PATH · Pathways to Heritage: Community heritage and the archaeology of movement in the Adelphi Forest, Cyprus
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2016-09-01 → 2018-10-01
- EU contribution
- €183,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Pathways to Heritage: Community heritage and the archaeology of movement in the Adelphi Forest, Cyprus
PATH is an exploration of heritage – how it is formed, reformed and negotiated. It looks at heritage as a process – the meaning that humans bring to the recent and distant past. It goes beyond material culture to look at the practices and activities that connect us to our landscapes and to each other. It is this heritage ‘work’ that forms the foundations of PATH. Until now, on the island of Cyprus heritage has been a field for academics and ‘heritage professionals’ who hold the control to say what is, and is not important. PATH breaks free of this mould. Through engaging communities in the question ‘what is important to you?’ it acknowledges contemporary connections - ‘unofficial’ heritage - that people have to the past and fosters a renewed sense of pride and confidence in their communities. Involving community members in the research process from the formulation of research questions, through to data collection and processing, acknowledges and reaffirms their connections to the distant and recent past. PATH creates a new process for engaging Cypriot communities in discussions around heritage thus adding to the debate concerning how ‘unofficial’ and ‘official’ heritage narratives intersect and articulate on the island. On a broader scale, results may be applicable to other countries whose rural communities face similar challenges such as depopulation and economic insecurity. PATH has five research objectives: To investigate the social and cultural processes involved in making heritage in rural Cyprus To merge archaeological, ethnographic and participant-based methods and resultant datasets to address the relationship between human interaction and the formation of heritage values To examine how local heritage values articulate with wider national and European heritage narratives To develop strategies for initiating knowledge transfer between archaeological projects and local communities, thus making archaeology relevant to contemporary society To lay the foundations for future community-based participatory research in Cyprus
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
PATH is an exploration of heritage, viewed as an active process where the past is remade in the present. Even in the 21st century, archaeological projects impose research questions and methods onto rural landscapes while offering little to those communities who inhabit them. These communities, however, have their own interests, histories and needs, particularly when they face economic and social pressures like depopulation and a changing resource base. As in many such rural communities, the voices of the inhabitants of Nikitari, on the edge of the Adelphi State Forest in Cyprus, are absent from the national heritage, in spite of a nearby World Heritage site and a recent major archaeological project in the area. Why? PATH seeks to answer this question through focusing on the archaeology and heritage of Nikitari’s pathways. PATH builds on the Fellow’s research with indigenous communities in British Columbia, Canada, that used community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods to document the heritage value of a 19th century wagon road. This was part of a larger community initiative to reconnect people to their land and identity. PATH’s innovation lies in its ability to transfer and adapt these methods to a new Mediterranean context to ask: what are the dynamics of heritage formation in Cyprus? Can giving voice to local heritage empower community members? PATH’s legacy will extend to other rural settlements in Cyprus and Europe facing challenges of depopulation and under-development. The Fellow will bring to the host organization a unique combination of extensive archaeological fieldwork experience in Cyprus and community-based research with a First Nations group in Canada. One of the greatest benefits of this fellowship will be mobilizing this expertise to develop a world-class knowledge base and advanced techniques for designing and facilitating CBPR projects on local heritage that can be applied across Europe.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW · GlasgowCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union