Should there be human intervention in the management of a natural heritage site, or should we let nature run its course? This is a question that can be raised when looking at any heritage site that has either been set up by or changed by human hands. This blogpost will look at the question of integrity of one of the most famous UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the prehistoric Stonehenge monument in Amesbury, England.
Human intervention has impacted nature in positive and negative ways. Lowenthal (2005), an American historian and geographer renowned for his work on heritage, says that development came at a price to the ecology of the earth. However, at the same time nature also affects the creations of human kind such as old buildings and artifacts. This means that nature is affected by human influence and vice versa.
Most of the one million visitors who visit Stonehenge each year believe they are looking at untouched 4,000-year-old remains. For decades the official Stonehenge guidebooks have been full of facts and theories surrounding the world's greatest prehistoric monument. However, what the brochures do not explicitly mention, is the restoring - or rebuilding - of the 4,000 year old stone circle throughout the 20th century. Even recently, from 1881-1964, changes were made to the Stonehenge to reverse the effects of nature and to preserve the monument and the landscape.
The very first documented intervention at Stonehenge happened in 1881 and is described here by Simon Banton. There was a lot of outrage in both local and national press about the intervention. The picture above shows workers on the site in 1901, and more restoration work was carried out in 1919, 1920, 1958, 1959 and 1964. Most of the restorations were focused mainly on straightening stones that were in danger of falling.
In the above pictures, we see the impact of the restorations throughout the 20th century.
The first picture shows the Stonehenge monument in 1877, the second picture was made from a similar angle in 2008. Here you can find many more pictures of restorations as well as information about what kind of adjustments were made to the monument. These human interferences could bring up questions of integrity, as Lowenthal (2005) also mentions. Lowenthal notes the importance of thinking about the combination of nature and human effort as cultural landscapes that are in need to be preserved, requiring the combined expertise of both humanists and earth scientists; however, people tend to understand human interference in cultural heritage, but the same doesn’t go for a natural one.
If we want to examine the ‘heritagescape’ of Stonehenge a little further, we can use the approach of Garden (2006). Garden describes the heritage site by means of a combination of the principles of boundary, cohesion and visibility. The Stonehenge site consists of 2,600 hectares of grass fields that are bounded by the river Avon, two car roads and an invisible field boundary. The roads have been a problem within the heritagescape as it is thought to interfere with the peace and tranquillity of this sensitive heritagescape. The site consists of the Stonehenge monuments aswell as other, less popular smaller monuments, standing in different places at the large site. Combined with a road tunnel that goes right through the middle of the site, we could say that there is a lack of cohesion in shaping the heritagescape. This lack of sense of cohesion can also be found back in the same discussions about the placement of the roads and tunnels in the area and human interference.2 Altogether, the visibility of the Stonehenge is obvious. It is called one of the wonders of the world and has a prominent place on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
These points make Stonehenge an interesting case as it is a popular prehistoric monument of natural elements which could lose all of its cultural integrity when changed by humans of the present. At the same time, the lack of interference of the present people could mean deterioration of its state through natural influences.3
In many cases, the line between what can be considered essential restoration work, and significant rebuilding, is blurry. Where should the line be drawn to reassure the integrity of a heritage without leaving it to be damaged by the elements of nature? We think every World Heritage is unique. Therefore each of them have different factors that have to be taken into consideration when making decisions about the extent of human intervention necessary to maintain the heritage and its cultural and global value.
However, an argument against human intervention at the Stonehenge monument could be that it has become a product of the 20th century heritage industry, making Stonehenge a reminiscent of what it might have looked like thousands of years ago, but is not anymore the creation of primordial people. What do you think about this particular case? Is the revitalization of Stonehenge justified and does it still have the same cultural value as before it was restored?
Written by,
SB, SL, MB
References
Barber, M. (2018, February 20). 100 years of care: early excavations and restoration at Stonehenge.
Opgehaald van English Heritage: https://blog.english-heritage.org.uk/stonehenge-early-excavations-restoration/
Batchelor, D. (1997, January). Mapping the Stonehenge world heritage site. In PROCEEDINGS-BRITISH ACADEMY (Vol. 92, pp. 61-72). OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC.
Emerson, S. (2016, May 26). Stonehenge, Easter Island, Venice: Climate Change Will Destroy Human History. Opgehaald van Motherboard: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xyga3q/stonehenge-easter-island-venice-climate-change-will-destroy-human-history-unesco
Garden, Mary-Catherine E. “The Heritagescape: Looking at Landscapes of the Past.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 12, no. 5 (2006): 394-411.
How They Rebuilt Stonehenge 50 years ago. (2015, December 29). Opgehaald van Indymedia.org: https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/12/330623.html?c=on
Kinsley, A. (2017, January 10). Restorations at Stonehenge. Opgehaald van Silent Earth: https://www.silentearth.org/restorations-at-stonehenge-2/
Lowenthal, D. (2005). Natural and cultural heritage. International Journey of Heritage Studies 11:1, 81-92.
Meskell, L. (2009). Introduction: Cosmopolitan Heritage Ethics. In L. Meskell, Cosmopolitan Archaeologies (pp. 1-24). Duke University Press.
UNESCO. (1886). Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites. Opgehaald van UNESCO: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/373
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