scholarly journals The Perishable Past - On the Advantage and Disadvantage of Archaeology for Life

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-202
Author(s):  
Jes Wienberg

The aim of the article is to make clear whether and in that case why archaeology is important. Often this is seen as a self-evident fact which needs no motivation. My point of departure is a concrete example, namely, the medieval church of Mårup in Denmark which will soon fall into the sea: Why is it so crucial to save or document this church and many other traces of the past? Isn't the so-called cultural heritage condemned to destruction and oblivion? Rhetorical catchwords, cultural values, justifications and explanations within cultural heritage management, archaeology, history and social anthropology are presented and critically discussed together with indirect motivations borrowed from the literature about the abuse of the past.

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 528-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh

Despite its architectural fame, the medieval city of Ani in eastern Turkey, once an Armenian capital on the Silk Road, was endangered until recently. Preserving the Medieval City of Ani: Cultural Heritage between Contest and Reconciliation traces the evolution of Ani since the late nineteenth century as an object of preservation and the subject of debate about heritage. As a primarily non-Muslim site in a modern, majority-Muslim country, Ani poses dilemmas shared by other cultural heritage sites in postconflict societies: it presents economic opportunity through tourism, but its history prompts questions about a painful recent past the state refuses to acknowledge. Analyzing the recent developments in cultural heritage management in Turkey involving international heritage organizations, especially for Christian and Armenian monuments, and highlighting the civil society debate about rediscovering long-suppressed episodes of Turkish history, Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh argues that despite daunting difficulties beleaguering acknowledgment of the past, cultural heritage can provide a medium for reconciliation rather than contestation.


AmS-Varia ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Even Bjørdal

This article discusses how to better unlock the information potential of unremarkable, though complex, prehistoric stone-built structures, by integrating the past 30 years worth of Nordic archaeological research results into aspects of the Norwegian Cultural Heritage Management processes. Traditionally, it has been rather commonplace to interpret such manmade collections of rocks as remains of either clearance of fields for agricultural purposes or as containers for burials, but this dichotomy should now be regarded as an oversimplification. The site of Orstad in the county of Rogaland, SW Norway, excavated in 2014, serves as a case study. This paper demonstrates how difficult it can be to put updated theories and methods into proper use in the field. Since these new research results call for changes in the approach to the subject were not sufficiently considered in the planning process, neither time nor budget allowed for an adequate examination of the individual structures and their context. This is likely to cause information loss, which creates challenges for both the excavation and post-excavation phases of an archaeological investigation. This paper stresses the need to update and improve how excavations of such sites are handled within Norwegian cultural heritage management. By applying new approaches, such localities can yield more information about the past than previously assumed.


2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Anders Gustafsson ◽  
Håkan Karlsson

This paper takes its point of departure in a critical and ethnographically directed discussion ofhow Swedish heritage management —in practiceconstructs, organises and presents the past (ke. , the cultural heritage) to the public at the rock-carvings in Tanum. This ethnographical approach is helpful when trying to move beyond the structures —and specific ways of viewing the world —that are a consequence of our own archaeological socialisation. Suddenly activities that, with an archaeological eye, seem to be completely normal, present themselves instead as peculiar examples of the culture ofcontemporary archaeology/heritage management. In this paper we present examples —derived from both the past and present —ofhow this specific culture approach handles and stages the rock-carvings in Tanum. It is stressed that, for various reasons and not least ethical and democratic ones, this culture and its rituals need to be examined even further from an ethnographical point of view


1970 ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Mattias Bäckström

Museums as mirrors of differing concepts of heritage The museum – is it more a reflection of the present than an entrance to the past? In this essay we visit four museums from four different eras to investigate how the ideals of the contemporary society were mirrored in the museum’s preservation and exhibition practices. The museums, all located in Stockholm, are: The Royal Museum founded in 1792 which focused on the classical heritage; the Nordiska Museet 1873 and Skansen 1891 with their interest in Nordic folk culture; the Museum of National Antiquities and the Office of Cultural Heritage Management in the days of their important reorganisation around 1940; and finally the Swedish Travelling Exhibitions established in 1965 with its distributive and democratic ideas. I have used the typology of Friedrich Nietzsche from Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben revised by the historian Svante Beckman in order to understand the differences. The museums are positioned in an analytic diagram (p. 72) according to the ideals which were fundamental in the construction of the respective institutions. In the centre Heritage, at the top Society perspective, at the bottom Individual perspective, to the left Cognitive emphasis, to the right Emotive emphasis. The conclusions are condensed in the diagram on p. 88. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-23
Author(s):  
Håkan Karlsson ◽  
Anders Gustafsson

The text consists of an analysis of how the classical Greek sites of Marathon, Thermopylae, Delphi, Olympia and Mycenae are staged and presented to the public. This analysis is focused upon how the cultural heritage management views the authenticity of these sites and their physical remains, (i.e., as genuine) phenomenon firmly, and solely, belonging to the past, and how these attitudes are materialized in the form of presentations at information boards and in the physical staging of the sites. The materialization of this attitude constitutes the conditions for the public’s physical and imaginative access to the sites and for the public’s possibility to reflect critically around them. Thus, the sites are products of the past, but their authenticity is in parallel also a product of its role in present negotiations of interpretive supremacy, control, power and politics. The article further stresses that a changed attitude towards authenticity is crucial also for a development of a constructive relationship between heritage management and the public. In accordance with this, the article also presents a reconstructed view of authenticity—as the cultural process constituting both humans and material remains.


2020 ◽  
pp. 182-186
Author(s):  
M. Yu. Zakharov ◽  
I. E. Starovoytova ◽  
A. V. Shishkova

The issue of the dual impact of innovative technologies on the sphere of spiritual culture has been considered. On the one hand, the digitalization of cultural values gives hope for their longevity, compared with traditional storage methods. On the other hand, the preservation of cultural heritage is facing new, previously unmet difficulties: the life of digital documents is short due to constant technological improvement and the rapid obsolescence of technology; not all artifacts can be digitized; when knowledge is transmitted through the media, its reduction, vulgarization occurs; finally, the person is changing, for whose sake the preservation of the cultural heritage takes place. Generations possessing clip thinking will have to deal with the fragmented, unsystematic cultural heritage, which is fraught with real cultural amnesia. The new approaches to digital information management and, specifically, digital cultural heritage have been proposed in the article.


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