It’s hard to be down when you’re up: interpreting cultural heritage through alternative media

Abstract

Heritage places are characteristically imbued with a multiplicity of meanings contingent on the specificities of the society, time and space in which such places are perceived. The interpretation of places also depends on the affordances of the representational medium through which these places are perceived and the ways in which such a medium is socially deployed and interpreted. Using the ancient settlement of Sirkap, located in modern-day Pakistan, as a case study, the present article demonstrates that a change in the representational medium entails a change in the interpretation of archaeological records. Most conventional historical accounts of Sirkap use two-dimensional site maps and city plans as the primary media to represent the urban fabric of the ancient settlement. These media lend themselves to interpreting the Block D Apsidal Temple complex as the dominant socio-religious structure in the affluent northern parts of the settlement. When the authors developed an interactive three-dimensional reconstruction of Sirkap using gaming technology – a medium that allows users, through their avatars, to explore the settlement from the standpoint of a pedestrian – it was immediately obvious that the aforementioned Block D Apsidal Temple complex did not demand such an interpretation. Instead, the authors argue that, at least in the affluent northern parts of the settlement, the northern gate, its adjacent fortifications, and the Block A stupa court were the dominant structures. Such an interpretation leads the authors to question the canonical understanding of the role of the state and its military apparatus in the socio-religious life of Sirkap.

Keywords:

• multi-user virtual environments
• new media
• tangible heritage
• intangible heritage
• place-making
• Sirkap

Acknowledgements

The construction of Virtual Sirkap was funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant Programme. We would like to extend our sincerest thanks to the NEH for their support. We would also like to thank Cambridge University Press for allowing us to use a number of plates from volume three of Marshall (1951). This project was born out of a collaboration between Daniel Michon and Yehuda Kalay. Finally, we would like to recognize the rest of the modelling team, as without their efforts this project would not have been successful. Thank you Pinar Aybar, Ginette Wessel, Seungwan Hong, and Paul Kim for all your work.

Notes

1. The model is available for download at www.virtualsirkap.com.

2. While it is true that GIS does have three-dimensional capabilities, they still rely very much on two-dimensional epistemologies. For example, the most popular three-dimensional use of GIS is in viewshed analysis. However, viewshed analysis does not allow a user to walk through the landscape and experience the site.

3. This view is not new, but rather is in accordance with much of the recent theorising on spatiality. One potential confusion is in the inversion of the meanings of de Certeau’s terms ‘place’ and ‘space’. That is, de Certeau, in line with continental scholars on space, thinks of space (éspace) in an Aristotelian sense: the space of all places (lieux). Here, space is full of meanings ascribed to it by the social groups that inhabit it. Most Anglo-American scholars, on the other hand, think of space in a Platonic sense: a physical container devoid of meaning. Thus, for these latter scholars, place is space imbued with meaning typically understood at the individual level. So, to be clear, we ascribe the meanings the term ‘place’ that de Certeau has assigned to space (éspace). In addition, obviously, our use of ‘space’ is akin to de Certeau’s ‘place’ (lieux).

4. ‘Kinesthesis’ is perception through movement, and since the user has an awareness of the avatar’s moving body’s position in relationship to an object of perception, it is a form of kinesthesis. However, like in all kinesthetic activities, the extent of the user’s ability to explore the environment liberally is limited by certain factors. In a virtual environment, the constraints depend on the programming code that controls and regulates movement. For example, in our project, the code does not allow avatars to fly or users to explore the environment using a flying camera. This is a restricted experience when compared with an environment like Second Life (www.secondlife.com), which allows its users both these abilities.

5. The archaeological data from Taxila published by Alexander Cunningham can be found scattered throughout his annual reports to the Archaeological Survey of India. See, in particular volumes I (1871), II (1872), V (1875), and XIV (1882), all now reprinted by the Archaeological Survey of India.

6. Other excavations and surveys of note include Ghosh (1947–48), Sharif (1969), and Khan (1983). A very good summary of many of these excavations can be found in Dani (1986). Most recently, there has been an ongoing excavation of parts of Taxila by a Korean team, but they have yet to put forth a full publication.

7. These ‘modern’ ideas of what makes for a well-designed, beautiful city are deeply rooted in the aesthetic assumptions derived from the western classical tradition. In fact, in the World Heritage Committee’s official justification for the inclusion of Taxila on the World Heritage List, it is Taxila’s link to urban development further to the west that is highlighted. In the final decision document (International Council on Monuments and Sites [ICOMOS] 1980), the World Heritage Committee briefly notes the presence of ‘a number of Buddhist monasteries of various periods and… Moslem mosques and madrassahs of the medieval period’ (ICOMOS 1980, p. 1) contained within the vast complex that is Taxila, but it quickly moves on to describe Taxila’s ‘universally meaningful’ settlement sites. According to the World Heritage Committee, the first settlement site, Bhir Mound, owes its urban design to the ‘Achaemenians’. The second site, Sirkap, derives its importance from its similarity to ‘the Hellenistic grid system and show[s] the strong western classical influence on local culture’ (ICOMOS 1980, p. 1). In addition, the third site, Sirsukh, ‘attests to the early influence of Central Asian architectural forms on those of the sub-continent’ (ICOMOS 1980, p. 2). Thus, the ‘universally meaningful’ heritage of Taxila is all connected to civilisations to the west of the subcontinent. Further, this judgement concerning the value of Taxila using almost exclusively ‘Western’ criteria is not limited to assessments of its urban form. After recognising Taxila as a unique exemplar of western urban development – and by omission not recognising Taxila for its South Asian urban heritage – the World Heritage Committee turns to Criterion 6 in which a World Heritage Site is ‘directly or tangibly associated with events or with ideas of beliefs of outstanding universal significance’ (UNESCO 1980, p. 5). The event of ‘outstanding universal significance’ associated with Taxila has nothing to do with Indian history – and Taxila is associated with many events of great significance to Indian history – but rather it is Bhir Mound’s purported association with the ‘triumphant entry of Alexander the Great into Taxila’ (ICOMOS 1980, p. 2) that qualifies it for inclusion.

8. Two examples of this kind of reproduction are in Behrendt (2004, Fig. 10) and Dani (1986, fig. 26).

9. See Marshall (1936), a volume that was published long before his integrative excavation report in 1951, and another full reproduction of Plate 10 in Mairs (2005, Fig. 2).

10. This plate is reproduced in a number of important publications, including, Dani (1986, pl. 2) and Allchin (1995, fig. 12.5).

11. While Dani (1986, pp. 140–141) concludes that ‘the general view of the Saka-Parthian city, as drawn by Marshall, can hardly be improved’, he also suggests that ‘main street (sic) dominates the entire city plan’ (Dani 1986, p. 92).

12. All later studies of Sirkap agree with this analysis, for example, see Chakrabarti (1995, p. 179) and Dani (1986, p. 92).

13. We constructed the height of the outer enclosure wall to rise 5 m from the ground level of Main Street; the heights of the other buildings are about 3 m. A significant difference between Marshall’s discussion of the temple complex and our model pertains to the two ‘stupa bases’ outside the main temple. Domenico Faccenna has made a very convincing argument that these types of bases were for pillars, not stupas, and we have chosen to follow Faccenna (2007). The pillars we constructed are also 5 m high, but the whole Block D Apsidal Temple complex was constructed on a raised, 2 m-high platform, so the pillars, in effect, rise 7 m above the street level. Cresting the pillars is a circular disk, the Buddhist chakra wheel. Further, we were quite conservative in our construction of the structures fronting Main Street. For example, while Marshall suggests that many of them supported a second storey, we only constructed single-storey buildings as we saw no significant evidence for two storeys. However, if we followed Marshall and did build another storey on some of these buildings, this would further obstruct the view of the Apsidal Temples complex in Block D. Of course, many decisions were made in how to reconstruct the city, and a complete discussion of such decisions can be found at the project website, www.virtualsirkap.com.

14. The Block A stupa court complex contained a central stupa which sat on a square plinth, three smaller, votive stupas, and a few small rooms. According to Marshall’s excavation report, the houses in Block 1 belong to very late stratum II only, that is, the very end of the Settlement Phase and into the Transitional Phase. Without these poorly built houses, the entry to the city would lead the visitor directly to the Block A stupa complex.

15. On Marshall’s (1951) site plan, we can trace a direct line from there is a direct line from the entrance to the city (square 2–68’) to some rubble (square 15–68’) that indicates some kind of walkway leading to the entrance of the stupa court from Second Street (square 15–65’).

16. We have yet to model the diachronic changes in the urban fabric of the city. This is something we would like to do in the future.

17. Support for the conclusion that this stupa shrine was a locus of royal patronage comes from its similarity to two other stupas in urban Sirkap, those in Block F and Block G – two stupas which, as I argue elsewhere (Michon 2007), received direct royal patronage and served as tools to express the power of the rulers. We, obviously, have not yet modelled these stupas.