Trench One 5: From landscape to Netscape
Trench One 6: Written in stone
Trench One 7: Save our heritage
Trench One 8: Game on
Trench One 9: Time Team on the web
Trench One 10: The great Barbie hoax
Trench One 11: Studying archaeology on the web
Trench One 12: Magical history tour: schools resources on the web

Save our heritage

From Trench One 7

When, last year, the government of Peru announced plans for a new cable car and hotel development threatening the ancient Inca site of Machu Picchu, an important part in mobilising opposition worldwide was played by a website set up by opponents of the scheme. The website (www.mpicchu.org/), regularly updated and published in both Spanish and English, combines the twin roles of providing information about the threat (maps of the proposed development, ‘before and after’ illustrations, detailed articles about its impact and so on) and getting people involved in the campaign against it.

Despite a UNESCO Special Mission report opposing any development at Machu Picchu until proper research has been done into its ramifications, the Peruvian government has not yet bowed to international and domestic pressure. So the website is still coordinating the international campaign against this and other development proposals in the area. The latest of these involves the construction of a new national highway through the old Inca settlement of Ollayantambo. The road would involve the destruction of more than 100 Inca terraces and an incalculable increase in heavy vehicles and other traffic throughout the 'Sacred Valley' leading to Machu Picchu.

The campaign against this scheme now also has its own website (www.cuscoperu.com/save_ollanta/index.html). Inspired by the success of using the internet to draw attention to the threat to Machu Picchu, the mayor and deputy mayor of Ollayantambo have posted an appeal for support from the international community 'in the hope of avoiding the destruction of the integrity of the archaeological monument and historic human settlement of Ollantaytambo'.

The Peruvian campaigns provide an example of how a diverse and geographically dispersed group of people can be brought together via the internet to act in defence of our common archaeological heritage. There is certainly no shortage of endangered sites.

At the World Monuments Watch website (www.worldmonuments.org/html/main.htm), you can peruse the full list of the World Monuments Fund's '100 most endangered' heritage sites. It is a chastening list of both well-known and little-publicised locations, ranging from UNESCO-designated World Heritage Sites, such as Machu Picchu and the Valley of the Kings, in Egypt, to less famous sites, such as that of the giraffe rock art in north Niger. In Britain, the inclusion of the Abbey Farmstead at Faversham, Kent, and the church and monastery of St Francis, in Gorton, Manchester, raised some tabloid eyebrows when first they were announced. But few people browsing the reports and links provided for each monument here would be left in any doubt about the importance of preserving these endangered sites.

Take, for example, the giraffe rock art of Niger. The World Monuments Watch website describes it thus: 'About 9,000 years ago, a spectacular life-size scene of two giraffes was deeply sculpted into the inclined, skyward facing surface of a rocky outcrop in the barren wilderness of the Niger Sahara. Every marking on the animals' hides is articulated and the proportions are exacting. The style of engraving is similar to a known style of Saharan art, the "Early Hunter" style or period, dating to roughly 10,000–5,000 BC. The site, previously known only to a handful of indigenous Tuareg and a few European travellers, was fully documented by rock art specialists in 1997 and has since been widely published. Although it is vital that the world knows about this rock carving, it is of equal concern that the work remains protected from visitors, at least until an enforceable tourist management plan is established (the exact location is not listed here for this reason). A single visit by an unsupervised group of tourists could damage it irreparably.'

The Trust for African Rock Art (TARA), which counts Mary Leakey and Sir Laurens van der Post among its founding patrons, has 20 of David Coulson’s specially commissioned photographs of the giraffe rock art on its website (www.tara.org.uk/Homepage.htm). Each one is worth the proverbial thousand words in promoting the Trust's aim ‘to create an international awareness of the antiquity, splendour and artistic eminence of this art and of its endangered situation’. The photos are stunning, in both their overall impact and their fine detail.

The World Monuments Watch website provides links to TARA and many other related sites worldwide. It is particularly good if you are looking for detailed archaeological information about specific sites. From there, for example, I discovered the Pompeii Forum Project (jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pompeii/). Its website presents 'work in progress' on the first systematic documentation of the architecture and decoration of the Pompeii forum and what it tells us about Pompeii’s urban history. It also has a photo archive, image maps and detailed reports on the high-tech surveying and other techniques used in the project.

World Monuments Watch also pointed me in the direction of the Theban Mapping Project (www.kv5.com/intro.html). For the past 15 years, the project, now based at the American University in Cairo, has been preparing a comprehensive archaeological database of Thebes. It has used the most modern surveying techniques – which in some tombs required more than 3,000 separate measurements to be taken. The result is that you can now explore the main ancient sites of Thebes, including many of the 62 tombs in the Valley of the Kings, accessing a level of information and detail that would once only have been available to the specialist. The website also has a question and answer section on ancient Egypt, a bibliography, timelines, photos, site maps and QuickTime Virtual Reality movies.

A full list of UNESCO’s designated World Heritage Sites, an alarmingly large proportion of which seem to be endangered in some way by tourism, development or other threats, is available at www.unesco.org/whc/heritage.htm. The World Heritage List comprises 630 sites altogether, 480 of them cultural, 128 natural and 22 mixed – including Machu Picchu, whose rare but fragile ecology is also threatened by the cable car plan. With details provided for each site, together with links to various 'partner organisations', the World Heritage List is bound to inspire even the most seasoned traveller to want to travel more. At least in visiting some of these monuments on the web, it doesn’t add to the tourist and other pressures that are doing so much to endanger them.