Cultural Heritage

Christoph Brumann , in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2d Edition), 2015

Abstract

Cultural heritage includes the sites, things, and practices a society regards every bit old, important, and worthy of conservation. It is currently the subject of increasing pop and scholarly attending worldwide, and its conceptual telescopic is expanding. Most social scientists emphasize its functions for supporting ethnic, national, and elite interests but others bespeak to its creative and counterhegemonic sides. The article reviews the relation of heritage with tourism and nostalgia, anomalous/negative heritage, heritage and faith, rural and urban heritage, and heritage institutions, in particular the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and its conventions. People's personal attachments to heritage deserve further study.

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Data literacy and cultural heritage: a proposed generic model for lifelong learning

Kim Baker , in Information Literacy and Cultural Heritage, 2013

Content

Cultural heritage includes: cultures, customs, beliefs, rites, rituals, ceremonies, indigenous knowledge, social community and traditions, arts, crafts, music, political and ideological beliefs that influence culture and beliefs, history, practices concerning the natural environment, religious and scientific traditions, language, sports, food and drink, calendars, traditional clothing, cybercultures in the digital earth, and emerging new cultures which will get the heritage of the future.

Related bug: contested history and conflicting narratives, cultural imperialism, retention, identity, censorship, multiculturalism, repatriation of man remains (museums), inclusion, exclusion, nationalism and national identity, cultures of do in museums, archives and libraries, moral rights to cultural heritage, intellectual property, privacy and data security issues, ethical apply of data, the office of communications media in the representation of cultural heritage, and critical thinking applied to cultural heritage.

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Digitization

Margot Note , in Managing Image Collections, 2011

Abstruse:

Cultural heritage institutions play an important role in preserving and providing access to cultural heritage materials, and digitizing these collections has go an essential task in fulfilling this function. Information professionals must engage the tools and practices of digitization in order to capture, preserve, and disseminate visual civilisation for posterity. This chapter analyzes the issues data professionals should be familiar with so they can course constructive strategies to design, fund, and manage digitization projects. Decisions on in-business firm or outsourced digitization, costs, staffing, collaboration, benchmarking, quality assessment, and content management systems must exist determined, based on what is most cost-constructive and beneficial for the host establishment. With this in listen, this chapter explores the fundamentals of a digitization projection, focusing on practical considerations and presenting an overview of the managerial, technical, and financial issues associated with digitizing cultural heritage materials.

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Handbook of the Economics of Fine art and Civilization

Kenneth G. Willis , in Handbook of the Economics of Art and Civilisation, 2014

7.one.one Definition of Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of order inherited from past generations. Physical artifacts include works of art, literature, music, archaeological and historical artifacts, every bit well as buildings, monuments, and historic places, whilst intangible attributes contain social customs, traditions, and practices often grounded in aesthetic and spiritual beliefs and oral traditions. Intangible attributes forth with physical artifacts characterize and identify the distinctiveness of a gild.

Small artifacts such as sculptures, pottery, coins, armor, paintings, etc., are preserved in museums and art galleries. Buildings, monuments, and historic places are often subject area to preservation orders and regulation past regime to ensure their survival for future generations. Cultural heritage artifacts are to a greater or less extent unique and irreplaceable. This poses a number of economic questions across the immediate question of how much are people willing to pay to consume (utilise, see, experience) unlike cultural goods. How much are people willing to pay to preserve cultural heritage for future generations? Exercise people value joint consumption (due east.1000. is the value of face-to-face groups of buildings in historic areas more than than that of an equivalent number of individual buildings conserved in isolation)? Are there differences in preferences and utility for cultural goods with physical and social distance?

The purpose of this affiliate is non to investigate all these questions. Rather, the purpose is to explore how stated preference (SP) methods tin can be used to value cultural heritage, and to illustrate this with examples of the valuation of different cultural goods and attributes. The chapter will show how these methods tin can inform cultural heritage management decisions.

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WORLD HERITAGE SITES, TYPES AND LAWS

Sandra Pelegrini , in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2008

Cultural heritage is the legacy that we receive from the past, feel in the present, and transmit to future generations. Etymologically, the terms 'heritage' and 'patrimony', used in Romance languages, are linked to patrimonium. They foreground 'inheritance from the fathers or ancestors' and are a reference to monuments inherited from previous generations. The English linguistic communication prefers the word 'heritage' to typify inherited monuments. The economic and legal definitions of the word refers to the concept of 'cultural holding', which the Italians properly call beni culturali (literally, 'cultural avails').

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NATIVE PEOPLES AND Archaeology

George P. Nicholas , in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2008

Cultural Heritage Concerns

Cultural heritage and traditional lands are defining elements of Ancient ethos and worldview. As a effect, the care of bequeathed sites has figured prominently in both the origins of and goals of Indigenous archaeology. By the mid-1960s, the preservation of archaeological sites was increasingly a focus of attention of CRM and heritage legislation in N America and elsewhere (National Historic Preservation Act, US (1966); Australian Heritage Commission Act (1975)). Such legislation was aimed at broad public values, simply did not specifically accost the concerns or desires of the Indigenous minority whose ancestors created the vast majority of archaeological sites in formerly colonized countries, and who lacked the authority to make decisions nearly the preservation and management of their own heritage. While 'consultation' with members of descendant communities has now become a frequent, and sometimes required component of heritage management, it as well often has remained only nominal with footling true power sharing. In addition, many Ancient communities lack funds and personnel to devote to archaeologists' requests for information and externally imposed timelines. Still, Indigenous organizations in southern Africa, Commonwealth of australia, Canada, and elsewhere increasingly require research, media, and travel permits for archaeological and ethnographic work conducted there.

Although federal and country or provincial legislation has protected the material heritage of Indigenous peoples, two aspects have been peculiarly problematic. The kickoff is the concept of 'significance' and its application in evaluating the value of heritage sites, as required past specific legislation. Within most archaeological projects, scientific values have been given primacy, although historical, religious, and customs values are also considered, every bit in Botswana. Such a priority often runs counter to not-Western perspectives that practice not require 'significant' places, ancestral sites, or entire landscapes to possess material evidence of what happened there (or even to have been culturally modified at all). Still, concerns about oral history and intangible heritage have been addressed by policies or legislation in South Africa, Canada, and elsewhere, and, more than by and large, by UNESCO. The second issue concerns the notion of 'stewardship' and the part of archaeologists and their professional organizations every bit stewards of the archaeological record on behalf of (or in the interest of) descendant communities, particularly those who may not be able (or willing) to intendance for information technology 'properly'. Ethnic and not-Indigenous critics take charged that stewardship has mostly been a unilateral, paternalistic process, with archaeologists assuming control over the process and imposing a different value system on the past.

Indigenous peoples have gradually achieved greater and more meaningful control over tangible and intangible cultural heritage through various avenues over the past thirty   years, although in that location have been regular setbacks when legislation is inverse or legal precedents overturned. New or broadened legislation has ensured greater directly Aboriginal involvement, such as the requirement for First Nations in British Columbia to review archaeological allow applications (Heritage Conservation Human activity (1996), Canada), and offered new levels of protection (east.g., Northern Territory Aboriginal Sacred Sites Deed (1989), Commonwealth of australia, and UNESCO'south Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003)). In the Us, a 1992 amendment to the National Historic Preservation Human action allowed tribes to institute their ain Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, enabling direct interest in heritage preservation on tribal lands. Successful negotiations for Aboriginal direction or co-direction of tribal lands and heritage sites also occurred with more frequency (such as Uluru and Kakadu National Parks in Commonwealth of australia), albeit with some federally imposed limits.

Tribal interest in archeology was underway as early equally the 1950s in many countries in Africa following independence. In the United States, it began in the 1970s with the Zuni Archaeology Program (in 1975) and the Navajo Nation Celebrated Preservation Department (in 1978) as the offset major initiatives to accost specific concerns of Ethnic peoples relating to CRM and as well to provide grooming. During the 1980s and 1990s, country government agencies and Indigenous organizations began to establish programs to train community members (e.thousand., 'Aboriginal rangers' in Australia) to monitor CRM projects. Higher and university-level archeology programs provided new opportunities for Ethnic people to gain access to of import tools (Figures iv, 5 and six).

Effigy 4. Lunch interruption during a trip to relocate a dugong hunting magic site inside the scrub in northern Cape York. Pictured are Kaio Ropeuarn, Mickeri Peter, Andrew Peter, Meun (Shorty) Lifu and Christo Lifu. (Photo Susan McIntyre - Tamwoy).

Effigy 5. Dr Innocent Pikirayi supervising Academy of Pretoria 1st-year students on Bantu-speakers' farming settlement earthworks. Mmakau, Ga-Rankua, South Africa, 2005 (Photo courtesy of Sven Ouzman).

Effigy six. Students in Simon Fraser University's Ethnic Archeology Field School, 2004. Earthworks of centre Holocene site on Kamloops Indian Reserve, Kamloops, British Columbia (G. Nicholas, Photo).

Various museums worldwide take responded to Ancient concerns by because and integrating alternate curation and management practices, shifting their roles from repositories of antiquities (or 'captured heritage') to holders of cultural treasures. The Museum of South Australia, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the National Museum of the American Indian, and others actively promote Ethnic perspectives in exhibits and education programs. In add-on, the rise of community-based museums has provided new opportunities to explore and articulate local values in cultural heritage. In the Us, new sources of funding, including casinos, take enabled some groups to fully fund their own archæology programs (e.m., Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Inquiry Center in Connecticut).

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Photographic paradigm collection management

Margot Note , in Managing Image Collections, 2011

Epitome collections

Cultural heritage institutions collect only a small portion of the body of information created and disseminated over time. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the collections of nigh research organizations were shaped by the needs of their scholars, resulting in predominately textual holdings that were deep just not broad in coverage. Under the influence of the growth of higher education after World War II, collections became more standardized and wider in scope. Many libraries in large, enquiry-oriented institutions began collecting in all areas covered by their academic departments then every bit to concenter faculty and graduate students and provide on-site admission to their users.

Museums and archives began to collect and display noteworthy photography collections. The Museum of Modernistic Art established its photography department in 1940, and the George Eastman Firm International Museum of Photography and Film was opened to the public in 1949. The International Center of Photography, the Center of Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, and the Women in Photography International Archive were established in 1974, 1975, and 1981 respectively.

By the belatedly 1960s and early 1970s, photography, which had remained largely on the margins of fine-fine art consciousness, began to become more accepted past significant institutions, and this contributed to its cultural and artistic status. University programs in photography created an educated audience in the post-state of war globe that expanded exponentially in the 1970s and 1980s. Concurrently, influential criticisms of photography were published, including John Berger'south Ways of Seeing (1972), Susan Sontag's On Photography (1977), and Roland Barthes' Prototype-Music-Text (published in France in 1961 and translated into English in 1977).

During this fourth dimension, the art world sought to revitalize itself past promoting the sale and drove of historical and contemporary photography. Galleries devoted to photography were opened, such as the Witkin Gallery in New York City in 1969 and the Photographers' Gallery in London in 1971, the year in which Sotheby's held its beginning photography sale. Post-obit the lead of Magnum, founded in 1947, photography agencies such equally Gamma and Sygma were founded in 1967 and 1973.

Along with prominent private collectors, the corporate earth turned to collecting photography in the 1960s and 1970s. Chase Manhattan Banking concern, the Gilman Paper Visitor, Hallmark, Polaroid, and Seagram's held significant collections of photography, many of which accept been donated to museums.

The number of photography exhibitions increased, showtime in the United States and so in Europe. All the same, it was only in 1989, photography's sesquicentennial twelvemonth, that the Majestic Academy held its first photography exhibition. That aforementioned year, the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial included simply one photographer (Grundberg 1999). As late as 2003, the Tate Modern in London mounted its first major photography show (Wells 2009).

Since the 1970s, research methodology has shifted to a greater reliance on visual documents as the topics of literary, historical, and sociological research have broadened to include many phenomena that are non well documented in texts. Women's history, for example, relies on sources from a variety of disciplines and uses photographs to illustrate the history of domestic life, amongst a myriad of other subjects. Relatively new fields, such as environmental studies, rely on the inadvertent documentation of built and unbuilt environments that would not have been remarked upon in texts.

Archives, libraries, and museums, as institutions for the accumulation and classification of cognition, found their ideal form in photography, which provides a rich store of historical images. Traditionally associated with analog formats, image collections are at present considered in a much broader context because of the possibilities offered by digital technologies. It is rare to find an institution that does non utilize digital technology for collection management, regardless of its size. Conferences of national and international associations, such as the Museum Reckoner Network, Museum Documentation Clan, and Visual Resource Clan, regularly include sessions on image applications.

Initial efforts at building digital collections were fueled by the widespread, rapid growth of the internet. During the 1990s, meaning advances in computer applied science created a wide user base. The decade saw a significant comeback in the colour quality and resolution of figurer displays, a rapid increment in central processing unit of measurement (CPU) power, a substantial increment in storage chapters, and an improvement in network speed, as well as each generation of technology costing less than its predecessor. Image collections online accept become an essential form of cultural organization and memory, and their ability consists in their relational potential, the possibility of establishing multiple connections betwixt images and constructing narratives about cultures.

Collections of digitized and born-digital images need to be of sufficient volume to create a corpus of research materials that makes access worthwhile. Critical mass is formed when a sufficient quantity of related items in a collection create a richer digital collection than do its analog originals. Technology has the transformative power to not simply recreate a collection online but besides give it new functionality. Without critical mass, none of the time savings or convenience inherent in spider web-based research can be fully realized. Comprehensiveness is the key to satisfying digital research needs.

Image collections also need to exist meaningful to the communities of which they are a function. Wolf (2006) states, "creating a database ex nihilo is almost always the best solution, as this path lonely tin guarantee that the final consequence will exactly mirror the needs of the institution, its faculty, and students" (25).

Terras (2008) notes, "Those producing digital versions of holdings for use past the general public had better proceed abreast of how the general public are using imaging technologies outside memory institution's [sic] environments, if they want their ain offerings to exist well used" (159). Stvilia and Jörgensen (2009) suggest "studying the photo-collection practices of users of Flickr [to] improve understand users' needs in using these collections and better align traditional information services and tools with those needs" (54). This is particularly important because digital images online concenter "new, not-traditional and remote users" (Matusiak 2006, 479). Understanding users and their requirements is essential because, as Fry (2007) writes, "the generic user of an image of Napoleon is well-served by Google searching; the specific art historical need is non" (eighteen).

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Estimation OF Archæology FOR THE PUBLIC

John H. Jameson , in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2008

Interpretation through inspiration and cognitive connection

Many cultural heritage specialists today are not content to rely solely on traditional methodologies and analytical techniques in their attempts to reconstruct homo history and bring it to life for people. They want to venture across utilitarian explanations and explore the interpretive potential of cognitive imagery that archaeological information and objects can inspire. They realize the value and power of artistic expression in helping to convey archaeological information to the public. Archaeologists are increasingly concerned with how the past is presented to, and consumed past, nonspecialists. They want to examine new ways of communicating archaeological information in educational venues such as national parks, museums, pop literature, film and television receiver, music, and diverse multimedia formats.

Archæology and archaeologically derived information and objects have inspired a broad variety of creative expressions ranging from straightforward computer-generated reconstructions and traditional artists' conceptions to other art forms such as poetry and opera. Although some level of conjecture will always exist present in these works, they are oft no less conjectural than technical interpretations and take the benefit of providing visual and conceptual imagery that tin communicate contexts and settings in compelling ways. Two such interpretive formats, two-dimensional paintings and popular history writing, are used by the NPS as public interpretation and education tools (Figures 2 and iii).

Figure ii. "Sara'southward Ridge Archaic Site." Interpretive oil painting past Martin Pate, based on archaeological site information and base map, Richard B. Russell Dam and Reservoir, Georgia and Due south Carolina. Paradigm courtesy Southeast Archeological Centre, National Park Service.

Figure 3. "Unlocking the Past." Oil painting by Martin Pate. The painting is meant as a metaphor for the theme and topics of the Unlocking the Past outreach project that discussed the nature of historical archaeology in North America. The image is being used by the Gild for Historical Archaeology as a logo for its educational activity and outreach efforts.

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Festival and Spectacle

Michelle Duffy , in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (2d Edition), 2020

The Search for Authenticity: Memory, History, and Nostalgia

Cultural or cultural heritage festivals have become a major focus in heritage tourism, and notions of authenticity are intimately intertwined with the success of such festivals. Tourists seek an authentic experience, and in the framework of actuality, a festival and its associated cultural products are divers as authentic or inauthentic depending upon whether they are made or performed by local people and according to traditional practices.

Yet, festivals framed past notions of ethnicity or civilization, as well as the so-called multicultural festivals, are ofttimes criticized for their superficial dealings with the concepts of identity, culture, and diversity. One argument is that festivals often nowadays rather express views of customs and identity, and the emphases on costume, nutrient, and music are only shallow representations of the complexities of cultures. Such festivals are also criticized because they seem to ignore how a festival might contribute to addressing issues of social justice, such as economic security, access, or disinterestedness.

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Exploring cultural heritage in the context of museums, archives and libraries

Kim Bakery , in Information Literacy and Cultural Heritage, 2013

The function of memory and contested history in cultural heritage

Equally was found with cultural heritage, the notions of retentiveness and contested history take not been discussed much in the field of library science, whereas the literature in museum studies and archival science is filled with soapbox on these aspects. While for decades museums and archives have been grappling with the impact that memory and contested history have in shaping cultural heritage, libraries have by and large overlooked these conceptual aspects in their pursuit of digitizing cultural heritage. And yet, it is impossible to consider what constitutes cultural heritage without taking these factors into account.

This department gives a very brief overview of the concepts of retentiveness and contested history, earlier a more in-depth exploration is undertaken from the differing perspectives and approaches of museums, archives and libraries.

Cultural heritage, in its wide sense (in other words, not only addressing the aspect of documentary cultural heritage every bit defined by UNESCO), carries with it the implicit, and problematic, notion of memory. It is people's memories, both individual and shared, that shape the germination of cultural heritage. It could be argued that scientific scholarship should be excluded from this discussion on memory. Withal, in terms of ethnic knowledge systems, scientific knowledge is passed down through the generations orally, and thus is also affected by the element of retentiveness.

Therefore, it would be useful to exist cognisant of some of the features of memory which are applicative within this context. In her written report on how memory functions and how information technology contributes to the shaping of heritage, using the specific case of Master Albert Luthuli, Menhert outlined some cadre factors to exist considered. She noted that memory is comprised of several parts, and that it can exist rigid and unable to be changed, or it can be fluid and, upon influence, be changed. She noted the three types of memory to be sensory memory (retentivity that tin can be evoked by a cue from one of the senses, such as a smell, a sight, a sound), short-term retention (which lasts for approximately 20 seconds, and, unless the information is integrated, tin can exist lost), and long-term memory (which is the aspect of retentiveness that is relevant to heritage) (Menhert, 2011: 1–2).

Menhert described the three components of long-term memory. The procedural component relates to processes we acquire in order to perform tasks, such as how to drive a car, and these, once integrated, can exist used automatically. Declarative retentivity could be considered to exist retentiveness by rote, where, for instance, names, dates and multiplication tables are integrated into the mind and are able to be reproduced by rote. The third component is the ane that concerns archival memory, and is termed "episodic memory." Episodic memory remembers events and how they affect us personally (ibid.: 2). Menhert noted that along with considering memory, it is also important to sympathise the office of forgetting, and how it occurs. Forgetting can occur when there is a lack of a retrieval cue to trigger the memory. Nigh critically, Menhert noted that when conducting interviews to tape oral history, nifty care should be taken non to inadvertently plant memories by ways of suggestion, thus altering the memories of the individuals (ibid.: three). She also observed that people tin trigger memories in each other when they collectively feel a shared event. Menhert ended that the memories that people have are as much an intrinsic office of history and cultural heritage knowledge as are documents, books and photographs. The primary source documents tin merely reveal a certain amount of information, just the context can be amplified and supplemented by relating the memories of people to them. Conflicts and differences in retentiveness are enrichments to the narrative, and should be explored further in dialogs. In the museum context, where for case exhibitions display objects to tell a story, she posited that the process of how the exhibition was mounted, what was chosen, and why, as well equally the inclusion of memories from people, give the public an awareness of how important and circuitous memories are, and adds an essential dimension to enable deeper research and understanding. Memory formed under trauma, which is especially prevalent in South Africa with its recent history of apartheid, is worthy of deeper and focused exploration in order to also bring to the surface what may accept been forgotten (ibid.: 9–11).

Menhert'southward findings from the perspective of museums are reinforced past perspectives from the field of archives. Harris, in considering the case of the archive of Southward Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, noted that the domain of social memory was the foremost location of struggle, and that this struggle was defined past the struggle of remembering confronting forgetting. He outlined that forgetting was an essential element in the struggle confronting apartheid, as some memories were also painful to recall. He further noted that retentiveness is not a true reflection of reality and procedure, and that it is shaped past imagination. In Due south Africa'south social memory, it is a battle of narrative confronting narrative. Harris described how the tools of forgetting were a crucial element in the arsenal of apartheid S Africa's state power, and that the state destroyed public records and removed voices they did not wish to hear past means of harassment, censorship, banning, detention without trial and bump-off. He observed that even in the transition to democracy, the apartheid state sanitized and destroyed retention information technology did not wish to transfer to the futurity democratic government (Harris, 2007: 289–90). This case illustrates how the already challenging notion of the accuracy of retentiveness is compounded exponentially in a context similar South Africa.

In a different approach to Menhert, Jimerson identified four categories of retention. He described them every bit personal, collective, historical and archival (Jimerson, 2003: 89). Expanding further, he observed that commonage memory equally social retentivity is seldom field of study to examination for reliability, authenticity and validity. He also observed that personal retention as eyewitness testimony is subject to the fact that memory tin can alter over fourth dimension, and that archival memory contains collections of surrogates of captured memory frozen in time. Jimerson considered that historical memory functions best as evidence-based examinations of artifacts, documents and personal testimony (ibid.: 89–90).

With this background on the role of memory in shaping perceptions and interpretations of what happened in history, it can be explicitly assumed that as a issue history is ofttimes contested. Dubin referred to the "civilization wars" which encompassed deeply felt confrontations between different groups within a guild over interpretations of race and ethnicity, the body, sexuality, identity politics, religion, national identity and patriotism (Dubin, 2006: 477). In the context of history, he posited that these contests were shaped by social and political changes both within a nation and globally (ibid.: 478).

The cistron of contested history when because cultural heritage, and especially when deciding how to collect, describe, preserve, showcase and present documentary cultural heritage, is a central element to be recognized. If a plan of data literacy intends to present questions and exercises that will guide users to cultural heritage resources, it is essential that the programme is cognisant of this, and of the fact that collections may exist biased in favor of, for example, a onetime colonial power'southward viewpoint reflecting a distorted version of a particular cultural group, or that collections may exclude the views of minorities living in developed countries.

Post-obit this brief overview of the disquisitional role that retentiveness and contested history play in the shaping of cultural heritage, it is now necessary to explore the broader approaches and perspectives of museums, athenaeum and libraries.

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