The Top Stratum: Heritage Conservation and Host Communities in Jordan
Dr. Erin Addison
Cultural Heritage Resources (CHR) Projects Lead for the USAID-SCHEP Project
Wednesday 13 May 2015 at 6:00 pm
Reception to Follow
About the Lecture:
Over the past 40 years there has been a growing awareness that archaeologists should consider the perspectives, concerns, and interests of the contemporary communities around archaeological excavation sites. Best practice in archaeology increasingly recognizes that no stratum of cultural heritage remains is intrinsically “more important” than another. One might be better preserved than another; one might have more material remains than another; but no culture’s history is objectively more worthy of study or preservation than another’s. The contemporary community is only the most recent, most tangible “stratum” of cultural history on a site.
This lecture will consider the relationships among host communities, heritage remains, and development approaches on a selection of sites over the past 20 years in Jordan, including ACOR’s new initiative, Sustainable Cultural Heritage through Engagement of Local Communities Project (SCHEP).
About the Lecturer:
Erin Addison is an historian and landscape architect specializing in the sustainable development of arid lands. She has lived in Jordan and worked in development and regional planning projects for most of the past 20 years, and is presently the Cultural Heritage Resource (CHR) Projects Lead for USAID SCHEP, which is being implemented by ACOR. Addison has served as Director of Research for the Royal Botanic Garden, Director of al-Hima for a Sustainable Jordan, and Environmental Expert on the Strategic Master Plan for Petra Region, which won the Pierre l’Enfant Prize for International Planning. From 1997–2001 She directed the Qastal Conservation & Development Project. Addison holds an M.L.A. in Landscape Architecture from the University of Arizona (2006), a Ph.D. (1992) and an M.A. (1986) in Religious Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Pomona College, Claremont, California.
