World Heritage 2016

The channels that criss-cross the Australian gold workings belong to a long tradition of water control that has taxed human ingenuity since the first irrigation canals were dug in the dusty plains of Mesopotamia some 7000 years ago. The challenges became all too apparent as canals became ever longer. Precious irrigation water was lost through evaporation before it ever reached its destination, and, as early as the third millennium BC, Sumerian cuneiform texts were decrying the problems of salination as evapotranspiration left salt deposits in irrigated fields exposed to the hot Near Eastern sun. A clever, if laborious, solution was the qanat. These gravity-driven canals, developed in Iran in the early first millennium BC, carried water underground, sometimes for several kilometres, minimising loss through evaporation en route. They are one of the latest additions to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The new additions are characteristically diverse: the medieval city of Ani in eastern Turkey, with its impressive towered wall and splendid Armenian churches; the monastic remains of Nalanda Mahavira in north-eastern India; the eighteenth-century British naval dockyards in Antigua; the Antequera megalithic tombs in southern Spain; and the basalt and coral ruins of Nan Madol in Micronesia, to name but a few. Also included is the Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape in south-west China, which was featured in our June 2015 issue. Indeed, China (land area 9.6 million km², population 1.4 billion) now has no fewer than 50 World Heritage Sites on the UNESCO list, but still lies in second place behind Italy (0.3 million km², population 60 million) with 51 WHS. Global heritage of ‘outstanding universal value’ remains an uneven concept.

An anniversary year

The year 2016 has been marked by a number of significant centenaries. April, for example, saw the four-hundredth anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. That coincided with excavations by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) at the site of the Curtain, the Tudor playhouse north of the Thames that premiered several of Shakespeare's most famous plays (including Romeo and Juliet and Henry V) in the 1590s. These excavations follow the discovery and excavation of the Rose Theatre in 1989, and of a small portion of the more famous Globe later the same year. The Rose hit the headlines not only through its Shakespearian connections, but also due to the controversy attending its excavation and preservation (see Wainwright 1989Footnote ¹ ). Development was stopped for several weeks while a solution was agreed. Fortunately, the bulk of what survived was eventually preserved beneath the modern office block that now covers the site, and it can be visited today.

Excavation of the Curtain, a Tudor playhouse in London, where many of Shakespeare's most well-known works were performed in the 1590s. © MOLA.

As MOLA archaeologist Sarah Trehy reminds us, the Curtain (along with the Globe and the Rose), is, properly speaking, a ‘playhouse’, rather than a ‘theatre’ because the central space was left open to the elements. But the Curtain differs from the others in one significant respect. The ground plan reveals its origins in the inn yards where players previously used to perform; to general surprise, it has turned out to be a rectangular structure, rather than the polygonal shape familiar from the Rose and the Globe. As with the latter, however, it had a central unroofed space surrounded by tiered galleries for the wealthier playgoers. With some walls surviving up to 1.5m in height, it is gratifying to know that (echoing the Rose before it) the remains will be preserved and accessible to visitors once the development is completed.

Another centenary this year recalls the purchase by the British Museum of the Parthenon sculptures known as the Elgin Marbles. The story is well known (St Clair 1998Footnote ² ). Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, secured a firman in 1801 permitting him to draw and model the sculptures, and to take away anything that did not interfere with the Turkish fortifications on the Acropolis. That firman became the basis for the removal of the Parthenon frieze and its shipment back to Britain. In June 1816, the sculptures were purchased by the British government and transferred shortly afterwards to the British Museum, where they have remained since. There was controversy about their initial acquisition, and that has scarcely abated in later years when the question of restitution—of returning the sculptures to Athens—has repeatedly been raised and debated. The Marbles were purchased by a special Act of Parliament. Recently, a new Act of Parliament has been proposed to reverse that earlier decision. There are a number of strands to the argument—that all of the Parthenon sculptures should be seen together (half of them remain in Greece), that they were illegally removed, that Greece was under foreign occupation at the time, that Elgin had no authority to dismantle a standing structure. Those opposed to their return worry that it risks opening the floodgates, or that the marbles rightfully have a key place in a museum of world culture. Inevitably, the ethics become confounded with the politics. To whom would we be restoring the sculptures? To the Greek state? To the Greek people? To the city of Athens? Or simply to the building from which they were removed? There are deeply (and honestly) held views on both sides, but opinion polls suggest that the majority of British public opinion favours restitution, if it could be amicably achieved.

Brexit and archaeology

This editorial opened with the image of Britain separated from the European mainland as Doggerland was flooded by rising sea-levels. That image has a special resonance in the current post-Brexit environment, where once again the cultural, economic, political and social ties between the UK and the rest of Europe have come under the spotlight.

There is widespread alarm in university circles that Brexit will be damaging for all parties, with reduced access to EU research funds, reduced mobility of researchers moving in both directions and a reduction in British-European research collaborations. UK archaeologists have been major beneficiaries of EU funding. The European Research Council has supported field and laboratory projects covering a diversity of themes including Star Carr, the Maltese temples, Bronze Age mobility, Saharan statehood and trade, and the African origins of the Acheulean. Furthermore, UK archaeology departments (as with those of other disciplines) have been enriched by a welcome proportion of non-UK academic staff (including from the EU) who bring international perspectives to teaching and research, and who help to keep our horizons broad.

It remains to be seen what the long-term post-Brexit arrangements will be, and most important at this stage is to do what we can to ensure that archaeology is not lost to view in the negotiations. Given the scale of the challenges ahead, however, we cannot expect to have a prominent voice. The general consensus among UK archaeologists is that Brexit will be harmful to our subject, both domestically and overseas. It is up to those of us who have spent decades working with European partners to send a very clear message that we will do our best to maintain and expand such collaborations into the future.