Classifying heritage by states of decay, restoration, and transformation for tourism, teaching, and research: ‘un-freezing' sites in time to reveal additional meanings

Abstract

This article offers a classification scheme useful for generic categories of historical sites that were produced with multiple examples, based on the individual states of decay, restoration, transformation, eradication, and reuse for each site. While most heritage sites are described and ‘frozen’ in the time of their construction when presented for tourism, they also have sets of secondary and tertiary meanings on the basis of their histories after their construction and continuing to the present, as well as on the basis of the earlier histories of sites chosen for construction. These secondary histories and meanings can also be classified in ways that can facilitate richer understandings of cultures and their histories for scholars, students, and the public. Potential applications include structures of empires that are already classified by age and architecture and that follow a consistent pattern for the time of their construction, such as the Khmer ‘hospital chapels’ of Jayavarman VII, Roman aqueducts, European and American colonial structures as well as infrastructure such as citadels and roads. The purpose of the classification is to serve as a guide for tourist descriptions and itineraries, restoration policies and spending, teaching, and social science research.

Keywords:

• heritage
• protection
• restoration
• tourism
• education
• Jayavarman VII
• Khmer
• Roman aqueduct
• urban planning
• environmental geography

Introduction

For the past several years in several countries in Southeast Asia, as well as in Eastern Europe, the author has been cataloguing hundreds of historical and cultural sites as a guide to help people recover, interpret and apply their lost and forgotten history so as to take pride in their past, to build understanding and tolerance with different peoples, to preserve their heritage for tourism and beauty of their communities, and to understand the historical relationships of peoples to their natural and social environments in ways that can promote healthy and sustainable communities (Lempert, 2012; 2013).

Although international public and private organizations have focused on packaging areas of history and culture as different kinds of landscapes to fit commercial and/or political goals, most of the focus is on a very small minority of sites that are then presented for tourism, with the large majority of sites left to face the consequences of nature and human interaction in multiple forms.

In visiting sites, the author has documented the repetition of multiple types of structures where particular cultures or leaders exerted wide influence over a short period of time and replicated those structures. One finds these generic sites today left in a diverse array of forms due to natural processes of decay following abandonment, purposeful destruction, and several different types of restorations and re-use by different groups. Although the sites are the ‘same’ in that they are a generic type, the state of each site also carries with it a second set of information and meaning.

While much of tourism and historical work is dedicated to understanding the meaning of sites at the time of their construction, there are in fact multiple layers of history, information, and meaning to be drawn from sites from the moment of their completion to the present. At the same time, there are also layers of meanings of sites that begin before their construction, having to do with how the constructions erased or integrated or changed previous sites on the same spot and how they came to be placed on particular geographic spots and with certain building materials and landscaping.

In presenting sites by historic ‘theme’, professionals in tourism and ‘heritage-scaping’ generally seek to freeze and discuss sites at their time of construction. However, it can be just as interesting and informative, for historical and archaeological purposes to identify, classify, and visit sites for what they reveal about the time after their construction or prior to their construction.

In designing heritage maps (and tours) of the French and American ‘colonial’ periods in a city such as Vientiane, Laos, for example, and then of the period(s) after 1975, the history and culture can be understood on the landscape and viewed in several layers by looking at the choices made to replace, reuse, or abandon specific sites at different times. After 1975, for example, most of the American-era buildings (other than churches, half of which were destroyed) retained their exact functions and appear as before, though with colorful new roofs that seek to copy the style of roofs in Buddhist pagodas (wats). One might say, in looking at the buildings, that the city simply ‘changed hats’ and continued as before but under a different set of families with different international allegiances.

This approach to classifying the buildings and presenting them by describing specific changes over time, offers a rich way to look at history. It goes beyond simply looking for the specific ‘new’ structures for that period.

This article offers a classification scheme useful for generic categories of historical sites of which there are multiple examples, based on their individual states of decay, restoration, transformation, eradication, and reuse. The purpose is to help ‘unfreeze’ sites from their time of construction and to see them in terms of their secondary meaning from the period following their construction and from previous periods on the same site. Potential applications include structures of empires that are already classified by age and architecture and that follow a consistent pattern such as the Khmer ‘hospitals’ of Jayavarman VII, Roman aqueducts, European and American colonial structures as well as infrastructure such as citadels and roads. The purpose of the classification is to serve as a guide for tourist descriptions and itineraries, restoration policies and spending, teaching, site interpretation, and social science research.

While tourism and educational presentations have often been packaged to appeal to the widest audience with simple messages in the belief that this is the sum total of their value, the result has not only been to strip heritage sites of the richness of their meanings but also to eliminate the intellectual content, challenge and excitement of heritage tourism in ways that actually reduce their full potential value for tourism and for humanity. Not all tourists may have the time or ability to consider the full context and implications of heritage sites, to consider their implications for their own societies, or to enjoy the historical puzzles they present on humanity. But the progress of civilization requires that we offer an opportunity for those who have the time, inclination and ability to draw meaning from and to apply lessons of the past to today, to have the opportunity to do so. This article offers a classification scheme designed to capture and present the layers of historical information on heritage tourism sites that are usually discarded so that they can be available to those seeking a richer experience that can contribute to the progress of civilization rather than to just the need for recreation and nominal protection.

The article begins with an explanation of the theoretical debate over presenting and protecting sites in ways that best evoke and display their multiple meanings, followed by an example of a classification scheme that helps record and analyze changes to generic sites since their construction. The model used for this analysis is the ‘hospital chapel’ of the Khmer from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, but the applicability of the model (and potential modifications) is also tested for several other generic sites over different periods and cultures, ranging from Roman aqueducts to recent American colonial military airports and landing strips. Collecting information on the earlier and later histories of these sites and placing them in their geographic and cultural contexts not only provides additional meanings over time but also can offer new theories about what such sites really were by considering how they were used and viewed later (or earlier) in the contexts of cultures that followed (or preceded).

The article will also offer some suggestions as to the classification of sites by meanings (if known or ascertainable) prior to construction.

Theories of representation on landscapes: the element of time

The theory of presentation and preservation of cultural sites has long recognized the multiple meanings of specific sites and the difficulties and implications for choosing how they are to be conserved. Anthropologists and cultural experts have long debated appropriateness of different approaches (Bhabba, 1994; Hems & Blockley, 2006; Karp & Lavine, 1991; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1998; Uzell, 1989). This literature is rich in discussions on the ideologies of representation and selection and presentation. The anthropology of tourism has not only debated how sites are packaged but also how individuals interact with sites, and how sites and cultures are changed by this interaction (Smith, 1989). Among these debates have been critiques of the UNESCO approach to creating ‘heritage-scapes’ that freeze cultures in time (Di Giovine, 2009), as well as the difficulties of creating heritage tours of landscapes that do more than just exploit landscapes for commercial or ‘theatrical’ benefits (Jafa, 2012; Lempert, 2013).

In experiencing and interpreting a heritage site, a visitor can easily be diverted or overwhelmed by both the preconceptions he/she brings to sites as well as the way sites are ‘packaged’ by outsiders for presentation (Barthes, [1957/1987; Bourdieu, 1993). Governments protect and present sites for purposes of ‘mystification’ and myth building in order to create national unity and to enhance their power, offering a selective view of their histories (Linenthal & Engelhardt, 1996). Corporations package sites to enhance profits and efficiency, offering simple messages and certain culturally pigeonholed experiences to fill the needs of specific consumers to reinforce certain beliefs. Meanwhile, individuals bring their own conceptions and experiences that project meanings onto sites that may have little to do with their original purpose.

Current approaches to classification and presentation of sites generally force them into themes or ritualistic performances. In classifying global heritage sites, for example, UNESCO seeks a theme and looks for objects of beauty or eccentricity rather than places that explain or offer lessons for humanity or windows into the human condition. Even though the UNESCO certification process may be long and complicated (some would say political and bureaucratic), it is constrained within the framework of a global agreement that restricts its focus to what can be described as ‘a masterpiece of human genius’ or provide ‘exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared’ or is ‘a type of building or architectural or technological ensemble or landscape’ (UNESCO, 1972). The makeshift buildings of slums or the architecture of warehouses, factories, or sanitation systems are not typically UNESCO sites. By contrast, ‘an outstanding example of a type of building or architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history’ and frozen to present that history rather than what came before or after (re-interpretation or destruction) may be (UNESCO, 2005). The UNESCO approach is to present objects of beauty in themes for single periods of time to present a particular idea or emotion. In doing so, in a political process with nation-state governments seeking to profit from tourism and to use the process for political and ideological purposes, they often appeal to what is exotic or unusual and understandable at a very basic intellectual level. Rather than present information that requires discussion or thought, the appeal is often to the lowest common human experience as their view of what is ‘universal’ or ‘global’ with little context or intellectual content.

In Laos, for example, Lao imperial Luang Prabang from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries as represented by its mansions and pagodas has been reconstructed and restored as a World Heritage Site while other history has been ignored, including the keys to explaining why Luang Prabang was chosen as a site (and by which previous disappeared cultural groups) and how the city and empire worked. The city wall that was an integral part of the ancient capital partly exists, but it is unprotected and unacknowledged because it is not an outstanding example of architecture even though it is essential for understanding the city. The interaction with nature that was essential to understanding the city: the boats and ports, the fields for the royal elephants, the royal gardens and fields, the military installation, the slave camps, and harems are also erased in this presentation of world heritage. The earlier Khmer history is also abandoned though it is essential to understanding the later construction, development, and culture. So is the settlement of indigenous peoples and their conquest and removal, though many of their traditions remain. This is not part of the story that the current government and UNESCO, representing its member governments, wish to tell. The French-era prison that was from a later period has been turned into a hotel as has the French hospital but these are not acknowledged with signs or on maps because they are not part of the theme. The UNESCO presentation is not about understanding identity or history or appealing to human intellect and capacity for learning and empathy. It is about creating amusement and perhaps contract work for a group of architects and government bureaucrats.

In looking at historical sites, whether as a result of the UNESCO presentation or other heritage tourism approaches, we generally view only the parts of structures that remain, without the peoples and the culture, without related sites, and often without connection to geography. If sites are restored, it is usually with a specific conception in mind for presenting architecture or landscape, for a specific time period with a specific message and little else. Though much more is possible and can engage us more fully in what is human without much effort, it is largely discounted.

While most scholars agree on the value of trying to present and retain the richness of information on historic sites and to allow for multiple and thick interpretations, most of the academic literature still comes in the form of critique without any suggestion of the ‘best’ way to preserve and present all of these multiple meanings, visions, and interpretations or to catalogue and describe sites as part of that process.

Indeed, these academic discussions can be paralyzing and can defeat the very purpose which the original debate intended: to enrich discussions of sites and learning. The process of deconstruction that has developed in the humanities and social sciences over the past several years has equipped scholars with the ability to unpack the ideological and mythical presentations of sites (Derrida, 1967), but the new interpretations that are offered are still based on subjective views brought by the observer. Often, these critiques create a new set of jargon and offer their own form of narrative or poetics that simply creates a parallel set of rituals and stories. We have deconstruction but we have yet to present agreed ‘reconstructions’ or basic, primary information that brings us closer to the actual cultural context of sites during the many different periods that they were used by many different peoples (including the way they are currently used).

Beneath the discussions, there is a reality of history. It may not be entirely knowable and there is always room for disagreement and interpretation. However, that discourse can begin by building on a commonality of basic information.

Though it may be flawed, there is an objective science for historical records. Carbon dating, for example, can only approximate the history of a site within a certain range and often the carbon that is found on a site may not be from the specific period of a site's construction and use (Diamond, 1999, p. 95), but it still offers a set of reference information that can be the basis for agreement and discussion. Certainly, there are some changes in interpretations of dates over time for sites that cannot be carbon dated and where dates are established using artistic comparisons or guess work, as well, with less precision. Even so, the range of information from scientific dating offers a different starting point for looking at and appreciating sites that differ from the pre-conceived choice of a site for tourism or for memorial or ritual that creates a meaning for it to fit a single context. Scientific dating relies on information that is external to the experience of the observer and cannot easily be changed for a political or ideological purpose.

The types of disciplinary questions that can be placed into a framework and applied to a site can help shape the experience of understanding the site by challenging the single thematic approach that freezes the meaning of a site. Framework questions and classifications can highlight factors that go into determining a site's meaning and individual identity as a site before meaning is projected into it to create a determined emotional or political response.

To improve the discussion about sites, what is needed is more of this external information about sites, presented to the public and researchers for interpretation and discussion. The more that is accessible, the less room for shaping and twisting a history to fit a specific mythological purpose. That is not to say that presenting all of the available information about a site is desirable, either. An abundance of information still forces selection and with limited time, most visitors and many researchers consciously or subconsciously shortcut the available information and impose a framework that distorts the reality. But to challenge the abuses of sites that result in myth-making for ideological purposes, at least a standardization of some core information can serve as a quick reference guide to open up discussions and to prevent exploitation of history and creation of meaning.

The goal of social sciences has been to try to systematize knowledge in ways that offer consistent sets of meanings for the purposes of learning. That may no longer be true of certain contemporary social ‘sciences’ that may no longer collect information about the real world and test hypotheses that can offer insight into the relationships between different parts of the physical world. But, when used correctly for measurements and search for relationships on important human questions, social science has the potential to challenge myth-making and commercial or ideological packaging. Collecting information about sites and their context can also challenge the packaging that distorts them and undercuts the ability to learn from them and to use that knowledge to improve the human condition.

Social sciences began with the idea that we could not merely critique subjective biases and categorize or catalogue the world around us but that we could offer scientific explanations to help understand how human societies work, the variables that influence them, and the human ability for change. Fields like anthropology and human geography have sought to combine the study of human biology, human history, and the natural and physical environment in order to model the workings of societies and the interactions of different variables (Diamond, 1999; Malinowski, 1944). To build these models, the kind of historical information that is necessary is information on past environments, on the different physical structures in those environments, their interrelations with each other, and their changes over time. In putting these puzzles together, we can come up with models of ‘cultures’ in different environments and try to understand the social structures, functions, and populations of these cultures and how they changed over time. Heritage, as the physical record of history on the landscape, offers this kind of social science data immediately on site and open for anyone to examine.

The work of examining heritage is often left to archaeologists who mine sites for information and then leave what is left for public packaging, with information selectively discarded and spun. Rather than simply breaking that link, it is possible to take the information today and put it into different forms to serve public purposes better through education and heritage tourism. While archaeology today is not necessarily well integrated with understandings of environmental interaction of peoples or the workings of cultures as it may have been in the past when anthropology was unified into four fields (physical anthropology/human evolution; archaeology/historical record; social and cultural anthropology studying modern cultures and societies; and linguistics), the basic idea of understanding the ‘science of culture’ has not entirely disappeared.

In cataloguing thousands of historical sites in Southeast Asia and Central Europe over the past several years, as well as in teaching field courses in social sciences throughout the world, the author has discovered that there are ways of taking some objective data about known sites and tagging them so that they can be used for this kind of scientific modeling. This kind of information gathering and presentation does not project information into sites for packaging. Instead, it simply offers information that can be used to identify relationships and patterns that emerge from it, inductively (Lempert, 2013).

One method of looking for relationships, for example, is to start either with a particular time frame and a geographic area that would have been accessible over a specific short time (a half day, a full day, and a few days) using the historic form of travel from that time (boats, foot, and animal) or a specific cultural group and a geographic area, and starting by mapping existing heritage sites that fit the criteria. This kind of map already creates a pattern. It opens up a way of looking at heritage in relation to geography/environment and reveals something about how specific human cultures adapted to their environments over time. If structures on sites have disappeared but if the locations are known or if certain types of sites should have existed but have disappeared because they were impermanent or were destroyed, they can be added onto or considered with the map. The approach is not simply to take what is architecturally beautiful but to look for everything that still remains from ditches and sewage canals to city walls and roads. Much of it still exists even if it is just the current outline of a road or the place of a swamp or a place name; and the story of what is still there and what is no longer there often has more meaning and offers more insight into the human mind and adaptation than what UNESCO chooses to believe is an ‘outstanding example’ of architecture. Indeed, some of the ancient landscaping is more ingenious than the brick work.

This is partly what some tour groups do with heritage trails or themed tours, which do start as a kind of packaging and what one might claim UNESCO does with its heritage-scapes frozen in time, but there are ways to go much further. In most current approaches, one visits only sites of a certain theme and imagines one is using a time machine and experiencing a culture. In picking only the artistic highlights or sites that are given meaning by particular events, one also loses the context. By contrast, the more of these maps that are created for the same geographic area (a specific city over time, for example), with the same sites reappearing or disappearing, the more one can move through time and see a moving picture with real humans making decisions. Angkor, for example, in Cambodia, is presented by UNESCO as a single theme in world heritage, but I have been able to take it and the surrounding area and map it in several time periods that offer ways to experience it moving through history and through different cultures (including the Thai, the French, the Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge and the New World Order as well as pre-history). Student groups have been taken to tour these histories in ways that place them in cultural, environmental, and historical contexts. Students then find they are no longer just ingesting a packaged set of symbols or snapping photographs of something exotic as part of an adventure, but are forced to grapple with the choices and experiences of a different culture in a different time, while also having to ask questions about meaning and function of site that are not answered in the packaged tours that focus merely on architectural beauty and sense of mystery or ‘magic’.

The idea of putting sites in contexts of geography and time and using scientific frameworks immediately raises questions of what is missing and why. Anthropologists start with basic questions and assumptions about constant sets of needs in human societies in everything from food production to disposal of wastes and dead to social cohesion, education, and development of technology. When students are presented with a framework for looking at a whole society, they do not just look at a heritage site to see what is presented to them. They immediately take the list of what is missing and wonder where it was, how it works, and why it has disappeared. Again, it is an inductive process.

This is catalyzed through basic descriptive information on the sites that are visible that offer information on their functions and form for different time periods. This is now missing at most heritage sites. Not only tourist authorities or companies who package sites focus on the limited information they can use to exploit a site, but the basic information that could be used by educators, by those in the tourist industry, and by researchers for several different purposes – the enhanced educational experience described above, for sets of more interesting and more versatile heritage tours, and for social science theories – is difficult to find or to use.

One way to spark and renew all of these approaches is with a consistent, easy to use, objective and accessible classification system for sites.

Classification scheme

A step forward for assuring the presentation of multiple meanings and interpretations of sites and for seeking to assure that certain types of generic sites can be preserved, presented, visited, and studied in a full array of states is to establish a classification system that collects information about sites in several different dimensions.

Generally, archaeologists (and art historians) now classify sites they visit in a full descriptive mapping, followed by conclusions on the period and type of site. Meanwhile, preservationists classify sites on their ability to withstand elements, recording the structural integrity of buildings as individual pieces of the structures disintegrate, shift or change in reaction to forces around them. Yet, there does not seem to be any anthropological classification scheme of sites that tries to capture a consistent array of meanings of historical and cultural changes.

Although some anthropologists may reject the idea of classification for not being able to capture every potential meaning of a site, the method used in searching for meanings in fact applies several categories of thinking about the relation of sites to nature, the view that cultures stamp on sites over time, and the way sites are currently viewed within their cultural contexts. These can in fact be part of a classification for interpretive purposes. To see how it works, we can walk through an example of the methodology.

Methodology: creating a scheme for a standard structure such as Generic Khmer sites

In creating a scheme for classification, it makes sense to start with a type of generic site for which there are multiple examples spread over a large area and subject to a variety of different cultures and transformations. For the purpose of this study, the Khmer Angkorian structures produced under the reign of King Jayavarman VII and known to archaeologists and art historians as ‘hospital chapels’ or arogayasalas, dated to 1181–1218, were selected. Ancient stone inscriptions mention them by name and number (102 in total throughout the Khmer Empire of that time), though not by location. They are perfect sites for educational purposes and tourism because they continue to raise questions through their a significant and continuing presence on landscapes over a wide area.

For this article, in creating a model generic classification scheme, it is not that important to identify all of these specific sites with great precision. That is left to the archaeologists, and there is still plenty of dispute. Important here is simply that there are several of these archaeological structures in large numbers over wide areas. Archaeologists can debate their function, the actual numbers and their placement. In fact, by having more information about the sites through classifying them individually and in a category, so can non-archaeologists – tourists, students, and specialists from other disciplines – participate in such debates, as described below using experience on how the researchers began to re-interpret these sites while classifying them.

Indeed, there does not appear to be any definitive account of whether these Khmer hospital chapels really totaled 102 or more, where they are, and how many remain, nor exactly how they worked. An inscription stone from 1186 at Ta Prohm in Angkor describes 102 hospitals (arogayasala) and 121 ‘houses of fire’ (resthouses/vahni-grihas/dharmasalas) across the area of Jayavarman VII's rule (Palmer & Martin, 2005, p. 299). It is possible that there were more than 102 of these sites, since Jayavarman VII ruled for another 30 years, though apparently a Preah Khan inscription from 1191 shows that the number of fire chapels remained unchanged five years later (Finot, 1925). Some other inscription stones mention these hospitals and may have come from these sites such as a disputed stone found near Vientiane, Laos, in the village of Hat Sayfong. Trying to visit and identify all of them could require years of work. Different sources claim that there are about 30 of them in Thailand. Other sources say that only about 30 have been identified in total. They can be found in Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos (and speculatively in Viet Nam). Scholars and explorers have recorded and discussed these sites for over a century and some of the earlier studies also serve as baselines for descriptions of changes that have occurred quite recently (Aymonier, 1901; Coedes, 1968; De Lajonquiere, 1911; Fino, 1925; Groslier & Arthaud, 1966; Higham, 2001; Mollerup, 2012; Parmentier, 1927).

Most of the temples in Angkor, the center of the Khmer empire in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, are identifiable by date and by ruler, and there is a key hospital chapel in Angkor with an inscription. But even for many Khmer temples in Angkor, it is still unclear what they are. The same goes for Khmer temples of earlier periods and of the Cham empire (to the east, in what is now southern and central Viet Nam) and partly applies to the towers (chedi/stupas) of other peoples who followed the Khmer: Sukhothai, Siamese-Ayutthaya, and Lao, as well as the Tai Yuan – Lan Na on lands north of the Khmer in what is now northern Thailand, and probably many other groups (though far fewer of these are specifically identified with rulers and specific times as are the Khmer sites). An example of some of the difficulty (and excitement) of trying to understand sites is one site described as a Jayavarman VII hospital chapel in Prachinburi, Thailand, at Sri Mahasot, that has served as a wat but with the stones entirely reconfigured so that the original hospital chapel is entirely unrecognizable. With archaeological heritage, it is easier to identify sites than to really know what purpose they served and when.

What anthropological analysis suggests, for example, after studying the structures of Vietnamese kings, is that the temples in the imperial centers that are now used as reference markers for classifying eras of construction were all the equivalent of tombs. The Vietnamese buried their dead, and each king built a tomb. The Indianized peoples of the area, such as the Khmer, cremated their dead, but each temple and tower (chedi/stupa) may be each king's cremation site, the equivalent of a tomb. That is an anthropological interpretation applied to the archaeological record that comes from comparing sites on the landscape; the same method can be applied to generic sites throughout these empires.

The disputes, the methods that archaeologists use to resolve them and interpretations by scholars in related fields are what create excitement among students and tourists, today because they allow for participatory and experiential learning. It is worth briefly explaining what is exciting about studying and visiting these sites for visitors at different levels of education and also from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, and then to see how a general classification scheme helps the discussion.

Almost all that is known about many archaeological sites, like the Jayavarman VII hospitals, is what the inscription stones say and what is visible to archaeologists and others who visit. Thus, the more examples recorded and classified, the more basic information there is to allow for testing and discussing different ideas about what they are, where and on what they were built, and how their use and meaning has also changed since their construction.

The inscriptions say that each hospital had a special Buddha, the Bhaisajayaguruvisthurayaprapa (which some describe as a seated Buddha figure with an upturned hand that could cup water), that marks the continued transformation of Khmer temples to Buddhist worship away from Hindu worship (something that seems to have started in the eleventh century, though both forms of worship seem to have continued). There are lists of doctors, servants, attendants, food preparers, and other custodians for each site, numbering about 100. There is mention that the sites were to be accessible to all ‘four castes’. Some stele mention the health recipe and mixture of 10 ingredients, including rice and spices to be prepared, that sounds more like a delicious vegetarian dish (with honey, ginger, onions, and mustard) today than a medicine (Coedes, 1968, p. 106; Chandler, 1992, p. 24).

At the sites archaeologists identify as hospital chapels is a series of repetitive structural elements. Among these are: a laterite surrounding wall and a central lotus tower with the tower set on a pedestal and with a post and lintel to allow entrance into the tower. There is an arched entrance doorway to the precinct to the east (a gopura) and usually a small pond (sra) to the northeast, just outside the precinct. Inside, there may be one or two other small structures around the entrance that are described as temples (vihear) or as libraries. Often there is a rectangular reservoir (baray) somewhere near and outside the walls.

Many of these elements are similar to those of earlier Khmer temples and some of them may be on the sites of earlier temples. The key differences are the sandstone (earlier temples are brick), the pond, and the transition to Buddhism (the earlier temples have yoni and siva linga that are stylized representations of male and female sexual organs for Hindu fertility rituals, lintel carvings that may have Vishnu and Siva carvings, and sometimes deity statues). Temples during the time of Jayavarman VII sometimes have characteristic statues that are reputed to be of Jayavarman VII: bald and in a meditative Buddha pose.

What makes the sites fascinating to anthropologists and for tourism and education is that while archaeologists, art historians, and architects stop with this basic information about structure, what one can see and not see today when visiting the sites raises many interesting cultural questions about their function and meaning. None of these sites seems to be a hospital today, or a place of medicinal gardens. Some are in major towns but many are far away as if they are abandoned or shunned. Others are treated as worship sites. If they were hospitals, why were they abandoned? Usually, cultures are conservative and take the paths of least resistance. Nature also can demonstrate long continuities. Introduce certain trees and they may reproduce even after the humans leave the sites. Nothing suggests that there were houses or cultivation or ample resources surrounding the sites to support the populations of 100 workers described at each location. In other words, the sites represent various layers of meaning that may best be explored by classification, protection, and presentation in multiple forms, allowing for an analysis by anthropologists and by those from other disciplines and training who visit the sites, beyond just professional archaeologists.

The written and oral interpretations of the locales in the region also add layers of meaning that are easy to explore. Several sources on the Internet describe these sites, for example. There are Thai books noting them as the beginning of Thai traditional medicine. There is psycho-analysis or historical interpretation of Jayavarman VII, with legends of a ‘leper king’ (possibly his son, Indravarman II) (Chandler, 1996) that might explain why he might have been concerned about health, or describing his conversion to Buddhism and its expression through these sites, or seeing him as a benevolent despot because of his apparent focus on providing the first socialized medicine throughout his empire, making it available to all classes. Some sources seek to explain the sites as hospital compounds with the sra and baray described as containing medicinal waters, but apparently without a single one used as such today. There is an assumption in these written sources that all of the instructions found on the inscription steles were followed and that there were small communities of 100 people living around these temples in wooden buildings. There is also an assumption that they were parts of communities and that they could draw on nearby populations.

All of these ideas are projections without any real evidence other than the suggestion that they were hospitals. Anyone familiar with constructions across an empire could easily challenge the goal or implementation and offer new theories to be tested. Were these hospitals similar to Christian missionary hospitals of the period of European colonialism (Koschorke, Ludwig, Delgado, & Spliesgart, 2007; Neill, 1986)? Were there really hospitals at all? Did they become a cover for something else? Did managers of the empire use them for other purposes?

Classifications of how they were treated, how communities remember them, what they are used for today, and where they are located provide a key to systematizing information and presentation in order to raise these questions for scholars, visitors, and students.

In classifying these spots for dozens of bicycle tours (not yet published or available) and in hope of promoting preservation and pride the researchers also found how this type of classification led to the sites being seen in a new way (Lempert, 2013). As they were classified and placed on maps, and as information was collected from local people on how they viewed the sites, the standard view offered in almost every tour book and in every archaeological work about these hospitals was challenged. We both brought our own experiences to the sites and our hypotheses projected some kind of meaning on to them. However, we were also able to use our experiences to test our hypotheses by using social science frameworks of how cultures fit different kinds of structures with particular functions onto the geography. These classifications allowed us to place ourselves more directly into the physical and historical settings in which these structures were built and operated.

The author's Vietnamese colleague, who has visited several of these locales over the past several years, has concluded from their placement outside of Khmer cities, as well as in scattered areas in the countryside that are often far from earlier or later settlements, that they were not public hospitals at all but actually military encampments to control the expanding empire. If they were hospitals, she believes they were likely catering to soldiers, but in ways that are not clear. Perhaps, they were sites of herbal gardens, though there do not seem to be particular trees planted with them. Her perspective, growing up in a small empire that has also been colonized by other empires, is shaped by her experience seeing military sites of empires in the region with military hospitals offering the best care (to male soldiers) and with militaries also investing large amounts of assets in strongholds that have historically endured. What she is unable to explain, though, is the specific placement of these sites often well outside cities and not in the same types of strategic areas of other militaries in the region (on hills, at confluences of rivers, on main roads, and close to or in population centers).

The author's theory as an anthropologist, studying the placement of sites away from population centers and treated today as if they have ghosts, is that if they were hospitals at all, they were some kind of sanitarium, offering rest and seclusion rather than public treatments. As an anthropologist, I also look for modern and historic parallels in the belief that cultures meet consistent sets of needs and that physical structures, even of different cultures, are similar in particular natural and physical environments. The closest analogy in Asia in recent times that I am aware of is the leper colony that existed during the French colonial era and prior to it. If these were ordinary missionary hospitals like French missions and religious hospitals, they would have been more centrally located and they would have proselytized something. But here, the locals already were Buddhist, so the sites were not spreading religion. The fact that none of them continue today with medical functions suggests that they served some kind of disregarded population. The military is one such group. The sick and isolated are another. In Asia, the most likely group may be lepers (Leger, 1920; Lewis & Cunningham, 1877), since there are legends of a ‘leper king’ of Angkor with the possibility that Jayavarman VII's son, Indravarman II, had leprosy. The idea that he built leper colonies that did not discriminate by caste (as the disease also did not discriminate) seems like a plausible explanation and coincides with an hypothesis offered by one of the early French archaeologists (Coedes, 1968).

It is interesting to conduct similar inventories of modern and historic structures in these areas to try to understand how they fit the environment and population strategies of the time and what lessons they offer.

Given the large number of these sites and their abandonment, not only are they rarely documented in tourist guides and maps but in many cases they are barely documented by national authorities or even archaeologists. Fascinating about these sites, known to locals but rarely visited by outsiders, is their actual identities as archaeological sites are sometimes denied as well. While there was a stele found near Vientiane along the Mekong, in Hat Sai Fong, a century ago, which is associated with a Jayavarman VII hospital (Maspero, 1903), there is no Khmer temple there and some archaeologists today wish to believe that the Khmer never reached Vientiane. In other places, there is evidence of the Khmer in fragments, but it is hard to know how to classify them, and archaeologists and art historians are silent (or combatative) given the evidence they rely on for determinations. Indeed, the value of anthropological classifications is that they even serve a role of challenging the biases of archaeologists and helping to present the local ideologies about sites but also those of archaeologies. While anthropologists may lack the training and tools to confirm the actual dates and construction of sites, classification of what anthropologists see may also be a way to challenge how archaeologists record, present, and seek to restore or refashion them.

There is good evidence in the form of architecture, religious objects, art work and finds of at least one inscription stone that the Khmer did reach Vientiane during the time of Jayavarman VII (Maspero, 1903; Ngaosrivathana & Ngaosrivathana, 2009). They certainly reached areas that far north but further west, such as Sukhothai, which was a Khmer city. Some French archaeologists reported on laterite stones at the main temple in Vientiane itself, the That Luang, where there is a siva linga (certainly Khmer) and a statue that many believe to be Jayavarman VII (Fombertaux, 1934; Ngaosrivathana & Ngaosrivathana, 2008, 2009). Was there a hospital shrine there? The author has visited a number of sites just across the Mekong River, south of Vientiane, where today there are just laterite rock piles or fragments of temples, or some other sculptures (like miniature carved sandstone towers) and baray-type reservoirs (nong in Lao and Thai). These may be dismantled Khmer sites. There are other places reported to be dismantled sites where there are just memories. Whatever they are, each site that may be a Jayavarman VII hospital shrine has its own story about relations with the Khmer, about ethnic interactions, about religious beliefs, and about how communities use materials and treat history.

The scheme for classifying Khmer ‘hospitals’ of Jayavarman VII

In classifying generic sites like the Jayavarman VII hospital shrines, we can start with something relatively simple, with just four categories that could of course be expanded.

The four different dimensions that can be used for basic descriptions are presented in Table 1. The classifications are relatively straightforward: whether a site has been abandoned and reclaimed by nature with evidence of changes to nature (such as imported trees that still grow in the area or other landscaped plants of various functions), or left with nature just in a small area around it, and if so, whether it has at least been cleared for some access or whether excavations have taken place; the state of deterioration or looting of a site that largely reflects human actions but also includes human and natural interaction; its state of maintenance or restoration; and whether or not it has been transformed into some other kind of site. Relation to population and other locales might make an additional interesting category among others, but we start by keeping it simple.

Table 1. Classifications for post-construction history of heritage sites using four descriptive factors.

Abandoned (natural reclamation)	Deteriorated or looted (decay stages)	Maintained (restored)	Transformed (other than tourism)
A.1. Unexcavated, Uncleared site within natural context of human changes to surrounding natural landscape	D.1. Original site, standing, with original affixed art and worship objects on site	R.1. (continuous to ‘Date') Maintained by original culture, replicating and restoring but not changing	T.1. (as of ‘Date') Same functional use but with additional design or icons of an evolving culture
A.2. Unexcavated, uncleared site but with surrounding areas cleared for contemporary usage	D.2. Original site, fallen, with original affixed art and worship objects on site	R.2. (as of ‘Date') Restored through replication of original construction with original materials	T.2. (as of ‘Date') Same functional use but with additional design or icons of a different culture
A.3. Exposed, unrestored site	D.3. Original site, standing, stripped of affixed art	R.3. (as of ‘Date') Partially restored using materials found on site but without additional art; may just be foundations without any wooden structures	T.3. (as of ‘Date') Different functional use (other than tourism) by same or different culture with some design changes
A.4. Excavated site, to uncover buried art work and other materials used at the site.	D.4. Original site, fallen, stripped of affixed art	R.4. (as of ‘Date') Recent restoration using modern materials replacing original	T.4. (as of ‘Date') Unrecognizable transformation but incorporating some original elements
	D.5. Desecrated site stripped of affixed art and some building materials
	D.6. Site stripped of all building materials but retaining landscape and infrastructure (baray, roads, and outline)
	D.7. Ghost site, identifiable by place name or written or oral history

Generally, these categories are independent, but since the processes all occur over a long time period after construction, it is possible for some overlaps that reflect multiple agencies. The first column reflects acts of nature and the other three reflect competing human actions of different human actors with different goals: destruction, protection, and re-use. A site could potentially be subject to all of these. For example, a locale could have been continually restored for several generations, then partly transformed, then subject to deterioration or looting, and then subject to a modern restoration that allows everything to be visible. But that is a very complicated case where not only would there be three of the variables but two different choices within one of the columns. In that case, the descriptions are really being applied to different parts of the same site. In most cases, the four categories are mutually exclusive and there is one choice within each category.

Herein is a set of labels that can generally fit a site into a category but which is flexible enough for multiple categories to aid in describing the rich history of a site.

Meanwhile, within each of the four categories, there are attempts to distinguish different levels or types of action. In the category for deterioration, the table shows several different levels of decay that generally reflect a progression. Certain valuables or fine materials disappear first. Changes to the geologic understrata below a structure are the last to change after building materials have been taken away. Viewing different sites at these stages is a bit like watching a film of time decay. Of course, finer categories could be added to mark specific changes if they are deemed important to document. If art objects have disappeared, this table does not distinguish between art work placed in some distant museum or photographed and disappeared or disappeared in other ways. The description is of what one sees during a visit.

There are four categories listed here in the column for transformations. These are in a spectrum of otherness, or distance from the stated purpose. For Khmer sites, there is actually another dimension of transformation depending on the cultures that have taken over the site. Various historical kingdoms took over the Khmer territories and many of them retained Khmer towers but modified them in different artistic shapes particular to their culture. So, there are Sukhothai-style additions (more ornamental lotus designs) of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Siamese-Ayutthayan additions (like corn cob designs) in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, and Lao-Lan Xang-era transformations (inkwell or carafe shaped) in the sixteenth century.

As noted above, the idea of trying to identify the actual functions of historical sites can be problematic and goes right to the center of disputes in anthropology as to whether there are clear identifiable sets of functions of human activities and whether they are knowable. But this discussion is all part of the process of using tangible heritage for education, tourism, and research. The exact functions may not be known, but we can at least try to deduce some of them and can also record apparent changes.

This classification scheme may not really help at sites that exist only in fragments or in memory, but there is a place to note them. The list for deterioration includes a final category for ghost sites that have nothing to distinguish them but memories. Sometimes, the destruction occurred recently enough that it becomes clear that the locales fit the category. But other destruction is so near complete that it is not even clear if a site belongs in the category or not.

For example, in Hat Sayfong, a village along the Mekong river about 15 km southwest of Vientiane and just across the Mekong from an ancient town now on the Thailand side, Vieng Kuk, French archaeologists at the beginning of the twentieth century found a Jayavarman VII hospital stele that is now on display in Vientiane at the Wat Pra Keo (a pagoda that the French transformed into an art museum). The French also reported legends of a Khmer bridge that no longer exists (Maspero, 1903). So, there is a stone and a legend of Khmer structures, but there is no name for the site and no remains. Some archaeologists today doubt that there even was a hospital shrine in Hat Sai Fong or anywhere around Vientiane. They say that the stone must have been brought there, but do not explain who would have brought it, when, why, or from where. The author's view is that the site could have disappeared under the shifting Mekong River here and could be buried under mud, or that it may be one of several other areas very close by that are linked to the Khmer.

Similarly, there are two temples in Thailand within a 20-km radius of Vientiane where there are stones typical of Jayavarman VII hospital chapels. There are sandstone blocks and some laterite, with a sra or baray, in a current wat precinct. But should they be defined as Jayavarman VII hospital chapels? Other sites that definitely had some Khmer traces, such as two of the main temples in Vientiane (Wat Si Muang and Wat That Luang) and another temple on the Thailand side, Bang Phuan, do not have these specific markers.

Pheuipanh Ngaosrivathana and Ngaosrivathana (2008; 2009), who writes about Khmer sites and archaeological history in Laos, is convinced there was one such Khmer temple in Ban Khwai that was either a Jayavarman VII hospital chapel or rest house, about 20 km northeast of Vientiane, on an ancient Khmer road. But the entire site, if it was not a fabrication (there are no photos) seems to have been dismantled or disappeared without a trace. Sites like this do not fit into the classification table. They are only listed outside of it, temporarily, as ‘mystery’ sites awaiting further investigation.

Finally, the element of overall flexibility in how to set the general category should be noted. Researchers, educators, heritage specialists, and tourist experts can specify the category in different ways. Instead of just looking at the Jayavarman VII hospital chapels, the category could be Jayavarman VII monuments or Khmer monuments within a set era (such as the tenth to twelfth centuries) and within a geographic area. The same classification scheme is then useful to answer questions about sites within that scope.

Using the model on other types of sites, with modifications

A way to test the applicability of the classification scheme is to see how it applies to a variety of generic sites from other historical time periods and other cultures. With some modifications, the approach seems to hold up fairly well.

Table 2 tests the classification scheme for several categories: Roman aqueducts throughout Europe and North Africa; dirt citadels constructed by the Chinese military ruler of North Viet Nam, Ma Vien, and by the Trung Sisters, in the area of the Red River about 40–43 C.E. (of which we have identified about 20); US airports and military landing strips in Southeast Asia including those in Laos known as ‘Lima Sites’, numbering more than 200; forts following the model of Sebastien Le Prestre de Vaubon (1633–1707), which numbered some 300 in Europe during his life and more than 20 in Viet Nam following this model during the French era (the early twentieth century), and French brick construction colonial schools and churches in Indochina from the early twentieth century to 1945 that also follow common patterns.

Table 2. Test of the post-construction history classifications for generic structures from different cultures and time periods.

Generic type of heritage	Applicability of the four descriptive factors and suggested modifications
	Abandoned (natural reclamation)	Deteriorated	Maintained (restored)	Transformed
Roman Aqueducts, the first century	Yes, the same categories can be applied	The seven categories can be merged into four because there was no art work. Either they are standing, fallen, visible as roads or waterways or just place names	Yes, the same categories can be applied	Yes, the same categories can be applied, though it is hard to imagine an aqueduct transformed
Ma Vien and Trung Sisters (‘Hai Ba Trung') citadels the first century	Yes, the same categories can be applied. Here, if there were interior houses and forts with weapons and or artwork, that would need to be excavated (an additional third category as to whether there has been excavation)	The art work would have been inside and the citadels are dirt or rock, so the list can be modified into only four categories: all walls and gates, some walls, outlines of walls and place names	Yes, the same categories can be applied	Yes, the same categories can be applied. Sometimes walls are transformed into roads
Vauban Style Nguyen Dynasty Vietnamese citadels, the nineteenth century or earlier Vauban forts in Europe	Not really applicable because they are recent and in city centers but an additional category can be added as to whether interiors were excavated	Yes, the same categories can be applied. ‘Art' here would be the design elements of the gates	Yes, the same categories can be applied	Yes, the same categories can be applied. Sometimes brick walls are transformed into jails or parks
French colonial schools or churches, the early twentieth century	Not really applicable because they are too recent but some places in war zones are abandoned	Yes. Here the ‘art' applies to the design elements and gardens	Yes, the same categories can be applied but it only applies to the building itself, not to the furniture and décor that require a different set of descriptions	Yes, the same categories can be applied but the determination of ‘function' of French buildings can be ambiguous and needs to be clarified in the descriptions
American military landing strips and airports in Southeast Asia, 1954–1975	Yes, the same categories can be applied	Yes, the same categories can be applied for airports, because there were buildings. For just landing strips, either the strip is still there or it is not (two categories only)	Yes, the same categories can be applied	Yes, the same categories can be applied. Sometimes these strips have become streets or markets

The template for the Jayavarman VII hospital chapels serves almost perfectly for several other types of locales. Generally, more recent sites and sites without art work can rely on classifications that are subsets of the one used for hospital chapels, with fewer categories.

The only additional category required is for recent buildings where the interior furniture and decorations are important to historical and cultural understanding. Certainly, period furnishings and heirlooms are either recreated or re-affixed when locales are turned into museums but otherwise disappear. Those discussions are really part of a different subject. The assumption for most recent buildings is that unless they are established for exhibits as museums, where questions of museum presentation are relevant, the interiors have changed and are likely to be private and difficult to visit.

Readers can apply the classification scheme on their own to different types of generic sites to see the locales’ various permutations and to consider how the different varieties should be analyzed, protected, and presented in order to serve various educational, historic, social science, and cultural objectives by different groups. Many French area heritage settings in Indochina have had unusual rebirths, with prisons and hospitals becoming hotels, public buildings turned into homes, and in some cases (like Phnom Penh under the Khmer Rouge), children's schools being used as prisons and torture chambers. Anthropologists can ponder the types of continuities or transformations these represent and can add classifications on specific uses, memories and oral histories about sites, and their relations to historic and current population areas.

Classifications for prior history

While most historical classification freezes historic sites at their most prominent remaining construction or most prominent notable use, the archaeological and anthropological record is that at all points in time cultures take existing sites that are considered to be of particular importance and mold what they find for specific purposes. They may continue the earlier use (using the least amount of effort, keeping something going as it is), modify it for a similar use or destroy it and replace it for an alternative use. Classifications usually tell us about a use at a specific point in time with the most recent use and sometimes other intervening uses still visible. But many sites had uses in earlier times. Important temples, for example, are often built on high lands that either protected animals from flooding or served as strategic military points. Sometimes they were cemeteries of chiefs or important settlement areas. It is valuable to try to turn the clock backward to note what goes back to these earlier uses, even when it is not clearly visible without excavation or written (or oral) history.

The variables that can be used are presented in Table 3. The method of classifying sites for prior history follows similar descriptions to those used for post-construction history. Essentially they are the same as columns two, three, and four in Table 1 but with fewer categories for the process of deterioration since part of the deterioration is in fact, later-era construction that has already occurred on the site. The only real difference is in the availability and reliability of the information. Unless the site is recent and the foundations are excavated before the recent construction, the only way to find the prior history of earlier structures is to rely on recorded history or legend, or to excavate, which may endanger a site.

Table 3. Three possible classification types for prior structures: modern restoration, transformation, or demolition and replacement.

Maintenance (restoration) of prior structure	Transformation of prior structure	Demolition and replacement of prior structure
PR.1. (prior structure from ‘Date') Restoration using modern materials replacing original	PT.1. (prior structure from ‘Date') Same functional use but with additional design or icons of an evolving culture	PD.1. (prior structure from ‘Date') Destruction of prior structure erasing all elements but for same function
	PT.2. (prior structure from ‘Date') Same functional use as that of a previous and different culture but with additional design or icons	PD.2. (prior structure from ‘Date') Destruction of prior structure erasing all elements for new function
	PT.3. (prior structure from ‘Date') Different functional use (other than tourism) by same or different cultures with some design changes
	PT.4. (prior structure from ‘Date') Unrecognizable transformation but incorporating some original elements

Discussion: applications of the approach

The classification scheme presented here is offered as a guide for tourist descriptions and itineraries, restoration policies and spending, teaching, and social science research. It is a simple tool that can be used to make decisions for tourism purposes, including site interpretation, and presenting a specific type of generic site. It can also be used to supplement a larger array of catalogued sites, over several time periods, as part of an effort to see individual cultures within their geographic and natural environments in particular time frames and then in multiple time frames, as parts of models of how different cultures met the spectrum of human needs and then how they changed and adapted over time. To have an impact, however, even such a basic presentation of information will have to overcome many of the political, ideological, and economic pressures that currently distort history, preservation, and heritage tourism.

Readers should view the tool as a set of flexible guidelines and recommendations to be adapted to local circumstances rather than as some kind of chemical formula or recipe that requires detailed specifications and must be followed rigidly and mechanically. Obviously, heritage tourism is most vibrant when there is already rich archaeological and historical information to draw from and where open scientific and historical inquiry that is not subject to ideological controls and biases are allowed. Where research is limited and where history is subject to pressure and conflicts of interest (problems that are found everywhere, though in different degrees) it is difficult to enrich heritage tourism and education, even if there is a will to do so. Even where there is information, there must be avenues to present competing narratives and to make them available for discussion. Thus, the approach offered in this article is open to many different forms of information collection and presentation, and potentially to abuses and distortions.

In many countries today, the work merely of inventorying historic and cultural sites has yet to be done systematically, let alone with the classifications that this article envisions using a classification tool. Several groups should have incentives to do this work, but much of it is simply not being done. The role of heritage classification and protection is one that is distinctly a public (governmental) function, recognized by international treaties. Its advocates should be in the tourism sector, which is now a global industry and which depends on identifying, protecting, and developing new products through research by archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and other cultural experts. It is also of direct interest to cultural groups seeking to protect their identities, environmentalists, and social planners. Despite this, it seems to remain one of the lowest priorities among international development agencies and donors, who often seem more concerned with homogenizing the world system and promoting investments in multi-national hotels and restaurant chains rather than recognizing, documenting, and exploring the richness of global heritage. Similarly, while there are travel associations with limited funds (part of this work in Southeast Asia benefited from a tiny grant from one of them), these funds are rather miniscule. Governmental support for research and classification depends on the degree of sovereignty a national government has in the global system and the political power of different ethnic groups to open up questions of history and identity. Thus, much of the effort falls on scholars and educators to recognize the value of the kind of information presented here for human knowledge and education, as a way to feed into heritage tourism at the level of public investment and industry research and development.

Educators and heritage tour designers can easily combine this classification approach with experiential education techniques like those described above (Lempert, 1995, 2013; Loewen, 2010) to enrich their teaching, though it requires initiative and a sense of entrepreneurialism. The classification can also serve as the basis for research presentations and analysis, but that depends on a respect for social science and a real search for answers about human societies and how they work to benefit humankind. This requires a departure in thinking from the current approach simply to deconstruct, critique, and offer narrative in a way that has deadened social science.

The classification approach is also easy to use as a tool in urban and development planning for pride and awareness of human uses of the environment (Lempert, McCarty, & Mitchell, 1995; Pierson, 2007; UNESCO, 2002). It can serve as a guide to selecting sites for protection based on a full array of meanings and types of decay. That also requires an appreciation for aesthetics, nature, and diversity, as opposed to the sterility, uniformity, and safety that has characterized much recent heritage preservation in an era of globalization.

In presenting a new system of classification for heritage sites that can be applied to heritage tourism, education, and research, this article offers not just a tool but a new way of thinking about heritage, itself. Simply offering a new way of recording information about heritage sites that creates an obligation for seeing heritage locales in their full historical, environmental, and cultural context, cannot overcome the ideologies and incentives that create current failures in presenting and understanding them. What this classification system seeks to do is to offer a different way of thinking about the world to those who work in heritage tourism, heritage protection, and teaching history and culture, as well as to those who plan our cities and land use. In requiring the recording of certain attributes of a site, it gives cause for reflection on why those attributes are important and why they should not simply be overlooked or overridden by a pre-existing set of stereotypes, ideologies, or incentives that limit the way we view, present, and protect our human heritage.

No tool is perfect and no categories are perfect. There will always be some areas of human judgment that are subjective and cannot be subject to rational test or agreement. But classification systems exist to enable us to see the world in new ways and to look for different and deeper relationships and patterns.

The classification system presented here offers a way of thinking that views heritage as a tool for understanding the past as a way to enrich our future. This approach sees human societies as operating on a set of underlying principles that can be understood in visiting heritage in its environmental context and in relation to each other, and to history. It is a view that respects students and citizens visiting heritage places in the belief that they have natural curiosity and intelligence and can put themselves in the place of others, consider the decisions they made and derive lessons for a democratic and participatory future, without being told what to think or not think, or not being allowed to think. It is an approach to the world that is not simply passive and critical of what others do, but is active and empowering, offering a simple way to see the world more fully and to present and enjoy the human experience.

Readers are invited to follow this article with strategies for using this approach in their own countries and communities, as well as to suggest other supplementary approaches. It is the hope of this author that this journal and others in archaeology, heritage, anthropology, and history will go beyond journalism or critique and will offer new constructive tools for documenting and presenting heritage for tourism and education, as well as share modifications on this approach as they seek to apply it.

Notes on contributor

David Lempert has worked in more than 25 countries on five continents since the early 1980s, pioneering new mechanisms in rights, law, education, development work, and social science. Among the more than 20 books he has authored – ethnographies, practical handbooks for reform, and fiction – are his alternative development text, A Model Development Plan (Praeger, 1995), and his work of model clinical curricula, Escape from the Ivory Tower: Student Adventures in Democratic Experiential Education (Jossey-Bass, 1995) highlighting the work of an NGO he founded while a graduate student in the 1980s (Unseen America Project, Inc.). He is founder of the Diaspora Bridge Center project of Eastern Europe and the Southeast Asia on Two Wheels/Bridges across the Mekong project as well as a Donor Monitor project and a Red Book for Endangered Cultures Project. Dr Lempert holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, law and business degrees from Stanford, an undergraduate degree from Yale, and an honorary degree in pedagogy from the Moscow External University of the Humanities.