Sustainable
approaches in archeology: the Ness of Brodgar experience, a point of view from
the trenches.
by Marta Laureanti
Introduction
“We must become atheists of economy , which it means do not consider as unquestionable the
evidence that the unlimited growth is a good thing and that the production of
material goods is more important than the political organization and family
happiness “(my own translation from Latouche, 2011 :53).
As Latouche pointed, a sustainable approach should be orientated to improve our way of life.
In his
opinion this improving should be carried out by a decreasing of economic growth, relocating the local communities in their own dimension and improving their
resilience. Some projects seem to promote this idea: the Transition Town in Ireland ( Transiction town 2011), the association Comuni Virtuosi in Italy (Comuni
Virtuosi 2011) or Terra Madre organization (Terra Madre 2011), just to
quote some examples.
A sustainable
perspective should be fully engaged with
the heritage, balancing the needs of conservation, access,
interests of the local community and sustainable economic development (HS 2008; Smith 2004;Sørensen & Carman 2009; Merriman 2004
Hunter, & Ralston,2001) and integrating many components of a landscape in a
complex system as well as it was underlined by the European Landscape
Convention ( European Landscape
Convention). I would like to reflect on the engagement between local communities, people and academic
research and I will consider the Ness of Brodgar site (Orkney) in which I was involved as
student during the 2011 season.
The Heart of Neolithic
Orkney: Ness of Brodgar.
As part of our course at the Orkney college, Master students and volunteers were involved in digging at the Ness of Brodgar.
The site is part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney that comprises also: the Stones of Stenness,
the Watch Stone,the Ring of Brodgar, Maeshowe, Skara Brae. The Heart of
Neolithic Orkney was inscribed on the World Heritage List on 2 December 1999
(HS 2008:15).
It was interesting for me understand what were the aims of the
management plan of the WHS 2008-11(Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage
Site) and try to make comparisons with the real approach on the site.
My
perspective took advantage from a long period of observations, cause I spent my
weeks digging inside structure One (fig. 1), at the north west corner of the site,
during the entire campaign.
 |
| Fig.1 Structure one, 2011, Ness of Brodgar, Orkney. |
The main aim
of the management plan of WHS was
the need to develop an holistic approach
to the Orcadian heritage on the basis of cultural pluralism and diversity, involving a large number of stakeholders (HS
2008). Some of the aims of 2001
Management Plan were to increase
people’s recognition, understanding and employment of the site and understanding and employment of Orkney and the rest of Scotland’s past, ensuring that policies relating to visitors to
the site emphasize quality tourism and encourage longer stays and higher
spending in Orkney (HS 2008:37,38; Card, Downes,
Gibson, Ovenden 2007). Tours around the site were organized daily. One person of the ORCA staff, or one Historic Scotland ranger, led the groups through the site, explaining the main features of
every structure and giving interpretations of the relationships among them.
As
master students we had the opportunity to take part to these tour.
The first thing that I could see it was the heterogeneous group
of visitors that stayed in front of us. Most part of them were English, from
different regions of UK but I could meet also an old and kind madam from
Australia.
One of the most important step during the tour it was contextualizing
the site in the landscape. As well I could better understand later, this point
had its correspondence in the management plan, in which the
aim 2 (HS 2008:31) refers to the need of presentation of the site as a whole, as part of an
integrated landscape.
The explanation involved also the way in which we were leading the dig: tecniques,
aims and objectives and also a visit to the finds hut and a large view of the
site from an high platform. I was really astonished from the amount of different questions that came from the public, after and during the tour. During the campaign an open day and activities with young people and children were also organized (fig.2,3).
 |
Fig.3 Tour in
action.
|
Another important aspect of the strategy of participation and communication toward the
community it was the use of a blog and local newspaper to inform the people about the progress at the dig. As I could note also these elements reinforced the engagement
of the community with their heritage.
The perception of their monuments among
the Orcadians is associated to their
individual experience of living on the islands, and represent a symbol of belonging ( HS 2008:18). My
personal experience at the Ness of Brodgar made me clear the value and the importance of a sustainable approach in archaeology to try to relocate the heritage in archaeology (Carman
2002; Carman 2005).
ML
REFERENCES
R. Bradley (1997) Rock
Art and the Prehistory of the Atlantic Europe, Signing the land,
Routledge: NY
Card N., Downes J,
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‘The Heart of Neolithic Orkney’ World Heritage Site in World Archaeology Vol. 39(3): 417–435.
Carman, J (2002) Archaeology
& Heritage, London:Continuum.
Carman,J.(2005) Against
cultural property, London.
Historic Scotland (2008) Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage
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Hunter,J. &
Ralston,I.(2001) Archaeological resource
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K.,(2011)
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