Action heritage: research,communities, social justice

Societies are unequal and unjust to varying degrees and heritage practitioners unavoidably work with, perpetuate and have the potential to change these inequalities. This article proposes a new framework for undertaking heritage research that can be applied widely and purposefully to achieve social justice, and which we refer to as action heritage. Our primary sources are semi-structured conversations we held with some of the participants in three heritage projects in South Yorkshire, UK: members of a hostel for homeless young people, a primary school, and a local history group. We examine ‘disruptions’ in the projects to understand the repositioning of the participants as researchers. The disruptions include introducing a scrapbook for personal stories in the homeless youth project and giving the school children opportunities to excavate alongside professional archaeologists. These disruptions reveal material and social inequalities through perceptible changes in how the projects were oriented and how the participants thought about the research. We draw on this empirical research and theorisations of social justice to develop a new framework for undertaking co-produced research. Action heritage is ‘undisciplinary’ research that privileges process over outcomes, and which achieves parity of participation between academic and community-based researchers through sustained recognition and redistribution.     

水下文化遗产原址保护研究概述

长年埋藏于水下的文化遗产,在适应周围的化学、物理及生态环境后可达到一种平衡的保存状态。通过概述水下埋藏环境对文物产生的影响,并对国外文物保护工作者在沉船、水下文物点、古代聚落遗址等类型水下文化遗产原址保护的成果进行研究,为中国水下文化遗产保护相关工作的开展提供一定的借鉴。     

面向文化遗址保护的物联网技术研究与应用

大部分文化遗址因其所处环境的特殊性,导致现有常规的信息化技术手段无法有效实施,而传统的文化遗址保护技术也无法实现文化遗产保护与利用的最大化。物联网作为一项新兴的前沿热门信息技术,已经广泛应用于众多领域,具有能够与文化遗址保护工作紧密结合的发展潜力。本工作首先分析了文化遗址保护的现状与面临的问题,并对物联网技术与文化遗址保护的关系进行了深入阐述。针对文物保护领域的特殊需求,着重描述了文物本体与环境信息采集、监测数据的远距离传输,监测数据的实时分析处理三方面相关的物联网技术,并对涉及关键技术应用解决方案进行了分析说明。最后简要介绍了已经部署运行的典型文化遗址保护利用系统———基于物联网技术的敦煌莫高窟保护与利用系统,系统经过连续几年的运行积累了大量的监测数据,为敦煌莫高窟文物的保护做出了重要的贡献。随着物联网技术的进一步发展,在文物保护方面的应用将更加深入和广泛,这将进一步提升文物保护工作的效率。     

Intangible heritage embodied and Intangible heritage

Over the past decade, intangible cultural heritage (hereafter, ICH), the significance which it possesses and the continuation of its myriad manifestations have reached unprecedented levels of recognition and attention on international and national policy agendas. Traditional Medicine (hereafter, TM) has long been included under the vast umbrella of ICH, yet there have been few attempts to explore that relationship. This paper examines the practical implications of applying the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage to TM, alongside the relationship of traditional medicine to the fields of human rights, public health and development. It considers, and reaches the conclusion that the cultural significance of traditional medicine combined with the fundamental principles of the Convention render the Convention significant in safeguarding traditional medicine for the future.     

International prototypes and local identity: The walled garden of Scotland as heritage landscape

Abstract

The distinctiveness of place is a central, and often unquestioned, tenet of landscape heritage studies and the landscape design and conservation which may accompany them. In learning from history and other comparative studies, one of the many challenges is to discern what determines diversity in the landscape. At what point does the local expression of an international prototype become a local and unique landscape type, a local landscape heritage, in its own right? This paper takes the walled garden of Scotland as an example to explore issues of national, regional and local landscape identities. It examines cultural traditions, biophysical constraints and stylistic responses to availability and command of materials and technologies. It explores some of the origins of the walled garden, the way the landscape type was developed and refined in response to the Scottish context, and the way this element is treated as landscape heritage today.     

Applications of satellite remote sensing for research and heritage management in Indian prehistory

Multidisciplinary spatial studies are relatively limited in Indian archaeology, despite their potential for research and heritage management. This paper discusses applications of satellite remote sensing, field studies and GIS, in the context of Palaeolithic archaeology. The study region covers an area of around 8000 km², in the state of Tamil Nadu, South India, and is characterized by a rich and diverse Palaeolithic record. Satellite images of varied spatial resolutions were interpreted to address both regional and site-specific research questions. Thematic maps were generated from satellite data and refined with intensive field investigations. These were used for demarcating sources of raw material, and in investigating variability in the distribution of sites through time in relation to a range of geological and geomorphological features. Satellite data and field studies also aided in mapping impacts on sites resulting from modern landuse patterns. The paper also discusses the development and testing of a model to detect potential areas where new sites may be rapidly located.     

International influence and local response: understanding community involvement in urban heritage conservation in China

This paper explores the situation of community engagement in the heritage sector in China, which is facing increasing international pressure particularly through donor agencies. It is argued that government-led residents’ committees do not essentially serve the interest of the local communities, whilst grassroots civil societies and NGOs are, to a great extent regulated, by the prevailing political power. Given the situation of insufficient community involvement in the sector of cultural heritage conservation in China, local government has adopted the international approach introduced by donor agencies, but this has not resulted in power sharing and the state constrains community involvement within certain limits. This paper examines the situation of community involvement in heritage management in the city of Yangzhou.     

不可移动文物保护材料研究中的问题和发展趋势

在不可移动文物保护科学技术中,化学保护材料起着重要的作用,影响着相关技术的实施和发展。本工作通过大量查阅最新的国际和国内研究文献,从材料化学角度综述了近年来国内外不可移动文物保护材料研究的现状,包括有机材料和无机材料。归纳了保护材料容易出现的问题或局限性,阐述了当前保护材料发展的动向和趋势,提出了国内值得开展研究的方向。     

International intangible cultural heritage policy in the neighbourhood: an assessment and case study of Indonesia

UNESCO’s heritage policies are one of the most extensive global drivers of landscape and cultural transformation and investment. In response to complaints about Western and object-focussed bias in World Heritage, a push within UNESCO generated a new convention and a new category of heritage: intangible cultural heritage (ICH). Maligned by academic critics, it has nonetheless been an incredibly widespread program internationally with over 170 states signed up to its convention and subject to its obligations. This article provides an assessment of the geographical reach and impact of UNESCO’s ICH program, and, through a case study in Indonesia, analysis of its most successful (according to the Indonesian Directorate of Culture) program for the production of batik cloth. Through the case study, I assess the impact of the ICH policy in Indonesia at different levels and for different groups, the scales it has enabled, and its impact on historical batik landscapes.     

Digital heritage research re-theorised: ontologies and epistemologies in a world of big data

ABSTRACT

This article provides the first theoretical treatment of the ontologies and epistemologies of digital heritage research at the time of the interconnected and social web, based on extensive empirical and analytical investigation. We draw on observations and concepts developed while conducting the first study of public experiences of the past that utilised big data – over 1.4 million Facebook posts, comments and replies – to revisit or generate new theory from the ground up. We expect that this will help scholars from a range of fields in the humanities, social and computing sciences who are interested in undertaking digital heritage research to understand the deeper implications of their work, the complexities and limitations of the knowledge they create, and its value in exposing the processes via which heritage is made and assessed.     

羟基磷灰石材料在文物保护中的应用述评

作为一种新兴无机材料,羟基磷灰石近年来在石灰岩、钙质砂岩和甲骨等文物的保护领域得到了广泛的研究和应用。本研究就羟基磷灰石材料本身的特点、保护原理及应用研究现状进行了阐释与评述,指出了其借鉴意义,并展望了羟基磷灰石保护材料研究的发展方向。     

International relations research performance among Australian universities

In this research note, the authors briefly report the results of an exercise measuring the relative research performance of Australian universities in the field of international relations (IR). The findings are based on counting articles in the leading journals in the field, as determined by the Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) journal ranking. The authors also present the number of IR scholars in each university according to a 2011 survey. Three issues are addressed: the logic of journal rankings, especially in light of the decision to drop these from the ERA exercise; the method by which the data was compiled; and a discussion of the findings. These results build on and update those reported earlier for the broader discipline of political science, extending to the period 2003–11.     

Regional cultural heritage versus national heritage in Scania's disputed national landscape

This article argues that the official landscape heritage in Sweden is formed in an interplay between regional and national discourses, and that the national ideology during the last century has promoted the preservation of stereotyped landscapes that partly ignores the conditions under which these landscapes were actually formed. This tends to naturalise the landscape, often cleansing it of human action and thereby generating a notion of an innate and given national landscape. To illustrate this, the landscape of the province of Skåne in southernmost Sweden is discussed from a heritage perspective. This province (which was Danish up to 1658) has a landscape characterised by its openness and contrasting to the emblematic Swedish cultural landscape of forests and small hamlets. A conclusion is that Skåne's landscape heritage runs the risk of being alienated when it is valued from a national criterion, and that a critical questioning of official heritage practice is therefore needed.     

高分子彩绘类文物保护涂层材料的性能及应用研究

针对彩绘类陶器保护的特殊要求,筛选性能优良的保护材料。在人工气候箱中对所选择的9种有机高分子文物保护涂层材料进行人工老化试验,分别采用傅立叶红外光谱仪测量试验材料的分子结构,分光光度仪测量颜料的主波长、色纯度和高度的变化,粘接强度仪测量颜料的粘接强度变化。结果表明:PrimalAC33、B72、有机硅的耐老化性能好,颜色变化小,粘接强度高,能很好的起到保护彩绘文物的作用,建议在文物保护领域推广使用。     

New Britain,new heritage: The consumption of a heritage culture

Abstract

Each month in Britain marks a further, official, distancing from the past and its memorials, as we move closer to the selected Millennium marker. Heritage has a particularly low profile at present with policies for destruction of the House of Lords encouraging increasing ridicule aimed at legacies from the past. In terms of media coverage, at least, the heritage bubble has burst, as indeed it had to. As soon as modest, individual or community, breaths were marshalled into corporate puff, the sheer size of the national preservation and presentation enterprise hinted at its own demise. Nicholas Howard, he of Castle Howard, provided an appropriate caution in 1993, when he noted: