Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Helsinki

New peer reviewed articles have recently been published featuring researchers from Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Helsinki.

In “Asset, Burden, Cultybraggan. Community Site Ownership in a Scottish Village“, Suzie Thomas and Iain Banks (University of Glasgow) write about their ethnographic and public archaeology research at a former Prisoner of War camp in central Scotland and discuss the challenges faced by the local village, who just over a decade ago elected to buy the site from the UK Ministry of Defense. The article is open access.

“Fool’s Gold? A critical assessment of sources of data on heritage crime” by Louise Grove (Loughborough University), Suzie Thomas and Adam Daubney (Portable Antiquities Scheme and Lincolnshire County Council) is a conceptual paper discussing the limitations and opportunities for current heritage crime research in the UK based on the data available. They consider among other things the idea of the so-called ‘dark figure’ in crime (the crimes that take place but go unreported and hence unknown), and how this concept may affect what we know about heritage crime.

Full references:

On Friday 23 November Suzie Thomas spoke as Keynote at a residential weekend for doctoral researchers from Falmouth University, the University of Plymouth and the University of Western England.

The weekend, for 3D3 researchers (coming from various arts and heritage backgrounds and using a vast range of digital, creative and participatory approaches in their research and practices) funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, was an opening event for recently started researchers on the programme. It took place at the Penryn campus of Falmouth University in Cornwall, England.

Thomas talked about Lapland’s Dark Heritage, a recently completed Academy of Finland collaboration between the University of Helsinki and University of Oulu. The project drew on a number of theories and methodological approaches that spanned many disciplines including archaeology, ethnology, cultural heritage studies, crowdsourcing methods and community engagement.

The weekend went very well, and there are hopes that the 3D3 students and their supervisors can visit Finland in the future!

A research team comprised of Nordic-based have been awarded a workshop grant from NOS-HS (The Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences) to organize a series of three workshops on the theme of “Changing Hands, Changed Concerns: Research on Illegal Trade in Cultural Heritage in the Nordic Region” (in Swedish: kiftande Händer, Förändrade Betydelser: Forskning om Illegal Handel med Kulturarv i Norden).  As reported on the Working with Cultural Objects and Manuscripts blog, it will fund three workshops over two years in Stockholm, Oslo/Kristiansand and Helsinki, bringing together scholars and practitioners from the Nordic region and beyond.

In the organizing team are Dr. Damien Huffer (Stockholm University), Prof. Suzie Thomas (University of Helsinki), Dr. Rick Bonnie (University of Helsinki), Prof. Visa Immonen (University of Turku) and Dr. Josephine Munch Rasmussen (Universities of Agder and Oslo).

Helsingin yliopistossa koordinoitava Tieteen termipankki on kaikkien Suomessa harjoitettavien tieteenalojen yhteinen verkossa toimiva, avoin ja jatkuvasti päivittyvä termitietokanta sekä wikipohjainen yhteistyön alusta. Termipankin sisältö karttuu rajoitetun talkoistamisen periaatteella. Tämä tarkoittaa sitä, että termisivuja pääsevät lisäämään ja muokkaamaan ainoastaan asiantuntijat – toisin kuin Wikipediassa. Termipankki tarjoaa kuitenkin myös alustan termeistä käytäville keskusteluille, joihin voivat osallistua kaikki termipankkiin omalla nimellään rekisteröityneet käyttäjät.

Termi ymmärretään termipankissa käsitteen ja sen nimityksen yhdistelmäksi, mitä ajatusta seuraten termipankki rakentuu keskenään linkittyvien käsite- ja nimityssivujen verkostoksi. Termipankissa on tällä hetkellä mukana noin 40 aihealuetta eli tieteenalaa tai erityisalaa ja yhteensä 40 000 käsitesivua. Uusimpina tulokkaina termipankissa ovat vuonna 2018 aloittaneet geologia, taidehistoria, historia ja perinnöntutkimus (engl. heritage studies).

Perinnöntutkimuksen käsitteistöä kokoava asiantuntijaryhmä on järjestäytymässä, ja keskeisimpienkin käsitteiden määrittely on vasta aluillaan. Keskusteltavaa on riittänyt aihealueen nimeämisestä lähtien, eikä itse perinnön käsitteelle ole vielä muodostettu tyydyttävää määritelmää. Aihealueen nimessä päätettiin siis käyttää suomen kielen sanaa perintö (sanan kulttuuriperintö sijaan), vaikka alan opetusta tarjoavat suomalaiset yliopistot puhuvat johdonmukaisesti “kulttuuriperinnön tutkimuksesta”.

Sanavalinnan tarkoituksena on erottaa tutkimuksen ja tieteellisen intressin kohteena oleva laajempi ilmiö ja yläkäsite alakäsitteestään eli kansainvälisen ja kansallisen kulttuuriperintöhallinnon määrittelemästä ja suojelemasta kulttuuriperinnöstä. Lisäksi haluttiin luoda suomenkielistä termistöä, joka on yhdenmukaista englanninkielisessä tutkimuskirjallisuudessa käytetyn käsitteistön kanssa.

Perinnöntutkimusta voi luonnehtia tieteidenväliseksi kulttuurintutkimukseksi, joka ammentaa käsitteistöään sekä humanistisista että yhteiskuntatieteistä. Perinnöntutkimuksen voi ymmärtää myös näkökulmaksi, joka on pirstoutunut menneisyyttä sekä menneisyydelle annettuja merkityksiä tarkasteleville aloille, kuten arkeologiaan, historiaan, taidehistoriaan, kansatieteeseen, folkloristiikkaan ja kulttuuriantropologiaan. Perinnöntutkimuksen termityötä on luontevaa tehdä näitä aloja, erilaisia tutkimusperinteitä ja käsitteistämisen tapoja edustavien asiantuntijoiden yhteistyönä.

Kulttuuriperinnön käsitteen ohella “perinnön” määritelmää on jatkossa analysoitava esimerkiksi suhteessa kulttuurin ja perinteen käsitteisiin. Lähtökohtia ja tukea käsiteanalyysille löytyy muun muassa folkloristien Oona E. Simolinin (Päivystävä folkloristi -blogi 19.10.2018), Anne Heimon (Vähäisiä lisiä -blogi 2.2.2018) ja Pertti Anttosen (Elore 1/2009) pohdinnoista.

“Kulttuuriperintö” sekä “perinne” on Tieteen termipankissa jo määritelty folkloristiikan aihealueella, mutta ainakin kulttuuriperintö saa oman käsitesivunsa myös osana perinnöntutkimuksen käsitejärjestelmää. Historioitsijoiden kanssa on puolestaan pohdittava esimerkiksi kollektiivisen muistin, historiatietoisuuden ja historiakulttuurin käsitteiden kytköksiä perinnöntutkimuksen avainkäsitteisiin.

Tiede on monikielistä, mutta omakielisten käsitteiden merkitys korostuu kulttuuria ja yhteiskuntaa tutkivilla aloilla. Perinnöntutkimuksen suomenkielistä terminologiaa kehittävät tutkijat ovat osaltaan varmistamassa, että Kulttuuriperintöbarometrissä suomalaisten arvostamana kulttuuriperintönä esiin noussut “kieli” säilyy jatkossakin elinvoimaisena.

Perinnöntutkimuksen asiantuntijaryhmään voivat liittyä kaikki perinnöntutkijoiksi itsensä identifioivat tutkijat ja tutkijakoulutettavat. Tervetuloa mukaan!

FT Johanna Enqvist on Tieteen termipankin tutkimuskoordinaattori sekä termityöläinen perinnöntutkimuksen ja arkeologian aihealueilla.

On Wednesday 7th November we are very happy to be hosting a public lecture Associate Professor Gertjan Plets, of the University of Utrecht.

Dr Plets will talk on the theme “Corporate Social Responsibility and Museums: heritage ethics in the age of neoliberalism?”, with the following abstract:

Heritage and archaeology are often theorised as the projects of nationalism; discourses about the past are textured by identity politics and archaeological projects are intricately structured by institutional frameworks and funding schemes. As a result, the ethical frameworks we employ to critically evaluate the politicisation of our practice is heavily influenced by this historic focus on the political influence of the nation state. However, states are not the only players that use culture and heritage to normalise certain political hierarchies or imbue certain norms with new cultural meaning. Drawing on examples from Russia and the Netherlands this paper will investigate how corporate funding of heritage sites and archaeological excavations influences archaeological practices and drastically alters power relations on the ground. This paper will encourage archaeologists to take Corporate Social Responsibility strategies serious and expand their ethical toolkit beyond the nation state.

Join us for this public lecture on Wednesday 7.11. at 16:15-17:45 in Metsätalo (Unioninkatu 40), Sali 4, University of Helsinki. No pre-booking required!

The book ‘Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia. An Anthropology of Forgetting, Repair and Urban Traces’ has been published by UCL Press. Also, it has received the Early Career Award by the European Association of Social Anthropology in the category of Best Monograph.

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What happens to legacies that do not find any continuation? The author brings together a number of sites of interest to explore the vanquishing of the Soviet legacy in Estonia. The anthropological study of all these places shows that national identity and historical representations can be constructed in relation to waste and disrepair too, demonstrating also how we can understand generational change in a material sense.

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By adopting the tropes of “repair” and “waste”, this book innovatively manages to link various material registers from architecture, intergenerational relations, affect, museums with ways of making the past present.
Victor Buchli, Professor of Material Culture, UCL

This book comprises an endearingly transdisciplinary ethnography of post-socialist material culture and social change in Estonia. It defies disciplinary boundaries and shows how an attention to material relations and affective infrastructures might reinvigorate political theory.
Maria Mälksoo, Senior Lecturer, Brussels School of International Studies of the University of Kent

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Francisco jointed the University of Helsinki in May 2018; since then he has published three articles: ‘Doing nothing: Anthropology sits at the same table with contemporary art in Lisbon and Tbilisi’ (Ethnography) ‘Analogue Photo Booths in Berlin. A stage, a trap, a condenser and four shots for kissing the person you love’ (Anthropology and Photography); and ‘The Serendipity of Anthropological Practice’ (Anthropological Journal of European Cultures).
Also, Francisco has edited two books that will be published within the next months: ‘Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough: Ethnographic Responses’ (Berghahn); ‘Common Grounds? Locating, Contesting and (Not) Defining European Anthropology’ (Berghahn). Currently, he is curating the exhibition ‘Objects of Attention’ at the Estonian Museum of Applied Arts and Design.

Recently Springer published a new edited volume titled “Competing Values in Archaeological Heritage“. The book is co-edited by Suzie Thomas of the University of Helsinki, alongside Stuart Campbell and Liz White. It features a chapter from Riikka Alvik who works for Museovirasto (Finnish Heritage Agency) and is also a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, about the underwater protection challenges around the Vrouw Maria ship. Other chapters span challenges found in other parts of Europe such as Spain, Norway and Slovakia. Suzie Thomas provides a concluding commentary chapter to the volume.

According to Springer about the book:

“Archaeological heritage legislation aims to ensure the best possible protection for the archaeological heritage, yet it remains the case that legislation can remain ineffective through other practical considerations. Some consideration may be legal or procedural, such as difficulties in enforcing legislation or in preventing crimes or damage or archaeological monuments. However other problems may be less obvious and harder to address, and require solutions which go much further than the simple application of the law. “

The book was published has 11 chapters, and is available as a hardback or as an e-book.

A new open access article has recently been published in the journal Open Archaeology, featuring contribution from Suzie Thomas of Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Helsinki. The article, titled “Archaeological Knowledge Production and Global Communities: Boundaries and Structure of the Field“, is a joint effort with international collaborators from Lithuania, Canada, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus. It is produced as part of a COST Action Network named ARKWORK: Archaeological practices and knowledge work in the digital environment.

The abstract is as follows:

Archaeology and material cultural heritage enjoys a particular status as a form of heritage that, capturing the public imagination, has become the locus for the expression and negotiation of regional, national, and intra-national cultural identities. One important question is: why and how do contemporary people engage with archaeological heritage objects, artefacts, information or knowledge outside the realm of an professional, academically-based archaeology? This question is investigated here from the perspective of theoretical considerations based on Yuri Lotman’s semiosphere theory, which helps to describe the connections between the centre and peripheries of professional archaeology as sign structures. The centre may be defined according to prevalent scientific paradigms, while periphery in the space of creolisation in which, through interactions with other culturally more distant sign structures, archaeology-related nonprofessional communities emerge. On the basis of these considerations, we use collocation analysis on representative English language corpora to outline the structure of the field of archaeology-related nonprofessional communities, identify salient creolised peripheral spaces and archaeology-related practices, and develop a framework for further investigation of archaeological knowledge production and reuse in the context of global archaeology.

Full reference information:

Rimvydas Laužikas, Costis Dallas, Suzie Thomas, Ingrida Kelpšienė, Isto Huvila, Pedro Luengo, Helena Nobre, Marina Toumpouri, and Vykintas Vaitkevičius. 2018. Archaeological Knowledge Production and Global Communities: Boundaries and Structure of the Field. Open Archaeology 4: 350–364. https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2018-0022

Welcome to this new blog page for Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Helsinki. Here we will update regularly on current research and teaching activities, publications, conference action and other relevant news.

We also welcome guest posts from researchers and practitioners, so please be in touch if you are interested in writing for us!