At Risk Cultural Heritage and the Power of Communities

Summary

In the years of willful destruction of cultural heritage as part of an extremist obliteration of the past, there have been several instances in the news of local populations taking stance against these destructive forces. In some cases protection of cultural heritage has become a voice against suppression and the reconstruction of destroyed monuments, e.g. through 3D printing and resurrecting lost parts, an act of defiance. Most destruction of cultural heritage, however, takes place much more quietly, through urbanization, the expansion of agriculture and modern mining. The destruction of un-excavated archaeological sites results in the complete erasure of the social history of large areas of the world. Here too, a close collaboration with communities living around and on top of the archaeology can provide access and protection of important cultural heritage, that cannot be reconstructed through 3D printing, because we simply would not know of its existence and importance.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 19944