The simple answer is that “Cultural Heritage” is anything from a culture that has left an impression that needs to be remembered: this includes sites, artifacts, objects, and other tangible quantifiable items, as well as, skills, songs, memories, thoughts, and other intangible and even unquantifiable wisps from the past. In fact, it has even been argued in this class (and in others) that cultural heritage doesn’t even have to have much of a past (certainly it doesn’t necessitate a distant past). Cultural heritage can be something that is ongoing even at the present. And thus, there is a wide range of categories that fall under the heading “Cultural Heritage”.
Dr. Beverly Butler (who has published her study on the Library of Alexandria and the current UNESCO version in Egypt) has also got us thinking about how and why we remember heritage. She asked us what we pictured when we thought of a museum. Our answer was almost unanimously a classical Greek-style architecturally designed building with marble and large pillars. She put forth the idea that in a way Museums are shrines to the past. We walk up the steps to enter this “shrine” and then stand in awe, speaking in whispers, at things that have been chosen for display. We take pictures of those things to prove we have been there and show these to our friends as a sort of souvenir of our contact with the past. Some of even describe the “deathliness” of heritage in that we collect the past (ie mortal) so that it (and we by association) will become immortal. We have curiosity cabinets for the relics that we revere and people come from far and wide to stand in the presence of these particulars.
Why do we, and so many people like us, feel the need to visit these sites, to enter these museums (from the word for muse – the mother of memory), to see these objects? Could it be that by attaching ourselves to these relics of the past we hope to reclaim the memory that has been lost? Could it be that we feel the need to go “home”? Could it be that we have some sort of a dramatic psychological separation with our origin that drives us to seek that “Paradise Lost”?
We need to think deeper about why we do what we do. If we can come to grips with our own personal motivations for working in this field of study we will be better equipped to present it to those with similar (and probably un-thought of) motivations. In essence, we will be more effective communicators of the past.
In a way, heritage takes a certain amount of faith. We weren’t there to see it happen (in most cases), but we are asked to present it as it happened. I found this to be an interesting thought from the perspective that my background has built. Faith, at least in Biblical terms, is not the blind blithering about that most people think of. Faith is an evidence-based substantive hope that moves one forward to a place that cannot be seen because of an assurance acquired through trust.
Applying this to heritage, then, and the need to conserve and present heritage, it is true that much of heritage conservation is faith. We weren’t there to see these things happen, but we do have a certain amount of evidence that they happened. Never (and I understand how final that word is) do we have all the information we need and seldom do we even have as much as we would like, yet we are asked to present it to the public nonetheless.
We are asked to present monuments of time to the adoring public who, themselves, are seeking to find their way “home”.
Could it be, then, that my studies in religion and theology are not as foreign to the study of cultural heritage, at least in purpose, as once thought?
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