislation as other cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible. This article seeks to complicate understandings of migrant heritage as a marginal practice, specifically by interrogating the use-value of particular narratives in the Australian context – that is, how do individuals, communities and other groups (the grassroots) draw on sanctioned and publicly circulating narratives to mark their site as heritage-worthy? Ideas of what constitutes official and unofficial heritage can be mutually inclusive – a dialectical process. I analyse this in relation to the commemoration of former post-war migrant reception centres in Australia.     

Public folklore dialogism and critical heritage studies

Abstract

Public folklore’s dialogic engagement with communities incorporates methodologies for sharing representational and interpretive authority, collaborative programme development, mutually constructed modes of presentation and stakeholder participation in policy-making. While recognising that heritage interventions inevitably involve power asymmetries, public folklore seeks to mitigate and diminish these imbalances as it develops approaches to enable communities to present their culture on their own terms. This paper explores dialogic public folklore practice through community self-documentation projects, folklife festivals, government folk arts funding programmes and a project promoting places of local cultural significance. It provides examples of the integration of multiple roles of public folklorists as scholars, administrators, producers of folklore presentations and government heritage officers. Public folklore praxis achieved through the integration of these roles is seen as a potential model for critical heritage studies praxis for scholars who are advisors and researchers in intangible cultural heritage (ICH) initiatives. Critical heritage scholars involved with ICH can learn from how public folklorists engage with communities and foster cultural self-determination. For public folklorists, collaboration and increased dialogue with critical heritage scholars could foster greater awareness of hegemonic discourses, reconceptualisation of the social base of ICH and recognition of the pitfalls of fostering economic development through heritage.     

Kosovo: Cultural Heritage in Conflict

Abstract

The secession of territory represents a unique challenge in the protection of cultural heritage in conflict. The declared independence of Kosovo has considerable implications for international cultural heritage. This paper focuses on the deliberate destruction of examples of historic architecture such as De?ani Monastery and Hadum Mosque as a means of contextualizing the nature of heritage in conflict with respect to international cultural heritage law. It offers a preliminary examination of aspects of cultural heritage in conflict, particularly in regard to the secession of territory and how it applies to historic monuments. The aim of this paper is two-fold: to address the considerations of immovable cultural property within the borders of Kosovo; and to utilize the examples of Visoki De?ani Monastery and Hadum Mosque to highlight the significance of cultural property in conflict.     

Multiplying and Sharing Heritage Values: Planning Conservation and Site Management at the Acheulean Sites of Buya,Eritrea

Abstract

The paper discusses some of the guiding principles and preliminary activities of a large-scale research project focusing on the prehistoric and palaeontological remains in the basin of Buya, northern Danakil, Eritrea, at the northern end of the Greater Rift Valley. Located at the intersection of manifold natural and cultural landscapes, the Buya basin needs to be monitored, protected and promoted as a heritage and touristic resource, but only if modern scientists and local residents will continue current efforts at multiplying, even before sharing, the potential cultural values and meanings attached to the heritage itself.     

Conserving by aesthetics,conserving by development: the rescaling and worlding of global south heritage

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the genealogy of rescaling the cultural armature of heritage in the Global South rooted within the colonial culture and postcolonial aid programs. Taking the case of historic Cairo, it explores how policies have developed through experimental practices of conservation to scale up authority, control, and power over residents and neighborhoods from the 19^th century to the present. The paper theorizes two paradigmatic approaches of conservation practices – by aesthetics and development – which have expanded Cairo’s inventory of monuments. The infatuation of heritage experts (the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe and Aga Khan Trust for Culture) with old neighborhoods has fostered accumulation by dispossession, disrupting people’s environments to generate a worlding image of heritage. The paper concludes with the metaphor of conservation practices as re-construction sites, as they repurpose the relationships between heritage, people, and their means of governmentality.     

Burning Libraries: A Community Response

ABSTRACT

The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a growing recognition that widespread impacts of climate change (erosion, sea level rise, wildfires, warming soil temperatures) are rapidly destroying archaeological sites and permanently wiping out millennia of cultural heritage and important scientific data on a global scale. This paper provides a brief overview of the efforts of the international archaeological community and its allies to organise a broad and coordinated response to this widespread and urgent threat to our basic record by mobilising at the local, national and international level. The work of the archaeological professional societies has supplemented a growing host of initiatives on multiple scales by national and local governmental agencies, regional research teams, local and Indigenous heritage groups and the international global change scientific community. This paper provides some reflections on the Society for American Archaeology’s Climate Change Strategies and the Archaeological Record team effort from 2015 to 2018, some links to more contacts and resources and some suggestions for future directions.     

The policy of non-discrimination and the protection of minority cultural heritage in Albania

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at the effectiveness of the policy of non-discrimination towards minorities in the preservation of minority cultural heritage, constructing a case study within Albania. After defining the key terms used, this paper examines the legal framework of non-discrimination towards minorities in its historical development and looks into the state of preservation of minority cultural heritage on the ground throughout the 2010s combining extensive field-work with interviews with key representatives of ethnic minorities in Albania. The poor state of preservation of minority cultural heritage is mostly attributed to under-financing and the insufficient policy of non-discrimination. As I demonstrate, in the case of minorities with a kin-state in the region, most notably Greece, as well as the heritage claimed by neighbouring states, primarily Turkey, the policy of non-discrimination and the practice of under-financing paves the way for external involvement in the protection of cultural heritage, in pursuit of international political agendas. The paper concludes that more needs to be done for the protection of minority cultural heritage in Albania.     

Indigenous peoples' rights to their cultural heritage

Abstract

This paper discusses indigenous peoples' rights to their cultural heritage, using the example of rights to indigenous human remains, held by institutions, universities, scientific centres and museums. It addresses international developments in indigenous cultural policy at the United Nations and the European Union, with specific reference to Australia and the United Kingdom. It also outlines issues relating to indigenous peoples' collective rights, free, prior and informed consent, ownership of indigenous human remains and the issue of benefit sharing and sustainable justice. There are now several international declarations, conventions and policies in place to assist indigenous people in gaining some form of control and protection over their heritage, however, these international instruments are often unco-ordinated and lacking in any enforcement mechanisms and they hold little sway with those who retain indigenous human remains against the wishes of descendant communities.     

Indigenous claims and heritage conservation: an opportunity for critical dialogue

Abstract

Indigenous claims of ownership and access to material culture challenge the field of heritage conservation. This article illustrates how indigenous concerns conflict with basic constructs of Western conservation, and how conservators respond to these claims. Despite efforts of inclusion, relatively few conservation projects integrate indigenous knowledge with scientific research. Redistribution of conservation authority is rarely put into practice. The article concludes by pointing to conservation as a meeting ground where collaborative decisions can be made about material culture on display. Conflict negotiation in conservation presents a potential forum for cultural representation and contested meaning of objects on display.     

Legislation as an Instrument in South African Heritage Management: Is It Effective?

Abstract

Heritage management and cultural legislation have always existed in the African continent, even before the days of written laws. However, it is often perceived that it was with the 'taking over' of the continent that civilization and heritage legislation were first implemented. The 'new' legislation did not recognize the indigenous means of management and ignored the fact that heritage sites have existed long prior to the scramble for the continent. The first enacted legislation in South Africa was distinctively biased towards the Bushmen heritage. I argue that this was probably because it was not politically problematic as Bushmen were considered to be a dying nation with a culture going 'extinct'. Having legislation that promoted the heritage of the people you were colonizing might not have been strategically correct. Legislation over the years moved away from the 'Bushmen culture' to protecting colonial heritage sites. Whilst the post-colonial heritage legislation has improved on the previous legislation — as can be shown by its success in courts — there are still areas of concern. I find the whole heritage framework represented by the legislation to still be clearly non-African, with a top-down approach that has not much respect for African culture, especially the values that clash with Eurocentric ones. I conclude that indeed there has been significant progress made with legislation over the years, from 1911 to 1999 when the current legislation was promulgated. However, a lack of proactive measures from within heritage management, as well as external factors, are still a stumbling block to a successful implementation of heritage legislation and as a result heritage is still threatened.     

On not being Dubai: infrastructures of urban cultural policy in Istanbul & Beirut

ABSTRACT

This paper compares how Istanbul and Beirut both attempt to underline their cultural and developmental uniqueness today in contrast to a metonymic menace – Dubai, standing in for spectacular yet supposedly cultureless Gulf cities. Even amid their own speculative construction frenzies that threaten local heritage, Turkish and Lebanese city-shapers assert theirs are ‘real’ cities because they have ‘civilization’ and ‘history.’ By addressing their own efforts to build, defend, or oppose physical infrastructures related to local urban culture, Istanbullus and Beirutis rely on and reassert strategic, phatic discourses that frequently reference Gulf cities as counterpoint. Analysis focuses on how each city crafts a distinctive urban profile via civilizational appeals to historic senses of culture, inflecting infrastructural developments related to bridging (Istanbul) and bordering (Beirut). Historical truisms are deployed with marked flexibility to showcase these cities as ‘not Dubai.’ This study offers lessons on the particular worlding of Middle Eastern cities and the role of discourses in the material-symbolic infrastructure of implicit urban cultural policy.     

An overview of Caribbean and Latin-American cultural heritage studies

Abstract

This review analyzes, through three recently published books that talk about cultural heritage in Latin America, how the Cultural Heritage Studies have allowed us to understand the current situation in the region characterized by the growing tendency to promote declarations of heritage as part of a plan for the use of culture as a resource for sustainable development. Likewise, those books analyze how responses from local communities are generated to hegemonic definitions of heritage, which indicates that cultural heritage in Latin America is not something given but something in constant construction and dispute.     

Ethnographic sound collections and Australian Aboriginal Heritage: Kaytetye song traditions remembered

ABSTRACT

Song was one of the principal methods of transmitting knowledge in the fundamentally oral societies of Indigenous Australia. As the breadth of song traditions has greatly diminished over the past 200 years, archival recordings of song now form a significant resource of intangible cultural heritage for Australia’s Indigenous people. The song performances recorded in the past are now being rediscovered, remembered and in some cases revived. This paper presents findings from a recent project involving the return of a set of poorly documented recordings of songs to Kaytetye people in central Australia. These newly discovered recordings, the earliest ever made of Kaytetye singing, are shown to be an important heritage resource for these communities. Working collaboratively with senior song experts in order to gain a better understanding of the meaning and cultural significance of various songs, I document the how this discussion of audio material generated important social-histories and memories, reinforced local understandings of rights in cultural heritage, and revealed both continuities and changes in Kaytetye ceremonial and song practice.     

This is not a Monument: Rhetorical Destruction and the Social Context of Cultural Resource Management

Abstract

Cultural resource management is often seen as a matter of identifying and valuing historic buildings, monuments and landscapes, and protecting their special interest through a suite of suitable heritage legislation and policy. However, unexpected damage and loss of heritage assets occur with regularity despite clear identification of their importance and the existence of suitable heritage legislation. While this problem is frequently seen as exceptional, this paper argues that it is not helpful to see these cases as such. Instead, it is argued that such cases highlight the social context within which cultural resource management takes places and, in particular, the rhetoric that is employed within the context of competing discourses.