A Community Empowerment Approach to Heritage Management

From Values Assessment to Local Engagement

Evangelos Kyriakidis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429769726
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion

This book presents an innovative approach to public archaeology in a rural community, which has had powerful results in terms of empowering a village community in Crete to become long-term guardians of their cultural heritage.

Highlighting the theoretical and local contexts of the Philioremos Peak Sanctuary Public Archeology Project, this book explores the methodology and the project outcomes, and assesses best practice in the field of public archaeology within a rural community.

As well as expanding the research on Minoan peak sanctuaries, the volume contributes to a greater understanding of how rural communities can be successfully engaged in the management of heritage, and is relevant to archaeologists and other heritage professionals wishing to understand the latest developments in public archaeology.

1
Introducing our approach

Old site, new perspectives

Since 2011, the Philioremos Peak Sanctuary Public Archaeology Project has been managed by our team of archaeologists and ethnographers from the University of Kent, in partnership with the Heritage Management Organization, and together with the community of the mountain village of Gonies in Crete and their Cultural Association. The project was initiated as part of the University of Kent’s ‘Three Peak Sanctuaries’ project to study the archaeological material and the social, economic and geophysical context of three Minoan peak sanctuaries in central northern Crete, in the Malevyzi province of the county of Herakleion. Stemming from our work to clean and conduct secondary excavations at one such peak sanctuary – situated on Philioremos peak – the public archaeology project had the dual aim of informing the research on Minoan peak sanctuaries and of engaging and empowering the local community to become long-term guardians of their heritage, including the Philioremos peak sanctuary site.

Public archaeology and community engagement constitute growing fields of heritage related activity internationally. Several ideas and tools could be therefore adapted to the purposes of our project from existing approaches. However none of the existing approaches was entirely sufficient or appropriate for our aims and, as a result, the approach that we developed has several distinguishing features. This chapter gives a brief introduction to existing approaches to public archaeology, and to the context for such work in Greece, before presenting the key distinguishing characteristics of the approach that we developed. In doing so, the chapter also introduces some of the main themes of subsequent chapters, including the importance of heritage values for public archaeology, our concern with community empowerment in respect to engagement with heritage and how our project was interested in rendering heritage a tool for the flourishing of the local community.

The following chapter, Chapter 2, presents the specific characteristics of the Philioremos peak sanctuary site and the local community of the village of Gonies. Chapter 3 explains more about our understanding of heritage values, while Chapter 4 presents both the methodology and the results of the values assessment conducted for the peak sanctuary site. Chapter 5 describes the methodology and tools used within our ‘community empowerment’ approach to the project, while Chapter 6 presents some of the outcomes of this approach, namely some ways in which the project promoted the protection of the site, became relevant for local interests and became a tool for the local community to achieve their own goals. Finally, Chapter 7 concludes the volume by drawing together some of the lessons learned from the project and their implications for public archaeology and heritage management, including the proposal of a better term to describe the flourishing of heritage than that of sustainability.

Existing approaches to public archaeology

Public archaeology, although often considered a subset of academic archaeology [McDavid (2002), 2], is a potentially larger field than its ‘parent’ [McDavid and McGhee (2010), 468]. It is often based on tenets such as that heritage is not an exclusive prerogative of academics, that local non-academic members of the public can be experts in aspects of heritage that non-local academic experts lack knowledge about, and that the management of archaeological heritage is partly exercised by the public in ways that academic archaeology cannot control. Therefore, public archaeology, broadly defined, refers to ‘any interaction between the public and their archaeological heritage’. Public archaeology is a growing academic field, with academic conferences, scholarly publications and journals, as well as hundreds of projects around the world [Marshall (2002); Moser et al. (2002), 220–248; Tully (2007), 155–187; Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson (2008), 5–6; Byrne (2012), 26–27]. The field has mainly been developed in the Anglo-Saxon world, particularly in North America, Australia and the UK, with a number of pockets of excellence scattered internationally in Scandinavia, Mexico and elsewhere. As a result, most of the ‘good practices’ being promoted are those that have been developed to fit those specific communities and socio-political contexts.

Merriman [(2004), 5–8], Holtorf [(2007), 105–129], McGuire [(2008), 145–146], as well as Okamura and Matsuda [(2011), 5–7], have all attempted to identify different types of approaches to public archaeology. Okamura and Matsuda, synthesizing the findings of the others, note four different trends: the ‘education’ approach, the ‘public-relations’ approach, the ‘multiple-perspective’ approach and the ‘critical approach’ to public archaeology [see also Bonacchi and Moshenska (2015), Figure 1.1].

The education approach aims to inform local communities and to educate them on things they know little about. In many instances, excavation projects will initiate a series of lectures by academic archaeologists to members of the local community, informing them about the archaeological finds of their area, but also satisfying local curiosity about new discoveries or explaining the relevance of those to contemporary finds elsewhere. Although a limitation of the approach is that this didactic type of public archaeology is often based on the tenet that local communities are not themselves keepers of expert knowledge on their heritage, we believe that aspects of the education approach constitute a crucial element of any heritage preservation or management program, as local communities deserve to have access to expert knowledge about their area.

Figure 1.1 A short seminar for the local population on how to source good clay soils in their area, July 2015

Source: Photo: Eleni Stefanou.

The second, public-relations, approach aims to render heritage important and relevant for local communities through various techniques, events and activities. The intention is to protect heritage and enhance its role as a potential source of education, culture and, possibly, sustainable development. For a heritage manager, increasing the importance and relevance of heritage is crucial for its management, protection and promotion. In such programs, experts may employ members of the local community as workers in the excavation and/or even train them [Hume et al. (2011), 15–19; Ricci and Yilmaz (2016), 41], thereby bringing some economic or other benefit to the community and enabling them to share in the excitement of discovering the archaeological finds. The assumption is that such initiatives will encourage the local community to accept and adopt the program, thus promoting its sustainability. Indeed, such programs are often successful in gaining the endorsement of local communities for the duration of the excavations. Some more ambitious public archaeology programs also maintain further engagement with the local community after the excavation phase, usually with the aim of enhancing site visitation and increasing the revenues from tourism [see e.g. Tsaravopoulos and Fragou (2013), 94–108]. It is characteristic of such programs, however, that the archaeologists and experts maintain academic and decision-making control throughout all stages of the project. The main focus and priority is the heritage itself, and the role of the experts as managers of that heritage reflects that focus.

The third, multiple-perspective, approach recognizes the existence of many different groups and stakeholders who have different interests in and different priorities toward the same heritage. Through this approach, the views of the various groups are studied, and ways are found for these multiple perspectives to be voiced. The multiple-perspective approach is partly educational, in that it informs stakeholders about the multiple facets of the same heritage, and in some ways a public-relations approach, in that it helps people understand the views of other groups and the importance of heritage for them. This multiple-perspective approach is in many ways a tool for promoting social harmony and social integration.

Finally, there is a fourth, critical, approach, which asks questions like: ‘whose vision are we trying to establish?’, ‘for whom are we doing public archaeology (or anything, for that matter)?’, ‘why do we do things this way?’ and so on. This approach is very important because it provides space to reflect on practices and to refine and question our methodologies and motives.

Archaeology is closely related to the state both organizationally and ideologically in most countries. It needs state funding for excavations, teaching and research institutions; in return archaeology ‘can provide tangible remains from the past’ [Sommer (2017), 166]. The state authorities, however, are not always happy to include other stakeholders in the protection and management of heritage. Unfortunately, in most public archaeology programs, irrespective of type, non-academic or non-state¹ recognized expert communities or groups are only seen as external, and secondary stakeholders; engagement with them, moreover, tends to be only short-term, for the duration of the archaeological work. Local communities are rarely considered as long-term caretakers whose prosperity is intrinsically linked to the conservation and flourishing of the heritage site. Even in the few cases where a longer-term commitment toward local communities is demonstrated, for example through the building of a local archaeological site museum, the projects still tend to have minimum community engagement. As Orange and Perring highlight, good intentions are not sufficient [(2017), 148–149]. Indeed the ‘ideals of community archaeology programs… often do not match expectations for the practical and perceived benefits for the communities’ [Simpson and Williams (2008), 86], even in countries with a clearly distinct role for such professionals [Aitchison and Rocks-Macqueen (2013), 54, 179].

Archaeology and public engagement in Greece

Archaeology has always been associated with politics and national identity. Although, as archaeologists, we may rarely consider our work in these terms, the discipline has always been closely connected with projects of state building and the construction of national identity [Yalouri (2001); Díaz-Andreu (2007)]. As a result, and often unknowingly, archaeological work frequently plays into these agendas and narratives. In a country like Greece, where the ancient past has played such an important role in the development of the modern state, this phenomenon is further accentuated.

Historically, the importance of the ancient past for modern Greek national identity was often reinforced by European romanticists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who saw Greece in a romantic light, calling the Greeks to revolt [e.g. Hö lderlin (1804)], fighting for their independence (e.g. Thomas Gordon, Lord Byron), depicting atrocities against them, such as Delacroix in 1824–1825 [see Jobert (1998), 127] and even describing the Greek Revolution as the greatest cultural event of the nineteenth century [e.g. Fallmerayer (1835)]. As with the Renaissance, Romanticism also saw in the revival of Greek letters a sense of renewal through a return to its roots [e.g. William Morris (1867) and (1868–1870)]. As a result, the country gained friends around the world through promoting the idea that modern Greece was the heir to antiquity. The Greek state saw itself as the guardian of internationally important ancient heritage, and, in its effort to protect it, made itself the chief manager of archaeological heritage [Ian Morris (1994), 8–47; Hamilakis (2007), 74–85]. As a result, Greece established the first European Archaeological Service in 1833.

The idea of continuity with the ancient past both contributed to and was greatly promoted by the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, which drew on the notion of a new Renaissance in the early nineteenth century. As a result such ideas dominated, with the counterarguments becoming extreme, completely refuting either continuity [Hasluck (1929)] or the origin of the Greeks [Fallmerayer (1835)]. However, the arguments in favor of continuity, which were prevalent in Europe at the time, shaped the beginnings of Greek archaeology as a discipline and the stance of its main patron, the Greek state. Right from the start, the Greek state undertook the protection of Greek archaeology and, together with it, the protection of its narrative. This effort, it was believed, would help to foster the prestige of the Greek state among the important European states and, following the European trends, gave particular emphasis to the heritage of the Classical, Mycenaean and, later, the Minoan periods [see e.g. Hamilakis (2001), 5–12]. Many of the educated elite in the new Greek state had studied abroad in Europe, particularly in Germany, where classical philology and archaeology and, later, Mycenaean prehistory were the main fields of study. With the publication of the Palace of Minos at Knossos (1921–1935) by Evans, Minoan antiquity also came into vogue. This greater interest in particular periods led to specific approaches to conservation and the restoration of antiquities that were congruous with the ideas on national identity [Kotsakis (1991), 65–90; Hamilakis and Yalouri (1996), 117–129; Plantzos (2008), 11–30]. The relevant state authority – the Archaeological Service – became a powerful administrative branch of the government. Moreover, through inertia and lack of regular revision of the curriculum, the exc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword: the climb up the Philioremos peak
• 1 Introducing our approach: old site, new perspectives
• 2 The local context
• 3 Values and the management of heritage
• 4 The values of the Philioremos peak sanctuary site
• 5 A ‘community empowerment’ approach to public archaeology
• 6 The outcomes of the project: community engagement and empowerment in practice
• 7 Conclusions
• Index