Heritage Practitioners Research Articles

Decolonising Plant-Based Cultural Legacies in the Cultural Policies of the Global South

Abstract The promotion and preservation of cultural legacies, including botanical traditions, are integral components of national identity and development strategies in many countries, particularly in the Global South. However, the manner in which cultural policies address plant-based heritage is not only influenced by contemporary priorities but also deeply rooted in historical contexts, shaped by colonial legacies. A comparative reading of the cultural policies of India and Nigeria, this research investigates the impact of colonial history on plant-based cultural heritage policies in the Global South. The study pulls from the Postcolonial and Critical Heritage Studies frameworks, to argue that the formulation and implementation of cultural policies on botanical plant heritage have been greatly impacted by colonial legacies. The result is the disparities in conservation endeavours and relegation of autochthonous knowledge. By shedding light on the on-going effects of colonialism on cultural practices and environmental conservation in the Global South, this research offers insights for policymakers, culture and heritage practitioners, and scholars seeking to address the issues around colonial legacies in cultural heritage management. It also seeks to provoke discourses on equitable and sustainable approaches to plant-based heritage preservation.

A Study of the Spatial–Temporal Development Patterns and Influencing Factors of China’s National Archaeological Site Parks

National Archaeological Site Parks are strategic projects in China for innovatively exploring the scientific protection and rational utilization of large heritage sites for the purpose of balancing urban development and protecting cultural heritage. Therefore, research on the spatial–temporal evolution and influencing factors of National Archaeological Site Parks can improve and optimize their management and pattern systems and is therefore of great significance for the sustainable development of large sites and their surrounding areas. Targeting the 135 National Archaeological Site Parks of China, this paper adopts the nearest-neighbor index analytical method, the kernel density estimation method, the standard deviation ellipse method, the method of constructing an indicator system, and an SPSS factor analysis method to analyze the spatial–temporal evolution and influencing factors of these parks. The findings are as follows: (1) In terms of the temporal evolution, the number of National Archaeological Site Parks increased from 2010 to 2022, and the ages and types of the large heritage sites they are built upon gradually became more balanced and diverse. (2) In terms of the spatial evolution, National Archaeological Site Parks form two high-density areas in Central China and East China. Their overall distribution is consistent with China’s “Hu Line”. (3) In terms of spatial–temporal evolution, the center of gravity of National Archaeological Site Parks’ distribution is advancing toward Southwest China, and the trend of a more balanced distribution is rising. (4) Finally, regional development, heritage tourism, historical resources, and government support were observed to be factors that affect the spatial–temporal patterns of the National Archaeological Site Parks. Based on these findings, we propose specific strategies for coordinating and linking the above four major influencing factors to promote the rational utilization of large heritage sites and the sustainable development of National Archaeological Site Parks. We aim to improve and optimize the management and pattern systems of National Archaeological Site Parks, to promote urban renewal based on large heritage sites, and to provide valuable insights for policy makers and heritage practitioners in other countries with historical resources around the world.

Negotiations of heritage in and around locally protected forests in Inhambane province, southern Mozambique

ABSTRACT In this paper, I explore negotiations of heritage in heritage forests from three case studies in southern Mozambique using oral history, field walking, video documentation and conversations. I argue that at local level there are processes of negotiation, authorisation, and legitimacy of heritage in forests. Such local forms of heritage negotiation and heritage discourse are authoritative and need to be recognised in both the planning of heritage conservation, and also in nature conservation. This recognition can strengthen local custodians to safeguard forest patches as locally protected areas, and opening room for heritage practitioners to be engaged by local people in the process of cultural heritage management.

Analytical Evaluation of Midjourney Architectural Virtual Lab: Defining Major Current Limits in AI-Generated Representations of Islamic Architectural Heritage

In artificial intelligence (AI), generative systems, most notably Midjourney, have tremendous power to generate creative images of buildings and sites of Islamic architectural heritage through text-to-image generation based on the internet. The AI-generated representations have significant potential for architects, specialists, and everyday users. However, the system has considerable limitations when generating images for some buildings and sites where the representations appear too far from their original represented structures. Evaluating Midjourney as an architectural virtual lab, this research article attempts to define the major current limitations of using Midjourney’s AI system in producing images similar to the actual buildings and sites of Islamic architectural heritage. This research employs prompt engineering techniques based on historical sources as inputs to examine the accuracy of the output of the AI-generated images of selected examples of structures of the Islamic tradition. To validate the research results, it compares the Midjourney output with the original look by employing direct observation through critical analysis of human intelligence (HI) facilitated by the analysis of the latest version of 3M Visual Attention Software and an online survey. It concludes that while Midjourney can represent high-end AI-generated images inspired by the Islamic tradition, it currently falls short of presenting the actual appearance of some of its original structures. Furthermore, it categorizes these limitations into four groups: (1) limits of the prompt, (2) limits of fame, (3) limits of regionality and historical styles, and (4) limits of architectural elements and details. The significance of this research lies in providing timely evaluation factors to architectural heritage practitioners and software developers. This practical article is the second in a series of two sequential articles in the Buildings journal; the first (theoretical) article introduces the concept of Artificial Intelligence Islamic Architecture (AIIA), answering the question: what is Islamic architecture in the age of artificial intelligence?

Visual Community Autoethnography and Heritage: Selected Cairns in South Africa

Cultural heritage practitioners and activists in South Africa engage in community autoethnography both in process and in the product. We spent over seven years collaborating with post-conflict museums that include community autoethnographic products in their tours and/or exhibits. This collaborative research focused on oral storytelling as adopted by the museum guides. This storytelling includes community visual autoethnographic products that engage the viewer in a performative manner. One example of such products is cairns. These sacred sites are similar in structure to those found in the landscapes across the world, including in South Africa, and are mostly linked to the indigenous hunter-gatherers or the early herders or farmers. However, the cairns focused upon in this paper memorialize three historical eras in the South African history of conflict and reconciliation: colonial conflict between the Voortrekkers and the British and the isiZulu-speaking people in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1800s; forced removals in Cape Town in the 1960s to 1980s; and the dawn of democracy in the 1990s after the release of President Nelson Mandela. The research identifies some of the elements of cairns that give them global relevance, and posits guidelines for post- and present-conflict communities on how cairns as community autoethnographic heritage sites can still evolve and stimulate sustainable community relevance and engagement.

Will Artificial Intelligence Affect How Cultural Heritage Will Be Managed in the Future? Responses Generated by Four genAI Models

Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) language models have become firmly embedded in public consciousness. Their abilities to extract and summarise information from a wide range of sources in their training data have attracted the attention of many scholars. This paper examines how four genAI large language models (ChatGPT, GPT4, DeepAI, and Google Bard) responded to prompts, asking (i) whether artificial intelligence would affect how cultural heritage will be managed in the future (with examples requested) and (ii) what dangers might emerge when relying heavily on genAI to guide cultural heritage professionals in their actions. The genAI systems provided a range of examples, commonly drawing on and extending the status quo. Without a doubt, AI tools will revolutionise the execution of repetitive and mundane tasks, such as the classification of some classes of artifacts, or allow for the predictive modelling of the decay of objects. Important examples were used to assess the purported power of genAI tools to extract, aggregate, and synthesize large volumes of data from multiple sources, as well as their ability to recognise patterns and connections that people may miss. An inherent risk in the ‘results’ presented by genAI systems is that the presented connections are ‘artifacts’ of the system rather than being genuine. Since present genAI tools are unable to purposively generate creative or innovative thoughts, it is left to the reader to determine whether any text that is provided by genAI that is out of the ordinary is meaningful or nonsensical. Additional risks identified by the genAI systems were that some cultural heritage professionals might use AI systems without the required level of AI literacy and that overreliance on genAI systems might lead to a deskilling of general heritage practitioners.

No Room for Modesty in Heritage Significance: The Case of Dennesig in Stellenbosch, South Africa

Significance and authenticity are two key concepts that run through the practice of urban heritage conservation. When combined, they form a powerful tool within a value-based system that ensures the preservation and continued use of historic places. Stellenbosch, being the second oldest town in South Africa, holds great importance as a historic town. However, several historic suburbs have experienced processes of redevelopment, studentification, and gentrification over the past decade, resulting in their deterioration. But what happens when the unique heritage character of a place is considered insignificant by developers, heritage practitioners, architects, and the local authority? This paper focuses on the Dennesig neighborhood in Stellenbosch, where the broader context of modest heritage significance has been neglected and erased from historical records due to poorly conceived planning, urban design, and mismanagement of heritage resources. The argument put forth in this paper is that in order to evaluate a specific case study site, one must consider the complexities of broader heritage and urban planning processes. This understanding is crucial to comprehend the factors that have shaped the current context and the eventual significance attributed to a particular place, setting, or townscape.

Generative Repair and Graceful Decay: Interview with Caitlin DeSilvey

Professor Caitlin DeSilvey works as a cultural geographer and lecturer at the University of Exeter. Her work explores the ways in which built environments change through aging, including processes of repair, decay, and wasting. She collaborates with photographers, architects, designers, repairers, heritage practitioners, and with students in her teaching. DeSilvey fosters sensibilities of how to collaborate with the buildings and structures that ‘tell us what they need’, and with the living ecologies that contribute to the transformation of these decaying matters, ‘to allow them space in the future’ of these environments. Caitlin DeSilvey is the author of Curated Decay: Heritage Beyond Saving (University of Minnesota Press, 2017); a co-author of Heritage Futures: Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices (UCL Press, 2020); and a co-editor of After Discourse: Things, Affects, Ethics (Routledge, 2020).

Fixing stone in time: Making and measuring consolidants for heritage futures

Stone consolidants have been used in conservation practices for decades, with an increasingly interdisciplinary scientific attention to their composition and performance. This article is an ethnographic account of the process of testing a new consolidant's efficacy, drawn from fieldwork and interviews with scientists and heritage professionals involved in a European project in 2013. I illustrate, in line with prior scholarship on laboratory time, how time is a central tool of laboratory control, which must be managed to produce evidence of consolidant efficacy. Yet the ‘fast time’ of controlled experimental conditions is also suspect for those working in the field of heritage. By tracing the temporal tensions between scientific evidence making, laboratory practice and heritage practitioners’ values, I illustrate that the project of materially fixing stone in time means intervening on heritage futures.

Walking, storytelling and melancholy survivals: memorialization of the ‘Troubles’ in Belfast’s City Centre

This article explores the role of walking and storytelling as a mode of memory-making in Belfast’s City Centre, a ‘shared space’ that has largely been emptied of reminders of the 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland known as the ‘Troubles’. Memorialization remains a divisive and contentious process in Northern Ireland with two opposing narrative traditions and a lack of shared collective memory. In the absence of state-led and officialized memorials to the ‘Troubles’, I explore how urban heritage can be expressed in motion, through spatial stories told by place-based professionals (urban planners, architects, heritage practitioners, arts and community groups) in the City Centre. In particular, I employ David Lloyd’s idea of ‘melancholy survivals’ to describe the ways in which memories of conflict persist in the narratives we tell and in the small physical residues scattered throughout the City Centre, which we encounter through walking and spatial stories. I argue that walking go-along interviews with place-based professionals elicits storytelling that evokes a mobile mode of memorialization. I begin by discussing the context of memorialization in Belfast’s City Centre, its role during the ‘Troubles’, and its subsequent urban redevelopment as a ‘shared space’. I then map out critical discussions around my methodological framework, which considers spatial storytelling, geographies of affect and walking methods as ways to engage urban heritage in cities that have experienced conflict. This is followed by observations from the walking go-along interviews, which include stories of physical residues, the psychosomatic legacies of conflict and ways the difficult memories factor into narratives in Belfast’s City Centre.

Digital Cultural Items in Space: The Impact of Contextual Information on Presenting Digital Cultural Items

Cultural heritage practitioners continue to engage with ever-changing technological opportunities, and digital cultural items (DCIs) offer the potential for engaging interactive experiences. As DCIs become more prevalent, we are motivated to seek new presentation opportunities from the medium and understand its affordances with regard to contextual information. In this publication, through a series of Speak Aloud tasks with (n = 15) participants, we explore how contextual information can improve user experiences with DCIs. The aforementioned study’s results demonstrate that the inclusion of contextual information when presenting a DCI can, in fact, improve a visitor’s understanding of a DCI’s size and scale plus also the perceived realism of a DCI. Moreover, we observe that contextual information, and its recommended addition, supports the generation of a narrative by the visitor audience. In conclusion, we advise on how contextual information can improve the relationship between a visitor and a DCI, toward interacting with a DCI in a manner very similar to that of its analog counterpart.

Negotiating performance between policy and platform — heritage practice of a Chinese craftsperson on Douyin (TikTok)

ABSTRACT The pervasiveness of digital media has profoundly transformed how we preserve and promote intangible cultural heritage (ICH). With the growing popularity of Douyin, a video-focused social networking platform, ICH inheritors in China have begun to post videos that showcase their artisanship. On the one hand, the affordances of Douyin encourage its users to keep up with the latest trend, subjugating them to mimetic participation; on the other hand, heritage policies in China foster the top-down formation of nationalist identity. Therefore, how heritage practitioners negotiate between the top-down authority of policies and the horizontal mimesis of the platform is a matter of concern. This paper applies performance analysis to explore the Douyin videos of a Chinese craftsperson, Li Niangen, a municipal ICH inheritor whose Douyin videos are highly popular. ICH policies in China and the affordances of the platform may support the formation of distinct identities. However, by assuming multiple and even contrasting roles in his videos, Li is fully engaged in none of them. This paper proposes that the presentation of multiple roles copes with the conflicting logic in Chinese society. In addition, the misalignment of these roles may simultaneously utilise and unsettle the administrative and digital authorities.

“Unless we Value the Intangible Heritage, the Tangible will never be Safe!” Linking the Tangible and Intangible Aspects of Heritage Sites in Africa

ABSTRACT A few heritage researchers and protection practitioners in some African countries define heritage sites and cultural objects based on European and North American criteria. Such criteria emphasize visual material remains like monumental structures and their aesthetically pleasing features. This Western view overlooks some critical aspects. For example, to local people, the meanings and associated values make the monuments and sites relevant. Despite the inseparability of the tangible heritage and associated intangible aspects such as spiritual practices, some researchers and heritage practitioners, including antiquities department officials, need to pay more attention to the invisible meanings embedded in the sites and cultural objects. Notably, it is these immaterial aspects which the local people value the most. In this article, we survey three fishing villages: Batini, Mkadini and Winde, on the Swahili coast in East Africa, and document what heritage means from the local people's perspective. We argue that fishing communities value features like reef crests, sacred mangrove forests, the ruins of stone-built tombs and sacred baobab trees not because of their physical appearance but the spiritual practices (e.g., healing, rituals, and offerings) the local people undertake within and around these sites. We further contend that to achieve heritage preservation sustainability, government officials and heritage scholars should pay greater attention to the spiritual aspects associated with these places.

Built Heritage Management Systems: Australia and Germany Compared

A recent, unreported, focus group of international heritage practitioners from academia, urban planning, land use management and urban design, found interesting similarities and differences between Australian and German cultural built heritage (CBH) management systems. For validation, a literature review provided a methodological framework and is reported in this paper. Its objective is to confirm the principal themes elicited by the initial work, being: assessment standards, transferable development rights, heritage conservation incentives and private property rights’ management thereby contributing enhanced clarity to the broader relationship between built heritage and stakeholder roles in heritage conservation. This paper is a precursor of more detailed planned empirical, in-country study seeking further insights into stakeholder interests and value systems based on a recent developed analytical approach known as Cultural Heritage Discourse (CHD). It is recognised that this empirical component is a limiting feature of the current research but anticipated as inevitable due to the preliminary stage of enquiry. Keywords: Conservation of built heritage; cultural heritage discourse; heritage management systems; transferable development rights; Germany and Australia

They know more than we do, yet we appreciate them less than they deserve: Decoding local ontologies in heritage interpretation and preservation in Southern Tanzania

ABSTRACT Many of the heritage sites researchers work on are reported to them by local people. Sometimes local people spend their meagre resources to protect such sites before researchers and heritage practitioners know about and visit them. Despite these roles, their (local people) skillsets and knowledge about the sites, including materials therein, are often ignored. A few researchers who value the contributions of local people give them temporary casual jobs mostly related to camp management. This paper draws examples from southern Tanzania to present the roles of local knowledge and epistemologies in heritage research and illustrate strategies to incorporate such local knowledge into research enterprises. The paper also discusses integrating and balancing what local people know with what researchers learn from those sites to co-produce well-balanced knowledge. We contend that integrating local people's interpretation of the sites and material culture in research outcomes is as important as conducting research at those sites.

Using keywords to link World Heritage research and practice: observations from the World Heritage Leadership Heritage Place Lab

PurposeThere is evidence of emerging silos separating research and practices in heritage. Creating spaces where researchers and practitioners collaborate and learn from their exchanges is therefore needed. This premise was the foundation of the pilot phase for the World Heritage Leadership Heritage Place Lab that allowed eight teams from different geocultural contexts to come together to develop research agendas. This paper provides observations about how these agendas relate to key strands in critical heritage research globally. It complements the other papers in this Special Issue that describe the case studies in detail.Design/methodology/approachA keywords approach has been used to identify areas where shared research agendas can advance both heritage practices and academic interest in the field of heritage studies. This was based on the observations made by the author during the pilot phase of the Heritage Place Lab and the research agendas produced by the research-practice teams. The approach is exploratory and experimental, inviting other contributions.FindingsTwenty keywords are identified and explored via both academic literature and the research priorities identified by the research-practice teams that participated in the pilot.Originality/valueA keywords approach is relatively untested in the field of heritage studies. Recognizing that commonly-used terms (or words) have fluid meanings across disciplines and practices potentially opens new dimensions to the dialogue between heritage practitioners and researchers.

Heritage as liberation

AbstractWhy aren't archaeologists engaging in more substantive heritage work, and how might we do so? This article offers a conceptual framework for mobilizing our praxis toward the achievement of collective emancipation—what I am calling heritage as liberation. Heritage as liberation provides a mechanism for reckoning. It asks us to reevaluate our motivations and more clearly articulate what we stand for as archaeologists and heritage practitioners. I offer reflections on recent attempts by archaeologists to organize toward a just future, sketch what I think a practice of heritage as liberation offers that agenda, and then analyze the Equal Justice Initiative's (EJI) heritage work as an example of what is possible when we practice heritage as liberation. I close the article with thoughts on where archaeology stands in attempts to repair and redress past wrongs and on the range of contexts that might see an emancipatory heritage praxis enacted.

The State of the Records of the Federation Union of Black Artists at the Johannesburg Art Gallery: An Overview

AbstractIn this paper, the author asserts that the Johannesburg Art Gallery has also done remarkably well in preserving archival material in the field of black visual art. Such documents shed light on the operations of the visual art industry in South Africa before the democratic dispensation of 1994. He argues that heritage practitioners, artists, and scholars can immensely enhance their knowledge through study of these records. The author also thinks that it is crucial for this unique collection to be digitized for preservation and access.

:Preserving Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age: Sending Out an S.O.S.

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EU heritage diplomacy: entangled external and internal cultural relations

ABSTRACT Cultural heritage is an expanding yet contested area of EU policymaking, which has recently been identified as an instrument for EU international cultural relations. In this article, drawing from critical heritage studies and recent scholarship on heritage diplomacy, we see external and internal cultural relations as blurred and deeply entangled in EU heritage policies. Empirically, we focus on the European Heritage Label (EHL), a central EU heritage policy instrument. We explore how heritage practitioners at selected EHL sites and EU heritage policymakers understand and give meanings to international cultural relations and explain the role of cultural heritage in diplomatic endeavours. Our method is a dynamic frame analysis of 44 interviews conducted in the European Commission and at eleven EHL sites in ten European countries. The analysis identified four frames of international cultural relations in the data: relations with non-EU countries for peace and stability building, showcasing and branding of cultural heritage for foreign audiences, creating unity in Europe, and small-scale international heritage projects. These frames manifest different understandings of heritage diplomacy ranging from geoculture to shared heritage and from intercultural encounters to the use of soft power.