Looting and vandalism around a World Heritage Site: Documenting modern damage to archaeological heritage in Petra’s hinterland

Abstract

In 2012 the ancient city of Petra celebrated the 200th anniversary of its Western re-identification. The Brown University Petra Archaeological Project (BUPAP) has sought to document the northern hinterland of Petra through a multi-component methodology that includes intensive field survey, feature documentation, and limited test excavations. The iconic site of Petra has a long and storied history, and it is a site that presents many challenges to archaeologists and cultural heritage managers. During a series of test excavations, meant to ground truth locations earmarked by the overlapping intensive field survey and feature documentation, several patterns of looting were identified. These instances of looting were often paralleled by observed vandalism that defaced archaeological heritage, within and outside the Petra Archaeological Park, with archaeological artifacts being sold to tourists at nearby shops. This study provides crucial documentation of these processes of vandalism and looting recorded over the last three years. We propose that only through continued monitoring can local authorities be provided with ample evidence calling for additional cultural heritage protection.     

“世界遗产”与“非物质文化遗产”两种遗产类型的特征研究

＂世界遗产＂（World Heritage）和＂非物质文化遗产＂（IntangibleCultural Heritage）是内涵和外延不同的两个专有名词和各有评价标准的两种遗产类型,共同点只在于,它们是由联合国教育、科学及文化组织（UNESCO）宣布、在国际层面上加以保护的文化或自然遗产。作为热门词汇,比较容易被望文生义地理解为是一种统一的世界级的遗产;所以在讨论学术问题时,宜谨慎使用＂世界遗产＂汉译词通称World Heritage和Intangible Cultural Heritage这两种遗产类型。     

非物质文化遗产的主体与保护主体之解析

非物质文化遗产保护是一项全人类、全社会卷入的公共文化事业,需要各方面主动扮演相应的角色、发挥各自的优势、承担特定的责任。把各个方面建构成积极有为的身份,就成为非遗保护的一项颇有建设价值的理论工作。其中,以"主体"身份看待相关的各个方面,是一项有益的尝试。界定非遗的主体与非遗保护的主体,实际上也是探索建立非遗保护这项公共文化事业的分工合作的身份框架。     

‘All mucked up’: sharing stories of Yolŋu–Macassan cultural heritage at Bawaka,north-east Arnhem Land

From the eighteenth-century Macassan traders from the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi made regular visits to northern Australia, where with the help of Yol?u, Indigenous Australians living in north-east Arnhem Land, they collected trepang (sea cucumber) for trade. Along with sharing language, technology and culture, the Macassans and Yol?u involved built relationships that are celebrated today in Yol?u art, songs and stories. While the trepang trade had officially stopped by 1906, resonances of this complex relationship continued and still continue today. This paper shares a number of stories told by one particular Yol?u family about this heritage and reflects on the ways in which for Yol?u, the tangible heritage (artefacts), intangible heritage (stories) and the land itself are locked in a symbiotic relationship where each depends on the others to define their existence. Looking after, or protecting this heritage, is therefore about attending to place, and the nature, storytellers, objects and stories contained within it.     

物质文化遗产的非物质性与非物质文化遗产的物质性认同

文化遗产是人类创造的文明结晶,物质文化遗产包含着精神内涵,非物质文化遗产必然依托于物质载体。文化遗产兼具物质性和非物质性两种因素:物质文化遗产与非物质文化遗产相互依存、互相作用。认清两种文化遗产之间的区别和联系,对于文化遗产的保护具有理论指导作用。     

对贵州非物质文化遗产的认识与思考

保护和利用好非物质文化遗产,对于继承和发扬优秀民族文化传统,增进民族团结和维护国家统一,增强民族自信心和凝聚力,促进社会主义精神文明建设,有着重要而深远的意义。贵州非物质文化遗产及其丰富,被列入国家非物质文化遗产名录的共有62项,101处,在全国居于重要地位。     

Book reviews

Abstract

This paper explores the decision-making process for heritage management at the monastic community of Mount Athos, a World Heritage Site in Northern Greece, in relation to the concept of living religious heritage and the pursuit to balance the heritage values of both the experts (heritage professionals) and the non-experts. The function and impact of a specific heritage agency — KEDAK (Centre for the Preservation of Athonite Heritage) — designed to establish the decision-making power of the Athonite monasteries will be critically discussed. A range of interesting compromising solutions and some challenges and problems raised by the function of this agency will serve as the background for examining the extent to which different perceptions on heritage management can coexist, particularly when heritage professionals find themselves on the bottom of a top-down decision-making process.     

‘Let’s find out’: the historian laureate and participatory heritage discovery

ABSTRACT

Developing modes of engagement in the construction of public heritage knowledge emphasize participatory media and active collaboration with citizens. The City of Edmonton created the first historian laureate position in Canada in 2010, and related programs are still rare. This article considers the interaction of narrative content with social and technological contexts of production, viewing the role of the historian laureate as amateur historian and professional storyteller. The historian laureate operates primarily in accessible contexts of leisure, mediated in part through digital technologies, and can respond relatively directly to community interests as a heritage coordinator rather than expert. Rather than representing oppositional or disruptive power to official heritage discourses, the project enables the production of ‘small heritages’ through a series of story episodes. These stories focus on events, people, places and artifacts that typically fall outside the meta-narratives and monuments of a city’s heritage landscape. The historian laureate, embodying or articulating local experience in ways amenable to leisure activity, demonstrates capacities to produce largely indeterminate, diverse and porous ideas of place and histories as part of a bottom-up social generation of knowledge.     

Whom does heritage empower,and whom does it silence? Intangible cultural heritage at the Jemaa el Fnaa,Marrakech

Since the 2001–2005 Proclamations of Masterpieces and the highly successful 2003 Convention, the UNESCO paradigms of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and safeguarding have become influential concepts in international, national and local cultural policy. But the thinking employed in the ICH model – where practitioners are ‘bearers’ of reified, bounded heritage practices – neglects the lived realities of practitioners, ultimately safeguarding little and potentially exacerbating existing inequalities. While the ICH model contains promises of community empowerment, its actual execution can in fact disempower many, merely replicating existing inequalities in the new context of ICH management. While existing literature addresses the theoretical shortcomings of UNESCO’s approach, the purpose of this article was to examine the ways in which they unfold in real life. As a practical case study, it is based on fieldwork among the performers at the Jemaa el Fnaa Square in Marrakech, a site addressed in the earliest rounds of the UNESCO ICH project. Using this case study, I discuss ways in which the issues of power inherent in the ICH paradigm have real consequences for those affected and implications for the success of the projects developed under its umbrella.     

从昆曲《藏·奔》看非物质文化遗产的创新与保护

昆曲具有典型的非物质文化遗产特性,它的传承与保护,应该适应时代发展,注入新的生命力。《藏·奔》是柯军先生主创的一部新概念昆曲,不仅保留了原汁原味的昆曲之美,在戏曲内容、表现手法和戏剧空间等方面更是大胆突破,为昆曲艺术的继承与发扬开辟了一条新路。