domingo, 4 de noviembre de 2012

REUNIONES INTERNACIONALES DE PATRIMONIO (11-13 Nov) Y DE ARTE RUPESTRE (14-16 Nov)

REUNIONES INTERNACIONALES DE PATRIMONIO (11-13 Nov) Y DE ARTE RUPESTRE (14-16 Nov)

Nuestra socia Margarita Díaz Andréu nos remite la siguiente información de cursos que tendrán lugar en Barcelona del 11 al 16 de Noviembre:
 
En los adjuntos podéis encontrar los programas sobre las conferencias que sobre patrimonio (11-13 Nov) y arte rupestre (14-16 Nov) tendrán lugar en el Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya y la Universidad de Barcelona.
La asistencia es gratuita aunque limitada a la capacidad de las salas



Indigenous Cultural Heritages

and

Sustainable Development


Current issues, future avenues



Barcelona, 11-13 November 2012


Organizers:
Daniel Arsenault & Margarita Díaz-Andreu


Meeting of the “Study Group on the Heritage Status of Aboriginal Cultural Property”
Sponsored by the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC).


The actual global economical crisis (exemplified notably by several European countries), the religious fundamentalisms active in many parts of the world, and the negligent cultural legislation and irresponsible governance of some "modern" governments, offer us now just a few examples of how heritage jewels are at risk of being destroyed or irremediably altered in spite of the ambient political discourses surrounding the sustainable development of such heritages and targeting the common prosperity of all nations. This meeting of the Study Group on the Heritage Status of Aboriginal Cultural Property in Barcelona aims at presenting some current contexts in which Indigenous cultural goods (tangible or not) are at stake of being affected in one way or another under such social, political, ideological and economic pressures. Indeed, we, as specialists, as well as our institutions are all involved, either theoretically, methodologically or with case-studies at hand, in such contexts to a certain extent, and we are striving to find out how to properly manage towards the best results. This two and a half day meeting (11th-13th of November) will give us then the opportunity to shed lights on the actual conditions proper to the contexts observed, the various actors involved (as well as those who should be involved but are not) and the possible causes which have driven various communities to face such situations in order to seek out and evaluate what could be the best solutions to apply for coping with the current problems, and therefore reach a real sustainable development for the Indigenous cultural heritages.







PROGRAM




Archaeological sites and other heritage issues

Sunday 11th2012



Morning Public Talks (9.45 am – 12 noon)
Place: Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya. Auditorium

9.30 am. Welcome
9.45 am. Daniel Arsenault (CELAT-Université du Québec à Montréal) – introduction
10 am. Daniel Arsenault (CELAT-Université du Québec à Montréal): Valorizing Indigenous cultural heritages during the world economical crisis: the Québec’s “Plan Nord”, and its impact on the archaeological heritage of the First Nations and Inuit peoples.
10.25 am. Aron Mazel & Gerard Corsane (International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, University of Newcastle): The en-compassexperience: reflecting on an international model for safeguarding cultural heritage
10.50 am. Serge Lemaitre (CELAT-Université du Québec à Montréal). Easter Island: A New Ecological Disaster?
11.15 am. Paul S. C. Taçon (Griffith University), Ronald Lamilami (Namunidjbuk Estate), Sally K. May (Australian National University) and Daryl Wesley (Australian National University). New ways of recording, presenting and conserving heritage for the people of northwest Arnhem Land, Australia
11.40-12 noon. Question time
12.00 noon - end of the public morning session


Afternoon Public Talks (3–5 pm)
Place: Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya. Auditorium

3.30 pm. John Norder (Michigan State University): Indigenous Activism in Heritage Management
3.55 pm. Jack Brink (Royal Alberta Museum). Indigenous Cultural Heritage and Medicine Wheels of the Great Plains: Future Directions on Issues of Reuse, Repatriation and Reburial
4.20 am. Daniel Chartier (Université du Québec à Montréal). The urgency of a library/documentation and archives centre for Nunavik
4.45-5.00 pm. Question time
5.00 noon - end of the public afternoon session





Museums and Interpretation Centers

Monday 12th2012



Morning Public Talks (9.30 am – 12 noon)
Place: Sala de Juntas, Facultad de Geografia i Història, Universitat de Barcelona.

9.45 am Prof. Xavier Roigé – Dean of the Faculty of Geography and History, University of Barcelona. Welcome to the University
10.25 am. Louis Gagnon (Avataq Cultural Institute). Museums in Nunavik: challenges for the Inuit communities in a time of identity crisis.
10.50 am. Mathieu Viau-Courville (Musée de la Civilisation de Québec). Museum Practice and the Participative Approach: a view from the Musée de la civilisation, Québec
11.15 am. Michelle Bélanger (Musée des Abénakis). The Musée des Abénakis: dealing with the tangible and the intagible for the future of a First Nation people in Québec.
11.40 am Question time
12.00 noon - end of the public morning session

Afternoon Public Talks (3 – 5 pm)
Place: Sala de Juntas, Facultad de Geografia i Història, Universitat de Barcelona.

3.00 pm. Stephen Loring (Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History). Research, Repatriation, Responsibilities and Respect: museum anthropology and indigenous northern communities as viewed from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
3.25 pm. Dean Whiting (New Zealand Historic Places Trust PouhereTaonga). Issues Confronting Maori Community Guardianship of Cultural Heritage
3.50 pm. Douglas Herman (Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian). Indigenous Geography: Documenting and Preserving Place-Based Cultural Heritage
4.15 pm. Carole Charette (Université du Québec à Montréal m (UQAM)). The future of First Nations peoples’ museums in Canada: three examples from Québec Algonquian-speaking communities.
4.40 pm Question time
5.00 pm End of the public afternoon session






Heritage, Museums and Archaeology

Tuesday 13th2012



Morning Public Talks (9.00 am – 12 noon)
Place: Sala de Juntas, Facultad de Geografia i Història, Universitat de Barcelona.

9.00 am. Yves Bergeron & Vanessa Ferey (CELAT-Université du Québec à Montréal) – The issues of the musealization of collections from aboriginal intangible heritage: positions and involvements of museums for a sustainable development of their knowledge at the hour of global crises.
9.25 am. Fergus Maclaren (ICOMOS Canada) –Narrowing the tourist perspective: Understanding the impacts of removing aboriginal cultural heritage fabric from display
9.50 am. Xavier Roigé (Universitat de Barcelona). What place for ethnological museums in Spain?
10.15 am. Margarita Diaz-Andreu (ICREA, Universitat de Barcelona). New Challenges for a new century - Contested archaeological heritage in Spain.
10.40 am. Elizabeth Chilton (Center for Heritage and Society, University of Massachusetts Amherst). Why Does the Past Matter? Towards a Social Science of the Past
11.05. Question time
11.20 am End of public sessions





 


Indigenous Cultural Heritages

and

Sustainable Development


Current issues, future avenues



Barcelona, 11-13 November 2012


Organizers:
Daniel Arsenault & Margarita Díaz-Andreu


ABSTRACTS





Archaeological sites and other heritage issues

Sunday 11th 2012



10 am. Daniel Arsenault (CELAT-Université du Québec à Montréal): Valorizing Indigenous cultural heritages during the world economical crisis: the Québec’s “Plan Nord”, and its impact on the archaeological heritage of the First Nations and Inuit peoples.

Two years ago, the Provincial Government of Québec, Canada, has launched the Plan Nord, an ambitious project for the economic development of a huge territory north of the 49th parallel (about 72% of the Province’s geographic area). Through this project, it is expected that the abundant and various natural resources (e.g. fresh waters, forests, minerals) are going to be extensively exploited over the next 30 years at least. Along with this anticipated massive exploitation, Québec also intends to preserve 50% of this territory by creating natural reserves and other protected areas. However, in its actual projection, the Plan Nord has severely underestimated the potential impact those industrial exploitations are going to permanently have on the archaeological heritage — the known as well as the one still to be discovered — of the Indigenous peoples living in those regions (the Cree, Anishnabe, Innu and Naskapi First Nations as well as the Inuits), and accordingly on their future sociocultural developments linked to its preservation. As a matter of fact, in spite of the new Provincial law on Cultural Heritage adopted in 2011, the Plan Nord is far from taking into account how important the Indigenous archaeological heritage can become a crucial tool for cultural identity and communities’ fulfilment and proudness, as well as a significant source of prosperity for all the Nations leaving on that territory. If nothing is done to change this tendency, then, it is obvious that a substantial part of their archaeological heritage is at risk of being destroyed or irremediably altered. Addressing the challenge for a real sustainable development of the archaeological cultural heritage in Northern Quebec, this paper will strive to emphasize the actual conditions proper to the context observed and the various actors involved (as well as those who should have been involved but are not) so as to evaluate what might be the best solutions to apply for coping with this important issue in times of global changes.


10.25 am. Aron Mazel & Gerard Corsane (International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, University of Newcastle): The en-compassexperience: reflecting on an international model for safeguarding cultural heritage

This paper reflects on an international cultural heritage project entitled: en-compass – an international diamond of cultural dissemination, capacity building with countries from the North, East, South and West. Funded by a grant from the European Commission, the project was developed as a four-way partnership between organisations in the People’s Republic of China, Kenya, Guyana and the United Kingdom. It is intended that the project would provide a model for the promotion and safeguarding of indigenous cultural heritage using a multinational approach. Through providing the outline of the project and considering some of the completed and continuing activities, the key objectives of this paper are to highlight the factors that have informed the different aspects of en-compass, to describe its development to date, and to consider some of the lessons that have been learnt.


10.50 am. Serge Lemaitre (CELAT-Université du Québec à Montréal). Easter Island: A New Ecological Disaster?

Easter Island, the most remote inhabited island in the world, is famous for its monumental statues, called moai, but also because the island has served as a warning of the cultural and environmental dangers of overexploitation, an ecological destruction. The whole island is a World Heritage site (as determined by UNESCO) with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. Hundreds of years after this process, another ecological destruction is taking place on Easter Island because of the tourism. About 80% of the population lives directly thanks to the tourism and more and more people are welcomed on this Island. They need accommodation, they drink and eat, they take showers and they walk on the land. So, the Rapa Nui people are now facing a new challenge: how to manage all the garbage? How produce of large amount of water? How to protect the soil and the archaeological sites? Where and how to construct new buildings? How to control the influx of Chilean people coming to make benefit of the tourism? And off course, how to preserve its culture in the changing society?
            In this island where the decision of the Chilean government, the choices of the native population, the interest of the tourist manager and the protection of the heritage culture are intertwined, it exists very few solutions.


11.15 am. Paul S. C. Taçon (Griffith University), Ronald Lamilami (Namunidjbuk Estate), Sally K. May (Australian National University) and Daryl Wesley (Australian National University). New ways of recording, presenting and conserving heritage for the people of northwest Arnhem Land, Australia

Since 2008, we have been systematically recording the heritage and rock art of the Namunidjbuk clan estate in the Wellington Range of Northwest Arnhem Land, Australia with a large multi-disciplinary and multicultural team. This includes oral history, artefacts, photographs and rock art sites with imagery that dates from about 15,000 years to as recent as 50 years ago. All of this is important for the contemporary Aboriginal people of the region. Rock art sites are considered to be like history books, with large complexes such as Djulirri that has over 3000 designs more like libraries. For the Lamilami family these places are of both local and world significance. Thus it is important to document, manage and conserve them using state of the art technology and a wide range of resources. We have recorded key sites in full detail using standard photographic and recording techniques but also have made films so that oral history and contemporary significance can be recorded for posterity. A new database management system that brings together variable records has been implemented and a program of 3D recording initiated in order to pass on the remarkable rock art legacy of Namunidjbuk to future generations in many different ways.


3.30 pm. John Norder (Michigan State University): IndigenousActivism in Heritage Management

Increasingly, cultural and environmental heritage resources have become the focus for social justice and activism movements in the United States and other countries, with efforts at their protection being spearheaded by Indigenous peoples. In addressing these causes, the tools of anthropology, archaeology, and heritage management have been sought to support agendas that empower indigenous knowledge and sovereignty. This paper examines case studies in the Great Lakes Region of North America where anthropologists and archaeologists have worked with Indigenous communities in efforts to protect and develop heritage resources, both successfully and unsuccessfully, and identifies the structures that impede or allow for successful outcomes.


3.55 pm. Jack Brink (Royal Alberta Museum). Indigenous Cultural Heritage and Medicine Wheels of the Great Plains: Future Directions on Issues of Reuse, Repatriation and Reburial

Medicine Wheels are large stone structures laid out on the prairies of the northern Great Plains. They are a popular and enigmatic site type, with the great majority of them located in Alberta, Canada. Forgotten for decades after Euro-Canadian settlement, a number of sites are being revisited and used by members of the Blackfoot Nation. The sites continue to hold powerful spiritual significance. A few medicine wheels were excavated in the 19th century and artifacts were collected. Now some Blackfoot want these artifacts returned and reburied at the original sites. This prospect, however, is not universally agreed upon, with other Elders supporting retaining the artifacts for future generations. The issue is especially important in that it is unlikely that other medicine wheels will ever be excavated. This paper examines these issues and discusses prospects for future directions and solutions that may satisfy concerns over cultural patrimony from both Indigenous and scientific perspectives.


4.20 am. Daniel Chartier (Université du Québec à Montréal). The urgency of a library/documentation and archives centre for Nunavik

The objective of this paper is to describe the challenges of establishing, in a society of the 21st century and in the context of the Inuit of Nunavik, a library / documentation and archives centre that can meet the needs of access to knowledge, a reflexion on heritage and the preservation of archives. The Inuit oral and material heritage has been the subject of several studies, including those by ethnologists, linguists and anthropologists, which allowed a form of attention which partially ensures its preservation. The latter was mainly the result of institutions external to the Inuit, although it was partly entrusted to Inuit organizations (eg for Nunavik, the Avataq Cultural Institute) in places of conservation that are rarely situated on the Inuit territory itself. However, the Inuit written heritage (documentary, artistic or literary) was not given, until now, the same attention. For example, there is yet no comprehensive inventory of texts and documents published by and on this territory in the cultural field, a bibliographic inventory that could become the equivalent of a virtual national library. In addition, there is no facility on site which could play the institutional contemporary role that considers as a whole in one single place: a public library, a preservation library and an archives centre for document conservation. The urgency of such a place is evident at all levels: a growing young population that need universal access to knowledge, a culture in transition that must take into account its written heritage and a society which may lose in the short term the founding documents of its institutions.






Museums and Interpretation Centers

Monday 12th2012



10.25 am. Louis Gagnon (Avataq Cultural Institute). Museums in Nunavik: challenges for the Inuit communities in a time of identity crisis.


10.50 am. Mathieu Viau-Courville (Musée de la Civilisation de Québec). Museum Practice and the Participative Approach: a view from the Musée de la civilisation, Québec

In recent years, indigenous peoples have engaged in a variety of movements seeking to secure the recognition of their rights. Empowerment in the preservation and presentation of their heritage has been front and centre in many parts of the world. Such developments have presented various sets of challenges for museums forcing them to (re)define their institutional cultural mission and policy in regards to marginalized communities. Drawing from the experience of the Musée de la civilisation, the presentation addresses the challenges that museums face in representing indigenous peoples and cultures, and how can museums preserve and promote their institutional mission statement and objectives whilst equally value and emphasise the voices of their partners. The paper examines the anatomy of the renewal of the Musée’s permanent exhibition Encounter with the First Nations, set to reopen in fall 2013. In particular, I reflect on the challenges and future venues for how existing knowledge – viewed as intangible heritage – is shared and interpreted in the museum participative approach context.


11.15 am. Michelle Bélanger (Musée des Abénakis). The Musée des Abénakis: dealing with the tangible and the intagible for the future of a First Nation people in Québec.

The Musée des Abénakis played a pioneering role as the first Native museum in Quebec. It occupies the former site of the Catholic school of the Abenakis community in Odanak, which is located in the heart of Centre-du-Québec tourist region. Founded in 1965 by missionary Rémi Dolan and elders of Odanak, it was intended as a place of exchange and discovery of the history and culture of the Abenakis Aboriginal Nation.
            In a tangible willingness to reach out others, during some 40 years this community museum gave visitors a labyrinth-like journey through the objects of the collection crammed in all the rooms. The Museum was also an important gathering place for all the Abenakis of Odanak. An ambitious expansion project began in 2003 in order to meet current museum-related norms and to also provide added community space and exhibition areas. The project did not meet with unanimity in Odanak, as it was deemed much too expensive for a small community of 400 people nested outside of regular tourist tours. As a result, this new infrastructure did not reach its attendance goals, the community neglected such an estranged institution, the precarious financial situation threatened crucial museum-related functions such as research and documentation of the collection.
            The underfunding of culture at both provincial and federal levels, the lack of a formal cultural policy of the Abenakis First Nation, the demobilization of the Abenakis community members and its Abenakis political institutions, all this compelled the Museum to invent an original project. In order to ensure the continuity and the diffusion of the tangible and intangible heritage of one of the eleven Aboriginal Nations of Quebec and Labrador, a community archaeology project was born, The Odanak Fort: Revisiting the Past (Fort d'Odanak: le passé revisité).


3.00 pm. Stephen Loring (Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History). Research, Repatriation, Responsibilities and Respect: museum anthropology and indigenous northern communities as viewed from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

The passage of the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1989 and the National Museum of American Indian Act in 1990 have profoundly transformed the relationship between indigenous communities and museums in the United States. The influence of these landmark human rights legislations have rippled through the academy and radically altered the relationships and assumptions about who owns the past and who should tell what stories about indigenous peoples, their history and communities. At the Smithsonian, the Arctic Studies Center has pioneered an approach to fieldwork, exhibition, and community anthropology that epitomizes these new evolving relationships.


3.25 pm. Dean Whiting (New Zealand Historic Places Trust PouhereTaonga). Issues Confronting Maori Community Guardianship of Cultural Heritage


This paper explores the range of issues that challenge community guardianship of Maori cultural heritage. Form the latter half of the 19th century Maori were considered a dying race, driven to the brink by the ravages of disease, land alienation, and poverty. Most considered that those who remained would fade into the melting pot of the New Zealand population, the vestiges of Maori culture preserved in museums or reconstituted for the curiosity of tourists. Despite this, Maori culture survived tenuously through customary practices, tribal cohesiveness, and the retention of traditional knowledge held by communities through their cultural framework of guardianship. Subsequent generations have faced new challenges that question both their authenticity of existence and the relevance of purpose. This scrutiny is compounded further when multiple rights of guardianship compete. In resolving these issues, a clearer understanding of the cultural heritage relationships, Maori world view perspectives, and the cultural frameworks for valuing and entrustment of guardianship responsibilities, can provide institutions and cultural heritage agencies the policies and strategies to support and assist Maori communities. But ultimately the processes of resitution, recociliation, and self determination provide the strongest basis for ensuring Maori community and its cultural heritage are sustained.


3.50 pm. Douglas Herman (Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian). Indigenous Geography: Documenting and Preserving Place-Based Cultural Heritage

Documenting place-based cultural heritage in Indigenous contexts involves adequately addressing worldviews that are fluid, holistic, and expressed through stories, myths and values. This paper will examine an approach developed by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and the Pacific Worlds project that uses internet resources to present community- and place-focused ethnographic information including maps, graphics, and photography. The Smithsonian's new IndiGEO project will combine this approach with community-based environmental monitoring, to help document the effects of climate change on the transformation of local biodiversity and resource availability, and therefore of cultural practices. How and why should we document such knowledge now? How do we ensure that appropriate protocols are in place for protecting proprietary local knowledge? And how does this project assist in strengthening awareness of place-based cultural heritage, both for the community itself and for outsiders? These are some of the questions this presentation will address.

4.15 pm. Carole Charette (Université du Québec à Montréal m (UQAM)). The future of First Nations peoples’ museums in Canada: three examples from Québec Algonquian-speaking communities.

This presentation discusses the challenges in Quebec that indigenous communities face with regards to museums or other places of preservation and enhancement of their ancestral heritage. Apart from the fact that these institutions must operate with limited financial resources, reduced staff and cope with apathy among community members toward their culture, administrators must also rethink their approach, which does not appear suited to aboriginals past or present reality. This study is conducted at four museums: Ouje-Bougoumou, Wendake, Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam and Mashteuiatsh. These administrators assert a common concern against the onslaught of the dominant culture and patrimonialism which does not match their vision of the world, nor the mode of life of members of their communities for which the objects are "alive" and created with the greatest respect for their relationship with nature, land and essential needs. They are also confronted with the “generational gap”, which exists between the new generation and elders. How can new technologies, aimed at the creation of interactive spaces (video, projection, web, etc.), play a unifying role, favoring an approximation and the enrichment of communities?




Heritage, Museums and Archaeology

Tuesday 13th2012



9.00 am. Yves Bergeron & Vanessa Ferey (CELAT-Université du Québec à Montréal) – The issues of the musealization of collections from aboriginal intangible heritage: positions and involvements of museums for a sustainable development of their knowledge at the hour of global crises.

The growth of museums face of the concept development of modernity in the twentieth century will make of the documentation of museum collections one of the major challenges in the advancement of knowledge. The Modern Man, individualistic and rational, contributes to the description of cultural worlds. The operation of musealization of the material and immaterial cultural witnesses of the world is perfectly enligner in knowledge contribution, that will affect all scientific disciplines. At the turn of the century, museums relativize deeply the heritage of their collections in addition to the work of anthropologists who take early in charge the intangible heritage preservation in their field of archives. Nevertheless, the public presentation of the immateriality of this heritage into exhibition rooms remain a great challenge. The question of the contemporary consideration of the intangible heritage will then be asked more radically in the aim to ensure their protection within museums. In 2003, the Convention for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO was ratified by different states where indigenous cultures are established in their territories. This communication examines how museums are actively engaged with these social minorities. Through their collection policies, what about their involvement in the consideration of these fragile heritage within economic, social, political and ideological crises ? Between globalization and digitalisation in our societies of knowledge, the publics of museums summon the political direction of their institution about indigenous cultures in danger. Presence, choice, identification or use of these Aboriginal museum collections are still debated in the museum space, and different interpretations are discussed. The museum is questioned about the application of its treaty commitments about indigenous cultures that he preserves. Which means deploying these institutions to justify their involvement in intangible heritage protection ? Far they undertake in the sustainable development of knowledge and information of these specific collections ? How aboriginal communities are they invited to contribute in their scientific works ?

9.25 am. Fergus Maclaren (ICOMOS Canada) – Narrowing the tourist perspective: Understanding the impacts of removing aboriginal cultural heritage fabric from display

British sociologist John Urry has outlined the conceptual framework of the "tourist gaze" as the set of expectations that tourists place on local populations when they participate in heritage tourism, in the search for having an “authentic” experience. In response to tourist expectations and prevailing cultural and racial stereotypes, local populations reflect back the “gaze” of the expectations of tourists in order to obtain financial benefit. Consequently, with the increasing interest in aboriginal tourism, the groups involved have witnessed the commodification of their cultures, be it a place and the traditional activities that occurred there, types of crafts or plastic art such as baskets, weaving or jewelry, interpretations of indigenous dance and musical forms. There has, however, been a pushback from aboriginal groups who have been restricting or limiting access to sites, driven the repatriation of artifacts from cultural institutions and museums, encouraging the retrenching of tangible cultural expressions and language, and witnessing the destruction of authentic places and relics. Looking at Canadian aboriginal communities as reference points, this paper reflects on the tensions between the manufactured and authentic attributes of aboriginal culture, and how increasing levels of control may be impacting tourists’ and non-native perceptions of aboriginal cultures, as they are being represented and interpreted, and the consequent potential for distortion and misattribution.

9.50 am. Xavier Roigé (Universitat de Barcelona). What place for ethnological museums in Spain?

This paper aims to reflect upon how the (re)invention of ethnological museums throughout the world entails a series of challenges for academic teaching and anthropological research. These are challenges which not only affect the career prospects of anthropology graduates, but also the theoretical bases and methodologies of the discipline itself. The need for anthropologists to take an interest in their museums is key, both for the consolidation of the museums and for the discipline of anthropology itself.  I will review some key aspects in the evolution of the ethnological and anthropological museums in Spain and will critically analyze current discourses used in the presentation of objects. I will argue that the social and cultural changes that are affecting today's society both at a global level and a national level make necessary a critical review of how colonial objects are presented in Spanish museums


10.15 am. Margarita Diaz-Andreu (ICREA, Universitat de Barcelona). New Challenges for a new century - Contested archaeological heritage in Spain.

This paper will examine the challenges to heritage brought about by the sudden changes in the population experienced in Spain in the last two decades. It will focus on Muslim and Jewish medieval archaeology, as opposed to other types of archaeology that are more attuned to the diverse national discourses competing in Spain. On the one hand, I will assess whether the arrival of Muslim migrants has posed any challenges to Islamic archaeology and heritage and I will enquire how archaeological and heritage practitioners have approached these new sectors of the population. On the other hand, I will analyze how the archaeology of Medieval Jewish Spain has changed over the same period and how archaeologists have reacted to the claims made by Jewish Communities and the commoditization of the country´s Jewish heritage in the form of tourism.




10.40 am. Elizabeth Chilton (Center for Heritage and Society, University of Massachusetts Amherst). Why Does the Past Matter? Towards a Social Science of the Past


In recent years, it has become clear that heritage impacts all aspects of society and how individuals define themselves in the world. In imagining and planning economic and social development, cultural heritage is often viewed as an impediment to “progress” and change, rather than as a pathway to a better future. However, heritage impacts how people understand and accept scientific knowledge, how they respond to and adopt technology and technological change, and their attachments to place and to each other. Given these wide-ranging impacts, public heritage preservation and interpretation are fundamental to the social evolution and development of nations, regions, and communities. There is a great need for a major research agenda that will ask some of the most pressing questions in our increasingly globalized and diasporic world: what do societies choose to remember, what do they choose to forget, and who gets to decide? And more fundamentally, why does the past matter?






 

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