Search

With the alarming rise in intercommunal conflicts worldwide, knowledge regarding post-conflict cultural heritage issues must advance to help formulate effective management systems and policies. Through an Actor-Network Theory-inspired approach, this paper explores the actors’ role in protecting religious heritage sites abandoned by displaced communities. Discourse analysis of relevant literature and empirical data from exhaustive fieldwork documenting and categorising the use-status and preservation state of church sites from Northern Cyprus has revealed multiple networks of human and non-human actors and actants. Through ANT concepts of fact-building and translation, a flat platform has been developed showing the positions and interests of the conflicting parties with a focus on the neglected or underestimated dimensions of heritage protection. This platform allows heritage conservation to be viewed from a broader perspective and, in a sense, helps dilute the conflicting parties’ positions and make their stakes less critical. It also emphasises the importance of compromise solutions, including pragmatically negotiating potential alternative uses and actively integrating the local community with the stakeholder group to protect the heritage of the displaced communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When armed conflicts devastate a country, its architectural heritage suffers. Its recovery is a multifaceted problem. This paper explores the architectural conservation challenges and complexities in conflict-ravaged Syria through in-depth interviews with Syrian heritage officials, practitioners, and experts. Analysis of the interviews and observations in the field has revealed the significant domestic challenges, threats, and weaknesses in the post-conflict recovery of built heritage. Syria shares characteristics with other post-conflict societies, especially the lack of financial and human resources, which are vital for efficient post-conflict conservation planning. However, Syria is also challenged by a diversity of domestic issues relating to the deficiencies in its heritage management and legislation systems. These include, among others, weaknesses in the preservation legislation, lack of archival records/documentation of the pre-destruction state of built heritage, inadequacies of the skilled workforce, and inefficient coordination and collaboration between the stakeholders. The article shows how improving the local heritage management capacity and infrastructure during peacetime is the key to an effective recovery in the aftermath of human or natural catastrophes. Doing so would reduce the uncertainty of depending on global aid and resources, which are scarce and politically complicated to access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to further the discussion that positions archaeological interpretation as a practice entangled between professional ethics and political circumstances. Perhaps the most obvious route for the mobilisation of extant architecture is to recruit it into nationalist discourses. An example of this is the case of the Roman Bath-Gymnasium Complex at Salamis (Cyprus), which can be used to illustrate how nationalism can call forth convenient narratives about material culture. Excavations (1952-1974) revealed the remains of a massive structure, and Vassos Karageorghis, the principal excavator, identified it as a 'Gymnasium'. This paper demonstrates that Karageorghis' hitherto well-accepted interpretation remains largely conjectural due to the absence of hard archaeological evidence. By examining the architectural characteristics of the remains and analysing the published excavation data, the paper explains how the present structure belongs to a bath-gymnasium complex, erected during the Roman period, and is an amalgamation of Roman and Greek culture. The paper revolves around the argument that the Romans' role in negotiating the socio-cultural differences, which ultimately enriched the existing structures, has been systematically downplayed in the architectural narratives for the sake of presenting a homogeneous ethnic-cultural continuity from the Homeric Greek world down to the contemporary Cypriote Greek society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did theWaqf, a widespread Islamic historic institution in the non-Western world which promoted traditional building upkeep and maintenance systems, cope with the emerging architectural conservation understandings of the modern era? How did colonial transfers of knowledge, expertise and political considerations influence these systems? The present study explores these questions by examining the case of the OttomanWaqf(Evkaf) institution in Cyprus. By collecting and analysing archival evidence on conservation projects, initiated during the British colonial period between 1878 and 1960, a model framework of initiation, authorisation and implementation processes of the upkeep of theWaqfmaintained properties has been identified. This framework has been used to show the transitional role of the colonial influence at different stages, which finally led to the dissolution of theWaqfsystem’s sustainable elements, and initiated the emergence of selective architectural conservation practices. By shifting the focus of conservation discourses to look specifically into the background dynamics of the institutional practice, a new argument has been developed. This revealed how heritage conservation practices are negotiated with the existing institutions and how they are transferred and/or transformed at different levels of institutional governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]