In the field of conservation, the terms management and conservation are sometimes used interchangeably to mean all or some of those actions that are taken to ensure the long-term conservation and appropriate use of a cultural site. This may include such steps as documentation policy, significance assessment, physical research and intervention, and visitor management.
In this article, the term management planning is used to mean the overarching framework by which one establishes a series of appropriate steps to preserve a site, including physical conservation. The term physical conservation is used to mean those interventions carried out on the fabric of the site or its environment aimed at lengthening the life of that fabric. The term preservation is used to refer to the desired outcome of the man-agement—the best, most efficient, and most appropriate way of achieving the long-term existence of the site and its cultural value.
The Step-by-Step Approach to Management Planning
Figure 1 shows the steps in a management planning exercise, as carried out in sequence by the participants of the conservation management training course. These are, in brief:
1. Location, identification, and documentation of the archaeological site or sites
2. Assessment of the value or significance of the site to the community or particular sections of the community, bearing in mind that “community” can apply to groups from the international to the local level
3. Assessment of the physical condition of the site
4. Weighing the values of the site with a range of management opportunities and constraints, including its physical condition, available management powers, resources, and experts
5. Arriving at a management policy or management objectives for the future of the site
6. Implementation of appropriate management strategies (including ongoing maintenance) in accordance with the management policy
7. Supervising and checking the proposed strategies and adjusting and altering them as required
In running the course, a number of concepts needed to be conveyed: First, the series of steps is a process with its own logical order; and getting the process right, complete, and in sequence is the real secret of management success. Second, the framework is empty until it is filled by
The managers themselves. That is, there is no magic recipe for management or preservation; rather, it must arise out of the adaptation of the process to local conditions and traditions, including the social, economic, political, and physical environment.
The grotto sites in China are beautiful, ancient, and of great cultural value. They also represent a great variation of fabric condition and management issues. They are often very large. Some of the elaborately carved and/or painted surfaces are still in good condition and are covered by wooden temple facades or other more modern structures. Some are completely exposed; and wind, sand, and water damage have accrued over a long period. Almost two millennia of conservation, restoration, and adaptation make a complex and technically daunting mix of interpretation and conservation problems. Pollution is also a major problem. The sites are often well staffed, but an increasing flow of visitors is causing a range of problems and is forcing the authorities to consider increasingly interventionist site-management techniques. In some areas, traditional religious use is still evident and is growing again. This brings its own set of dilemmas and management issues, especially delicate in the modern secular state.
The value of these sites, and the apparent gravity of many of their problems, seems to call for instant action—a drainage treatment here, a visitor center there, a newly invented scientific technique somewhere else. Yet, unless conservation managers analyze the whole site, and the whole problem, and systematically plan management in a logical way, they can do more harm than good.
In China, as in Australia and the United States, the managers (the participants, in this case) showed an initial tendency to leap to solutions rather than to diagnose and plan—to treat obvious symptoms without first properly analyzing the site and the management situation. There was a feeling that the value of the sites and their problems were well known, and that what was needed from the conservation professional was the latest, most scientific, and preferably the most high-tech solutions. As the training course showed, the initial assumptions of the teaching staff, and those of the participants, were just that; and also that simple, time-honored methods are often as useful, and more relevant, than imported solutions.
The secret of successful management is to develop a plan that suits the long-term needs and abilities of local management and that responds to the multiple values a site may have. Perhaps the best way of illustrating this in the case of the grotto sites is to run through some of the elements of the process, as we worked through it at Datong, and to explain some of the conclusions and outcomes that the participants developed and presented as their application of the management-planning process to local conditions.
World History
