When we think about cultural heritage, we often picture art, monuments, buildings, and archaeological sites that are a visible expression of the values and traditions of a community. However, heritage also consists of intangible cultural features like oral traditions and community bonds.
Preserving cultural heritage is a challenge in a globalized world that brings with it issues of homogenization and the loss of unique traditions. Solutions to these challenges require cooperation between communities and legal approaches that are socio-legal in nature.
Objects
When people think of cultural heritage they often imagine artefacts such as paintings, drawings and sculptures as well as monuments, buildings and archaeological sites. This is an understandable perspective given that objects can validate ideas and bring them to life in a way that words and images cannot.
However, this is only one part of the picture. Cultural heritage is also made up of intangible elements. These include social practices, traditions and rituals as well as languages, local knowledge and traditional skills.
Intangible heritage is a living expression of culture and the identity of communities that is transmitted through time. The preservation of this heritage requires a different approach than that of tangible heritage as it involves the transmission of ideas rather than physical objects. This can be achieved through the use of digital technologies such as digitisation, 2D and 3D modelling, ontology and dance processing to identify the underlying semantics of dance. It is a complex process that aims to support communities in the preservation of their heritage.
Places
UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites includes some of the most breathtaking destinations on earth, from medieval walled cities in Europe to ancient temples in Asia and African savannas teeming with wildlife. The sites, buildings and places that make up cultural heritage are tangible expressions of the values, beliefs and traditions that make up unique communities.
The concept of cultural heritage has grown in importance to include not just physical artifacts and monuments, but also places and natural landscapes as part of the human experience. The heritage we inherit is often intangible, but there are also many ways to preserve that intangible heritage in the form of music and dance, traditional craftsmanship and skills, and oral history and community bonds.
Protecting cultural heritage has always been a delicate balance between private and public interests. A famous example comes from the Romans, who recognized that sculpture decorating a city’s streets was not the property of any individual person and thus could not be removed.
People
The idea of cultural heritage often brings to mind artifacts (paintings, drawings, prints, mosaics, sculptures), historical monuments and buildings, and archaeological sites. But the concept has expanded to include all evidence of human creativity and expression, including photographs, documents, books and manuscripts, and instruments. Today, towns and the natural environment are also considered part of cultural heritage because communities identify with them.
The destruction of mausoleums in Timbuktu, for example, shows how far extremists will go to obliterate heritage and erase a culture. Incorporating education about the costs and consequences of the global antiquities trade into school curricula and university syllabi can help fight this destruction.
Preserving cultural heritage requires people to value and care for it. This starts with individuals who enjoy and understand it. Then they want to pass it on to future generations. This is the only way to ensure that cultural heritage will be protected in the face of manmade and natural disasters.
Values
Heritage is more than artifacts, buildings and historical sites. It is also intangible cultural practices and traditions such as dance, music, storytelling, artisanal crafts, oral history and religion. These intangible aspects of heritage are vital to our sense of identity and connect us to each other.
As a result, heritage is increasingly seen as having value in the context of society beyond its historic fabric. This has increased the complexities of decision making, as highlighted by Rogers, in the case of Eastern State Penitentiary or by Throsby regarding the economic benefits that flow from both tangible and intangible heritage.
As a consequence, it is important that heritage professionals have the tools to understand and engage with different societal values in their work. As Walsh, Buckley and Mackay show, this often requires a more participatory approach, as well as a recognition that values are rooted in many different sources, not only heritage. This is crucial to achieving a more equitable and adaptive heritage management, as advocated by Mallarach and Verschuuren.