Cultural heritage in context: the temples of Nubia, digital technologies and the future of conservation

The conservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage is a well-developed field. However, cultural heritage is only ever partially preserved if its context is lost. This contribution argues that the future of conservation should include context as an integral and inalienable part of all forms of cultural heritage. As such, this will require an increase in cross-disciplinary collaborations with, among others, archaeologists, historians and archivists involved in efforts aimed at restoring cultural heritage to the contexts from which it has become disengaged. Based on theoretical frameworks from the digital humanities, cultural theory, history of the built environment and archaeology, the authors outline a method of re-contextualisation using the drowned landscape of Nubia as a case study. Aside from the landscape in which the Nubian monuments once stood and the vernacular of historical Nubian cultures, we argue that the history and socio-political nature of the decisions made in the name of preservation itself should also be incorporated as part of this context. The contribution argues that digital representations coupled with digital archiving provides one means of incorporating such heterogeneous and diverse information to present the contexts in which descriptions, texts, photographs, letters, videos and oral history can be better understood, interpreted and distributed. © 2017 Icon, The Institute of Conservation.