Cultural Heritage and the Challenge of Sustainability by Diane Barthel-Bouchier

Author:Diane Barthel-Bouchier [Barthel-Bouchier, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Archaeology, Criminology
ISBN: 9781315431031
Google: kdFmDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-06-16T03:23:13+00:00

ANTARCTICA

Heritage conservation in Antarctica presents a somewhat different situation, insofar as it is more focused on the survival of historic sites important to the collective memory of different nations.61 There is growing awareness, and not just within the global heritage community, that the tangible remnants of what has become known as the “heroic age of Antarctic exploration” are suffering from a range of climate-provoked problems. In 2004 the WMF placed Shackleton’s Hut on Ross Island on its Watch List following its nomination by the Antarctic Heritage Trust, an INGO based in New Zealand with close ties to a British organization of the same name. The site was again included in the 2006 and 2008 Watch Lists, but with the addition of Scott’s Hut on Cape Evans, the Northern Party base, and the Carsten Borchgrevnik station on Cape Adare.62

Although the threats to each site form a unique mix, a common problem is increased precipitation, resulting in heavy mechanical loading due to snow followed by massive melting that invades structures that were meant to last only a few years. Other causes of deterioration include fierce winds and erosion, biological decay, decay due to salt spray, and fluctuations in temperature and relative humidity. In addition, Cape Adare hosts the world’s largest breeding colony of Adélie penguins. Some 500,000 nesting pairs fully occupy the shingle beach in front of the two huts from October to February every year. They also have, over the years, deposited an impressive amount of guano that makes excavation of buried artifacts impossible and generally provides another difficulty in an already difficult conservation assignment.63

Collectively, the huts have stirred the public imagination, and tourism to the South Pole is on the rise. This is not only because of the heroic narrative attached to the sites but also because of the touching manner in which everyday artifacts of the explorers’ lives have been preserved: their tins of food and enamel plates, their newspapers spread open on the table. As actor Kenneth Branagh says, in a quotation featured on the Antarctic Heritage Trust website, “The bases constitute an immensely rich and powerful legacy. They should be preserved to inspire future generations to show such qualities so we can encourage people to deal with the challenges of the coming century.” Or, as Sir Simon Jenkins, Chairman of Britain’s National Trust, felt moved to remark, “I visited the huts … and consider them the most evocative historic buildings in the world. No other continent retains the physical evidence of man’s first attempt at settlement, and of his eviction by Mother Nature.”64

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