Conference Report: Tangible- Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Sustainable Dichotomy? the 7th Annual Cambridge Heritage Seminar

Nearly a decade ago the Cambridge Heritage Seminars (CHS) began meeting at Cambridge University, creating a forum for discussing ideas, questions, and case studies arising from working with, or studying, cultural heritage, itself a nascent field. From their start the Seminars proved to be fruitful venues for conversation, and through the events themselves and their subsequent publications, have garnered a great deal of interest and comment over many different disciplines. With the ripening of the discipline of heritage studies (as it has come to be termed) since that time, the remit of the CHS has likewise expanded to include collaboration with academics, policy-makers, and practitioners, with the intent of a mutual enriching of theory and practice amongst these sub-sets of researchers. The 2006 Cambridge Heritage Seminar, held at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research on 13 May 2006, sought to better understand the rapidly evolving concepts of tangible and intangible cultural heritage (sometimes referred to as ‘material’ and ‘immaterial’). Both the structure of the programme and the diverse make-up of the participants continued the CHS tradition of open discussion and interdisciplinary learning. The impetus for the May 2006 conference was the impending ratification of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (here referred to as the 2003 Convention), which came into force the month before the conference, in April 2006. Given the developments in the field that this convention represented, and the debates over the interpretation and implementation that would surely ensue, it was timely to lend it a critical eye. Discussion of the 2003 Convention did figure prominently during the course of the day, but its presence did not prevent a range of other issues from surfacing in the numerous papers, posters, and conversations that took place. Participants spoke eloquently on the perceived dichotomy between tangible and intangible cultural heritage, both praising and questioning its usefulness for theory and practice. To extend the discussion to the wider community in heritage studies, this report contains a synopsis of the conference (divided into three parts), a critical discussion of the issues it raised, and some avenues for future research.