Monica Juneja

Michael Falser

This book investigates what has constituted notions of "archaeological heritage" from colonial times to the present. It includes case studies of sites in South and Southeast Asia with a special focus on Angkor, Cambodia. The contributions, the subjects of which range from architectural and intellectual history to historic preservation and restoration, evaluate historical processes spanning two centuries which saw the imagination and production of "dead archaeological ruins" by often overlooking living local, social, and ritual forms of usage on site. Case studies from computational modelling in archaeology discuss a comparable paradigmatic change from a mere simulation of supposedly dead archaeological building material to an increasing appreciation and scientific incorporation of the knowledge of local stakeholders. This book seeks to bring these different approaches from the humanities and engineering sciences into a trans-disciplinary discussion.

Transcultural Entanglements between Local Social Practices and Global Virtual Realities

'Archaeologizing' Heritage?

This book unravels the formation of the modern concept of cultural heritage by charting its colonial, postcolonial-nationalist and global trajectories. By bringing to light many unresearched dimensions of the twelfth-century Cambodian temple of Angkor Wat during its modern history, the study argues for a conceptual, connected history that unfolded within the transcultural interstices of European and Asian projects. With more than 1,400 black-and-white and colour illustrations of historic photographs, architectural plans and samples of public media, the monograph discusses the multiple lives of Angkor Wat over a 150-year-long period from the 1860s to the 2010s. Volume 1 (Angkor in France) reconceptualises the Orientalist, French-colonial ‘discovery’ of the temple in the nineteenth century and brings to light the manifold strategies at play in its physical representations as plaster cast substitutes in museums and as hybrid pavilions in universal and colonial exhibitions in Marseille and Paris from 1867 to 1937. Volume 2 (Angkor in Cambodia) covers, for the first time in this depth, the various on-site restoration efforts inside the ‘Archaeological Park of Angkor’ from 1907 until 1970, and the temple’s gradual canonisation as a symbol of national identity during Cambodia’s troublesome decolonisation (1953–89), from independence to Khmer Rouge terror and Vietnamese occupation, and, finally, as a global icon of UNESCO World Heritage since 1992 until today.

Michael Falser

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