Studying Systems: Comparative Approaches to Heritage Management

Abstract

ABSTRACT Amongst his many interests, Henry Cleere was particularly active in the field of cultural resource management. This interest included the bringing together of two important volumes of comparative studies on the evolution and form of heritage management systems internationally. His broader writings also included a number of articles exploring heritage management in Britain, placing this within an international context. In encouraging comparative research on heritage management, Henry Cleere was following a tradition which saw fervent activity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain. The context was the increasingly noisy debate around the need to strengthen the Ancient Monument Protection Act which had been adopted in 1882 but which was in danger of becoming redundant. A key resource for this early debate was the comparative information on protective systems outside Britain contained in books produced by a Scottish Solicitor in Glasgow, David Murray, by an English Professor of Fine Art in Edinburgh, Gerard Baldwin Brown, and in a series of Government reports by ‘Her Majesty’s Representatives Abroad.’