This book is a general introduction to archaeological site management and museology in Egypt. It was written with the aim to let archaeologists and site managers preserve the archaeological heritage in their care for future generations and present it in a meaningful way to the public. The book is a useful tool for anyone working in the field of heritage management. It is also a direct reflection of the site management and museological training projects that were organized between 2017 and 2020 by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Cairo and the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) for the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities (MoA) and several heritage professionals from Egypt and the Netherlands.

Religious heritage has long been within the scope of academia, but very little research has been conducted on the heritagization of Catholic monasteries. This is remarkable considering the longstanding historical presence and social impact of these institutes that, in recent times, have also become well-visited spiritual centers and much-cherished heritage objects. This book addresses this lacuna. It does so through examining the heritagization process of De Heilige Driehoek (The Holy Triangle), a religious site comprised of three living monasteries in the south of the Netherlands. Ever since the turn of the millennium, the monastic communities living there have increasingly experienced the involvement of heritage groups. In this dynamic, the distinctive religious tradition of the monastics has led to a distinctive heritage perception of the area; one in which the spiritual and historical values of this tradition are recognized. However, as these values are translated into a secular heritage discourse, the question arises how this translation relates to the self-understanding and needs of the monastics. The aim of this book is to conceptualize through a historical lens the evolving and differing ways in which the different parties involved envision the meaning, potential, and nature of the monasteries. This study shows the struggle of heritage groups with creating a compelling narrative for their intended audiences and the often problematic impact this has on religious communities. In doing so, it offers a new perspective on the complicated relationship between religion and heritage

Since the eighteenth century, many if not most ancient and medieval manuscripts or other text-bearing or associated objects have been procured through imperial expropriation or through the antiquities market with little or no evidence of findspot or place of original deposition and with no assurance of legal provenance or authenticity. The consequences of these questionable acquisition practices for scholarship and for our understanding of the past are the focus of much enquiry. Recent high-profile acquisitions (and subsequent returns) of text-bearing objects by prominent private collectors and museums and the appearance on the market of demonstrably modern forgeries have resulted in increased scrutiny of the intellectual and commercial impacts of academic engagement. Scholarly research can abet the antiquities market directly or indirectly through identification, authentication and legitimation of illegally traded text-bearing objects. These harmful complications of well-established academic practice raise important questions about how and even if the academy should engage with ancient texts and text-bearing objects of uncertain provenance. Through a wide-ranging set of case studies, variant scholarship focuses on the methodological, theoretical, and ethical dilemmas facing scholars when working with ancient texts in modern contexts. This book is intended for those interested in the historical practices of research into ancient manuscripts, ethical quandaries in studying unprovenanced textual materials, and the unintended consequences of scholarly interactions with problematic text-bearing objects.

Cities are in a constant process of change and are the theater of interaction among people and their complex, historically multi-layered, culturally diverse living environment. Therefore, various interests, needs, and values affect these dynamics of interaction and urban change, which bring challenges and opportunities for the development of cities. Particularly, when urban development deals with such complex living environment and the management and conservation of both listed and non-listed heritage – as in the case of World Heritage cities – a variety of public and private, and global and local stakeholders are affected by processes of change. Inclusive approaches in the negotiation of these changes that involve all these actors is increasingly advocated for a more sustainable urban development. In the past three decades, the emergence of the so-called living heritage approach promotes the empowerment of those communities, groups, and individuals that keep heritage alive in participating in decision-making over the management of urban developments, and heritage management and conservation that affect them. The preservation of their continuous relationship with their heritage is considered key to fostering the mutual benefit of cities, heritage, and society. While research worldwide offers examples of best practices, the implementation of these approaches still faces many barriers and new challenges. This book aims to explore how (World) Heritage Cities are dealing with the preservation of their living heritage, what is needed for its effective management, what approaches are adopted, and what challenges and opportunities are encountered. Results offer an overview of current practices, which also include some of the first testimonies of their evolution in the time of a global pandemic (COVID-19), that can inform future research and urban strategies.

In the early modern centuries, several European states issued pioneering regulations to protect what they thought of as “heritage” – that is, antiquities, monuments, and paintings considered important for their country’s splendour. These early protocols have had a substantial impact on the development of legal and aesthetic approaches to heritage protection in recent times.In this volume, legislation is explored from both a legal and art-historical perspective in order to understand how cultural, political, and social factors influenced the introduction of the first systems for safeguarding “precious artefacts” in early modern Europe. By comparing concepts and practices developed in different states, the narrative tracks down the origins of legislation for heritage protection, shedding light on the gradual development of new definitions of “antiquity”, “artwork”, and “monument” in the laws issued between the 1400s and 1700s.In the second part, the transcriptions of these regulations are presented together with their English translations: the original texts were in early modern Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, German, and Latin. Such a systematic apparatus offers a robust research instrument to scholars and academics worldwide, also constituting a fascinating read for broader audiences interested in the history of heritage protection.

Ethnographic museums, now often rebranded as collections of ‘world cultures’, appear permanently problematic, even as their contexts and the orientation of their activities change. Across Europe and elsewhere, curators and other museum staff are committed to dialogue and collaboration with the peoples from whom collections were made. But their vast assemblages of artefacts, removed from countries of origin primarily during the colonial period, and assumed, mostly inaccurately, to have been looted, seem always in question.Photo-Museology arises from an art project undertaken over 25 years. From the early 1990s, Mark Adams and Nicholas Thomas together investigated sites of cross-cultural encounter in the Pacific and associated places in Europe, ranging from Captain Cook memorials to ethnographic museums. Some of those museums still exhibited colonial symbols and forms of knowledge, others had attempted to displace such histories, foregrounding more inclusive or progressive stories. Complementing the academic studies in the Pacific Presences series, this book offers what John Berger referred to as ‘another way of telling’. Through photography, it revisits the places collections were made, and the places they ended up in. It is a meditation on presence and absence.

Modern receptions of Graeco-Roman Antiquity are important ideological markers of the ways we envisage our own twenty-first-century societies. An urgent topic of study is: what kinds of narratives – sometimes controversial – about Antiquity do people create for themselves at this moment in time, and for what reasons? This volume aims to showcase a number of illustrative examples, and thus to provide a deeper understanding of twenty-first-century reception of Antiquity.After a general introduction in Part I, the volume focuses on two main fields: controversies referencing ancient and modern literary works; and controversies surrounding heritage ethics. Part II takes literary evidence from the USA to Italy as its starting point: it shows how metaphors about early Christianity find their way into American conservative discourse; how Sparta is evoked in right-wing thinking in the USA, Germany, France and Scandinavia; and how Aeneas plays a role in recent Italian debates on migrations. The last paper discusses the depiction of classicists in modern novels. Part III focuses on heritage ethics and material culture, in first instance taking practices at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden) – on the display of death, queering and orientalism - as case studies. The last paper delves into the history of the Via Belgica to show how antiquity has been weaponised for political aims for many centuries. Together, these papers show that academics should engage with the receptions of antiquity in the recent past and present. If they want their research and museum displays to be part of current reception, they should make their voice heard.

The Caribbean region faces particular environmental challenges as a result of colonial land use, pressures from tourism and globalisation, as well as climate change. No less affected are its heritage resources, which include natural and cultural elements crucial to economic survival and local identity. This research explores the relationship between land, law and heritage in order to better understand the regulatory failures that undermine heritage protection in the English-speaking Caribbean. Using a spatial justice lens to examine the legal framework of eight islands in the Lesser Antilles, the analysis posits that domestic heritage laws are ineffective, because they ignore the relevance of local places or landscapes to the formation of heritage. Relying instead on ideas of land as abstract property rights, heritage is presented as a mere visual embellishment that can deteriorate into an unsightly and costly burden for the landowner or State, rather than the outcome of dynamic and locally unique interactions between people and place. While domestic laws continue to classify heritage as objects, sites and buildings with fixed aesthetic value, international law has adopted a more progressive stance, placing community relationships with landscape at the heart of heritage protection strategies. Empowering communities to contest unsustainable treatment of the landscape can potentially lead to the recognition of the value of landscape integrity to sustainable heritage, and influence change at the national level. Integrating landscape considerations into the legal framework can make law more responsive to the nuances and limits of the local cultural and natural environment. These dynamic landscape processes are also relevant to debates concerning climate change, ecosystem degradation, access to public spaces and environmental human rights. As such, this work should be of interest to legal practitioners in heritage and environmental law, planners, geographers and other academia exploring socio-legal approaches to sustainable development.

Heritage institutions face major changes in the areas of digitisation, narrative, inclusivity, and participation. In this groundbreaking book Wim Hupperetz, an expert in the field of museums, heritage and digital curation, reflects on the challenge of change. How does a museum move from an object or a collection to storytelling, and what is the impact of digitisation on curatorship? How to assess the biography of a collection when you think of museums as a medium of memory? And in striving to achieve a participatory dialogue, what is the difference between collaborating and doing things together?   In six chapters, theory and practice are juxtaposed. Each chapter concludes with practical dos and don’ts. This book is also meant as a tribute to everyone who has contributed to the renovation of the Allard Pierson, the museum and knowledge institute where the collections of the University of Amsterdam are preserved and presented.   Museums, Heritage and Digital Curation is intended for heritage professionals and students who want to gain insight into the debate in a rapidly changing field.