Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Examines cultural heritage management as the universal process by which people use places, objects and traditions from the past to educate, entertain, profit, promote change, maintain status quo, create identities, and build communities and nations. The course presents archaeology as one aspect of cultural heritage management and as an activity governed by national laws and international conventions for protecting and making appropriate use of heritage. Using case studies from Canada and abroad, the course explores stewardship as a fundamental professional ethic in archaeology and other fields engaged in studying, applying, and safeguarding personal, familial, communal, national, and transnational heritage. Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

Cultural heritage management warrants study as the universal process by which people value and employ places, objects, and traditions from the past. We identify, record, assess, and suggest treatments for "vernacular" or communal CHM that is created and sustained (or not) by informal value systems and rules. We contrast this grassroots form of CHM with professional archaeology, museum sciences, and related fields of "authorized" CHM practice governed by formal international, national, and local governmental policies.

Groupwork exercises are based on heritage that is valued by individual students and are intended to highlight the prevalence of heritage and the ways it is cherished, used, and defended—often at considerable cost—by individuals and communities. We survey the policies—statutes, regulations, treaties, court decisions, etc.—that mandate and guide authorized CHM, giving particular attention to how policies affect CHM practice by archaeologists and museum professionals in Canada, the United States, and Indigenous contexts. We examine the consequential and ongoing roles of Indigenous community and government leaders in shaping CHM policy, ethics, and practice. Case studies illustrate how individuals and groups use heritage to create and perpetuate distinctive identities, while governments employ heritage in public education, economic stimulation, and national identity promotion.

SYNC Tues 4:30pm-6:30pm by Zoom. 1 hour of group work will be followed(6:30pm-7:20pm).

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Course completion will enable students to identify, then to think, discuss, and write about the following processes, using specific examples from personal observation:

•  Humans use the past—both as experienced and as imparted to us—to define values, meanings, identities, and actions at social, spatial, and affective scales ranging from personal, local, and proliferating to universal, global, and tragic.
•  Authorized or official CHM (practiced by international, national, and regional governments) is distinct from unofficial or vernacular CHM (practiced by communal, familial interest groups, that is, heritage stewardship).
• Archaeological practice is everywhere influenced by international and national rules and trends, as well as by local cultural values, land use, and economics.
• The four essential steps followed by CHM archaeologists and other heritage professionals around the world: (1) identify, and inventory heritage; (2) record and document heritage; (3) assess and evaluate heritage significance (and threats to heritage); (4) plan and implement treatments to avoid and mitigate threats to heritage, typically through study, interpretation, stabilization, rehabilitation, or restoration.
•  Rapid expansion and diversification in heritage identification, treatment, interpretation, use, and management is creating demands for interdisciplinary CHM expertise in Canada and globally.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING NOTES: