Abstract. Technology to document and investigate cultural heritage sites is rapidly advancing – multispectral and high dynamic range imaging, spherical high resolution photography, three-dimensional laser scanning and unmanned aerial vehicles are only a few of the new technologies available to heritage conservation professionals to record monuments, buildings, city centres and landscapes. These advanced tools are giving architects, engineers and conservation professionals’ new insights and additional information which helps to make better informed decisions. But this technology and the knowledge about its correct use are extremely unevenly distributed across the world. The Digital Divide is present and growing in the field of cultural heritage preservation (Letellier, 2001). Many of those responsible for the management, maintenance and care of some of the world's most significant cultural heritage sites do not have access to or information about the latest technologies. They are also confronted with an overwhelming assortment of new technologies and consultants or developers that promote them and therefore must allocate their limited budgets with limited information. What is to be done about bridging this gap? Obviously cost and accessibility are issues. However one of the most important challenges to be addressed is education. As the base knowledge of these technologies is very uneven this leads to further questions: Are there strategies or methodologies for teaching this technology? How to combine and balance different professional backgrounds from different and so unevenly distributed places around the world and provide them all with useful information to make good documentation and conservation decisions? This paper will describe the methodology developed over the last ten years in teaching documentation technologies to diverse groups of cultural heritage professionals and students from Côte d'Ivoire, Germany, Belgium, Kosovo, Albania, Nigeria, Egypt, Japan, Iraq, Jordan, Argentina, United Arab Emirates, United States of America and around 20 other countries. These strategies deal with establishing methodologies and guiding principles for the selection of technologies, highlighting successful illustrated examples, levelling uneven educational bases and gaining access to expertise. The authors have developed these strategies and techniques to appeal, engage and succeed with such diverse groups – to encourage the participants to cooperate on a common goal and overcome specific challenges while embracing the technology and thinking critically about its appropriate application for the conservation of cultural heritage in their home countries. Other strategies include setting norms that respect the various cultures and differing levels of technology education, offering voluntary sessions for more advanced and ambitious participants, finding and then adopting natural leaders as co-instructors and offering a mix of sessions including standard lectures combined with field and laboratory exercises and distance learning. This methodology and strategies have proven to be successful as the participants have provided positive evaluations months and/or years after the courses, implemented their own courses using the materials and methods and have established a strong, sustainable network related to this topic.
ABSTRACT:Recent dramatic events have brought to the forefront the debate on how to protect, safeguard and document Cultural Heritage in conflict areas. Heritage places have become battlefields, sources of illicit trafficking and even deliberate targets of destruction because of the politicisation to further conflict ideologies as well as misinterpretation of the values they represent. Is it possible to protect Cultural Heritage under such circumstances? If yes, when is the right time to intervene and who can help in this task? How can documentation and training assist?The International Course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis promoted by ICCROM (The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) in collaboration with various partners focuses specifically on ways to help in such difficult and stressful situations. This paper explores the methodological approach and highlights the special circumstances that surround rapid documentation and preliminary condition assessment in conflict areas, and in cases of complex emergencies such as an earthquake striking a conflict area. The paper identifies international actors that might play a special and crucial role in the first steps of such a situation and recognizes the need for training activities to strengthen capacities for disaster response to cultural heritage at national and regional levels.
Abstract:A conservation process usually generates new knowledge and an enormous amount of documentation during the inception and implementation of the project: the information collected from archives and other institutions; the information provided by the preliminary studies carried out prior to the intervention; the data provided in the field during the works and at the end of the process; and the final set of documentation delivered to the institution responsible for the maintenance and management of the monument. The challenge for conservation professionals and cultural heritage managers throughout this process once the works are over is to achieve and transmit this information to the public and specialists in order to raise awareness for better conservation of our built heritage. During the last few years, one of the actions that the Caja Madrid Foundation has activated with its restoration projects has been the opening of permanent on site museums or "Salas de Fábrica", a place on site to understand the restoration works, to exhibit the remains that have being retrieved during the project and to permit the public to better understand the historical and artistic values of architectural and archaeological heritage as well as the importance of preserving our cultural legacy for the future.
Session E4 -Integration, conservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage KEY WORDS: Virtual Archaeology, reconstruction hypothesis, 3D model, interpretation, public awareness, restoration project, interdisciplinarity ABSTRACT:The Toledo Gate of Ciudad Real, Spain, constructed between the late 13 th and early 14 th centuries, is the last remaining portion of a once complete medieval city wall. It represents the long history of the city and constitutes its main heritage symbol, dividing the historic city centre from the later 19 th and 20 th century expansions. In October 2012, the Town Hall and the Montemadrid Foundation started the conservation works to preserve this important monument. The preliminary phase of this project included an in-depth series of scientific studies which were carried out by a multidisciplinary team focusing on archival research, historic investigations, archaeological excavations as well as material composition analysis and main treatment application tests. As a result of these studies a series of virtual 3D models were created to inform, discuss and study the monument. A first digital model permitted visualization of the gate in the 19th century and how the main entrance to the city was integrated as a fundamental part of the city walls. This virtual reconstruction also became an important part of the campaign to raise awareness among the citizens towards a monument that had remained in the shadows for the last century, isolated in a roundabout after the systematic demolition of the city walls in the late 19 th century.Over the last three years and as a result of these archaeological and historic investigations and subsequent virtual models, surprisingly new and interesting data were brought to light thus permitting the establishment and corroboration of a new and updated hypothesis of the Toledo Gate that goes beyond the previous ideas. As a result of these studies a new architectural typology with construction techniques of has been suggested. This paper describes how the results of this continuous and interdisciplinary documentation process have benefitted from a computer graphic reconstruction of the gate. It highlights how virtual reconstruction can be a powerful tool for conservation decision making and awareness raising. Furthermore, the interesting results of the final reconstruction hypothesis convinced the technical team responsible for the conservation to alter some aspects of the final project physical interventions in order to focus on some of the features and conclusions discovered through the virtual model study.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.