Çatalhöyük and Localized Universality: the challenge of sustaining heritage post-UNESCO

Summary

UNESCO has long set the example for heritage practice, with site practitioners worldwide motivated to achieve the nearly universally desired World Heritage Site (WHS) status to help preserve and sustain their sites. However, the idealized goals espoused by UNESCO, a global organization, are inherently universalizing, which can render them incompatible with the particularities of each local setting. One illustrative example is Çatalhöyük, Turkey. Since being granted UNESCO WHS status in 2012, more constrictive government regulations have been enacted, in what seems to be a proactive measure by local bureaucracy to ensure it maintains WHS status. Though sustainability has become a priority in UNESCO policy recently, these increasingly strict local regulations have actively hindered archaeologists from trying to institute sustainability measures locally--such as making changes on the site that would benefit the nearby community--as every modification to the site is now being strictly monitored. It is important, therefore, to consider this cautionary tale of the inherent dichotomy between global UNESCO and each unique local situation. Despite how it is widely conceived, UNESCO designation is not always the ideal answer for sustainable preservation.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Sustaining Heritage: New Directions for Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage