Monitoring serial transnational World Heritage – the Central Asian Silk Roads experience

Abstract

The last decade has seen a steady increase in the number of cultural World Heritage serial transnational nominations. For this concept of heritage, new approaches and tools are required beyond those used for traditional site management. This paper focuses on the monitoring tool and methodologies developed for the Silk Roads serial transnational World Heritage nomination in Central Asia. A monitoring tool was developed to document the state of conservation and possible threats to the Outstanding Universal Value based on a risk management approach. It was implemented as web-based Geospatial Content Management System, following international documentation standards and methodologies. The first Silk Roads World Heritage property was listed in 2014 and more are under preparation.

Keywords:

• Content management systems
• digital documentation
• monitoring
• Silk Roads
• World Heritage

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the support of the Belgian Science Policy Office and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. The author wishes to thank the UNESCO offices in Almaty and Tashkent, the Central Asian States Parties, the Belgian consortium and experts participating in the Silk Roads CHRIS project. In addition, the author would like to thank Koen Van Balen (University of Leuven), Mario Santana Quintero (Carleton University) and Tim Williams (University College London) for their continuous advice.

Notes

¹ Avrami, Mason, and De la Torre, “Report on Research,” 7.

² For references see: D. Myers. 2010. Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities (MEGA) – Jordan. www.smartdocheritage.org [accessed 1 December 2015]; and Myers, Avramides, and Dalgity, “Changing the Heritage Inventory Paradigm”.

³ Mason, “Theoretical and Practical Arguments”.

⁴ ICOMOS. 1964. Venice Charter. http://www.icomos.org/venice_charter.html [accessed 30 August 2015].

⁵ Avrami, Mason, and De la Torre, “Report on Research”; and Della Torre, “Learning and Unlearning”.

⁶ Jokilehto, “Defining the Outstanding Universal Value”, 2.

⁷ Zancheti and Jokilehto, “Values and Urban Conservation Planning”.

⁸ Australia ICOMOS. 1979 [revised 2013]. The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance. http://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Burra-Charter-2013-Adopted-31.10.2013.pdf, Art. 1.2.

⁹ For references on heritage dimensions see: ICOMOS. 1995. Nara Document on Authenticity. http://www.international.icomos.org/naradoc_eng.htm [accessed 2 November 2010] para. 13; UNESCO, 1972. Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (Paris: UNESCO); and UNESCO, 2015. Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Document WHC.15/01. http://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines [accessed 1 December 2015].

¹⁰ Hall and McArthur, “Human Dimension of Heritage Management”, 10.

¹¹ For references on non-expert values see: Mason, “Be Interested and Beware”; Lipe, “Value and Meaning”; Frey, “The Evaluation of Cultural Heritage”; Pereira and Van Oers, “Managing Change”; and Hall and McArthur, “Human Dimension of Heritage Management”.

¹² Australia ICOMOS, The Burra Charter.

¹³ ICOMOS Charter – Principles for the Analysis, Conservation and Structural Restoration of Architectural Heritage, ICOMOS 2003 http://www.icomos.org/charters/structures_e.pdf [accessed 25 June 2015]; and Della Torre, “Learning and Unlearning”.

¹⁴ For references on risk management, see: ICOMOS. 2011. Guidance on Heritage Impact Assessments for Cultural World Heritage Properties. http://www.international.icomos.org/world_heritage/HIA_20110201.pdf [accessed 15 June 2014]; Pereira and Van Oers, “Managing Change”; Paolini et al., Risk Management at Heritage Sites; and UNESCO, Managing Disaster Risks.

¹⁵ Van Balen, “Introduction”.

¹⁶ Abbot and Guijt, Changing Views on Change, 13.

¹⁷ UNESCO, State of Conservation Reports. http://whc.unesco.org/en/soc/ [accessed 20 July 2014].

¹⁸ UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, Annex 5 and 7.

¹⁹ See Vileikis et al., “Silk Roads Cultural Heritage”.

²⁰ Methodology adopted by the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) together with the Canadian Institute (CCI)-Institute for Cultural Heritage of the Netherlands (ICN) to heritage collections. For references see Paolini et al., Risk Management at Heritage Sites; Vileikis et al., “Connecting World Heritage Nominations”; Waller, Cultural Property Risk Analysis; and Standards Australia/Standards New Zealand, SET Risk Management Set.

²¹ See Martin and Gendre, UNESCO World Heritage.

²² Elisseeff, The Silk Roads; and Hansen, The Silk Road.

²³ Transoxiana: the area had been known to the Greeks as Transoxania (Land beyond the Oxus), to the Arabs as Mawarannahr (Land Beyond the River), and to the Iranians as Turan. This region includes the province Sogdiana of the Sassanid Empire.

²⁴ See UNESCO, Decisions adopted by the World Heritage Committee at its 38th Session (Doha, 2014) Decision: 38 COM 8B.24. http://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/6110 [accessed 25 June 2015].

²⁵ UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, Annex 5 and 7.

²⁶ Letellier, Recording, Documentation, and Information Management.

²⁷ See Vileikis, “Achieving Dialogue”.

²⁸ UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, para. 77 and 78.

²⁹ Van Balen, “The Nara Grid”; and ICOMOS, Nara Document on Authenticity.

³⁰ Pereira and Van Oers, “Managing Change”; and UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, para. 82.

³¹ See Vileikis and Allayarov, “The Silk Roads”.

³² UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, para. 88.

³³ UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, para. 99 and 104.

³⁴ Vileikis et al., “Documentation in World Heritage Conservation”.

³⁵ See Vileikis and Allayarov, “The Silk Roads”; and Vileikis et al., “Silk Roads World Heritage”.

³⁶ UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, para. 88b, 88c, and 132.4.

³⁷ UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, Annex 7.

³⁸ Addison, “The Vanishing Virtual”; and DCMI. 2012. Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1. http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/ [accessed 3 January 2015].

³⁹ Vileikis et al., “Silk Roads Cultural Heritage”; and Vileikis et al., “Silk Roads World Heritage”.

⁴⁰ Waller, Cultural Property Risk Analysis; and Standards Australia/Standards New Zealand, SET Risk Management Set. For further reading and discussion see Vileikis et al., “Silk Roads Cultural Heritage”.

⁴¹ Mason, “Assessing Values in Conservation”, 9.

⁴² See Lin, Peshkov, and Turekulova, Central Asian Serial Nominations.

⁴³ For detailed description of the Silk Roads CHRIS architecture and features see: Vileikis et al., “Documentation in World Heritage Conservation”; Vileikis et al., “Information Management Systems”; and Vileikis et al., “Silk Roads Cultural Heritage”.