Piecing together bits of Norway’s medieval history

The National Archives of Norway’s stores some of its property three stories underground, beneath 25 metres of granite bedrock. Walls are thick around the seemingly endless shelves of books and documents. Pipes full of cables and wiring feed into holes in the walls.  Before these perforations were made for electronics and power, the walls were capable of withstanding a nuclear attack.

A shower head protrudes incongruously from a white wall.  You would not like to see it drenching all this valuable paper and parchment. But of course it was designed for washing off radioactive fallout on any survivors if the Cold War got hot. The thick walls and the unused shower tell the story of an earlier era.

Much older stories are found down here. The shelves are packed with state documents that have been in the hands of the National Archives since the institution was founded in 1817. Here are protocols from the Fredrikshald [now Halden] Toll Station on the border with Sweden, for instance. Of course census figures and statistics are dominant, just as even the most ancient notations on clay tablets are often linked to taxation and book-keeping.

Fragments of history

Tor Weidling and Espen Karlsen are employed respectively by the National Archives of Norway and the National Library of Norway. Their assignment is to hunt for bits and pieces of documents.

They page through old ledger books, trying to find even older fragments of manuscripts and documents used to bind them. The ledgers were sent from Norway to Copenhagen in the 16th and 17th centuries, when Norwegians were under Danish rule.

The books full of accounting figures were made of animal skin, or parchment. When making a book, the pages of parchment were sewn together with strong thread. Sometimes these threads ripped the parchment. So pieces of older parchment were added as patches to prevent the books from coming apart at the spine.

It is these recycled fragments that Weidling and Karlsen spend their time fitting together. Some of them contain texts and comprise parts of older manuscripts.

Specifically, the project involves identifying remnants of a book collection from the old Halsnøy Abbey on the Hardangerfjord in Hordaland County. This abbey on the spectacular Norwegian west coast was founded in 1163 and was dissolved with the Reformation in 1536. To date the researchers have found documents comprising nearly 40 books.

“All we have from Halsnøy are these fragments that we have found,” says Karlsen.

Their discoveries are contributing to knowledge about the Middle Ages and Norway’s cultural history.

Made in Norway

Karlsen’s curiosity was roused when he noticed the difference in sizes among the fragments of parchment. While most of the fragments used to strengthen ledgers were little bits, the ones from Halsnøy were fortunately quite large.

Weidling and Karlsen are sure these fragments are from Norway, even though the ledgers were sent to Denmark and spent centuries there. One indication is the discovery of such fragments on Norwegian accounts that had never been shipped south to Denmark. This means the fragments were added to the ledgers in Norway. 

“We have not come across a single fragment which with any certitude was added in Copenhagen. But there are lots that undoubtedly were fitted to the books in Norway,” says Karlsen.

Weidling offers material from Norway’s Akershus County as an example. Feudal overlords, lensherrer in Norwegian, distributed various goods and materials to bailiffs, men in their employ who among other services acted as tax collectors. Each of these had their own way of binding these parchments together and different parts of the country had their disparate methods too. Documents from Akershus are thus physically discernible from documents originating in Bergen or Trondheim.

Weidling doubts that the Danes would have done things this way – using different methods of bookbinding for the different parts of Norway, especially as all of these are unlike the way Danes did these tasks in Denmark. 

The bits of documents from Akershus could come from different churches. There were numerous churches in the county, which covers extensive countryside and towns around Oslo. It is difficult to determine which churches the fragments come from.

It is easier in smaller and more isolated locations, which is why documents from Halsnøy Abbey stand out. It was rather distant and isolated from Bergen and other towns and communities, making it easier to determine exactly where the pieces come from. 

After the Reformation, the administration of the Halsnøy district housed itself in what had formerly been the Abbey, so it is easy to imagine that when old parchments were needed, administrators just took those left by the medieval men who had formed a monastic community living under the rule of St. Augustine.

Recycling

The documents from Halsnøy Abbey were written in Latin, as were all the other bits and pieces that Weidling and Karlsen hunt down. Similar projects have run earlier with fragments of old Norse documents.

The recycled abbey documents were sometimes liturgical, mostly linked to church services. Song books are among them. Fortunately for posterity, as society and religion changed, things that were no longer of any use were not always discarded.

“This is definitely an example of recycling,” says Weidling.

Parchment came in a limited supply and even the elite in Norway who worked for the government centuries ago had to use it sparingly. It is a durable material but expensive, made from an inner layer of hides of calves or sheep. If large parchments were demanded the skin of a whole sheep was needed to make just one page. 

“The most extravagant I have heard of was a book made from 500 sheep,” says Karlsen.

So books were expensive. Of course the meat from the livestock did not go to waste, but plenty of skilled work went into making good parchment. To draw a comparison, the production of a book could represent a cost amounting to tens of thousands of dollars in today’s currency.

A century or two

The practice of recycling parchment was most common in the 16th and 17th centuries. From the mid-1600s it started to decline. 

“Some of the latest documents we have found using remnants from Halsnøy Abbey are from 1647,” says Karlsen.

As the 1700s approached, new parchment was used more often than old here on the Hardangerfjord. Weidling and Karlsen are not entirely sure why, but one explanation comes readily to mind.

“Perhaps the supply of medieval parchment manuscripts was depleted. Even at Halsnøy there had to be a limited number of them,” says Karlsen.
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Reference:

Einarsdóttir, Silja Björklund. 2016. “Piecing together bits of Norway’s medieval history”. Science Nordic. Posted: November 14, 2016. Available online: http://sciencenordic.com/piecing-together-bits-norway%E2%80%99s-medieval-history

Face of Tehran’s 7 millennia old woman reconstructed

source: Mehr News Agency

The reconstruction of the face of Tehran’s discovered 7-millennia-old woman had been carried out as part of the anthropological features and documentation.

In November 2014, Mahsa Vahabi, an Archeology student serendipitously discovered in the dug soil in Mowlavi St., of Tehran Water and Wastewater Company some pottery.

Her discovery of simple earthen material drew attentions from her fellow archeologist and a study team addressed the place on Mowlavi St. Further excavations uncovered from under the soil bones and skeleton, reportedly and supposedly belonging to a women from 7,000 years ago.  

Soon archeology researchers carried out research to find out more about its characteristics. A 3D documentation method was carried out on the skeleton by Mohammad Reza Rokni, an expert in Archeology Research Center.

He told Mehr News that to develop a 3D documentation, “we used whole parts of the skeleton and the principle of symmetry of human skeleton to reconstruct the missing parts or parts which are unfit for the reconstruction.”

“The model was developed drawing upon the supine position of the skeleton to represent its true position when interred; to reconstruct the face we added a digital version of missing parts mounted on the 3D model; the prepared model was pinpointed in 11 points in face on eyes, nose, ears, chicks, lips, and chin, and then the digital texturing filled these pinpoints to give us a clear image of the face,” he detailed.

Rokni also commented on the way the hairs of the woman was reconstructed; “since we had no trace of the hairs, choosing a color for hair was a matter of taste; in doing so, we drew upon the signs in pottery found in Cheshmeh Ali; five strong and standard modeling software versions helped us synchronize and corrected,” he told Mehr News.

He claimed that the finished reconstructed face would be 95 per cent accurate compared with the original face of woman last seen 7,000 years ago. “This is a common practice to reconstruct the face of skulls; however, the public would be abandoned uninformed about the practice; to make the reconstructed face more true to natural state, we fed some people’s faces to the machine to use the details to give a better and improved finished face,” he added.

Hamideh Choubak, head of the Archeology Research Center believes it is very interesting for the public to know what the face of ancient past people looked like; she said that the estimations made would not show the level of similarity to the original face.
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Reference:

Mehr News Agency. 2015. “Face of Tehran’s 7 millennia old woman reconstructed”. Mehr News Agency. Posted: June 16, 2015. Available online: http://en.mehrnews.com/news/107975/Face-of-Tehran-s-7-millennia-old-woman-reconstructed

Archaeologists restore early Islamic caliph's palace on the shores of the Sea of Galilee

The Department of Ancient Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) is to receive EUR 30,000 through the Cultural Preservation Program of the German Federal Foreign Office to help with the restoration of a caliph's palace on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The palace complex covers a site of about 5,000 square meters and was uncovered from 1932 to 1939 by German archaeologists from the Catholic Görres Society and the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin. It sits on land that today still belongs to the German Holy Land Association (DVHL) and is managed by the Israel National Parks Authority.

The palace was constructed from white limestone on a lower course of black basalt and includes one of the oldest mosques in the Holy Land. It was built by Caliph Walid I (705 to 715 A.D.) of the Umayyaden dynasty, which established the first caliphate in the Holy Land from 661 to 750 AD. A few years after construction started, a severe earthquake rocked the palace and caused a fissure right through the center of the mosque and the entire east wing of the building, and this probably put a stop to the work before the structure was fully completed. In the Middle Ages, a sugar cane oven was set up on the site. This brought considerable wealth for the crusaders who owned it but resulted in lasting damage to the environment thanks to the vast amounts of water and wood needed to operate it. Since being excavated in the 1930s, the ruins have been exposed and threatened by vegetation growth and weather effects.

The restoration project sponsored by the German Federal Foreign Office highlights the importance of this year's anniversary of 50 years of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel. "This project has been initiated just in the nick of time - there is no more time to waste", emphasized archaeologist PD Dr. Hans-Peter Kuhnen, Chief Academic Director of the JGU Department of Ancient Studies and project manager, who has been involved in archaeological research at the Khirbat al-Minya site together with students from Mainz University since 2009. "Every year we have been witness to the gradual deterioration of the palace. By backing the project financially, Germany is assuming responsibility for an important archaeological site that would not have been excavated without the German initiative in the 1930s. At the same time, we are supporting the work of the Israel National Parks management, our students have the chance to gather practical experience in archaeological conservation, and we are also setting an example within the archaeological community for a dialog with Islam," added Kuhnen who, together with Franziska Bloch of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), authored a guide to the palace in 2014.

Since 1981, Germany has been supporting the preservation of cultural heritage across the globe as part of the Cultural Preservation Program of its Federal Foreign Office. The aim has been to foster an independent national awareness in the partner countries and a collaborative approach to dealing with the world's cultural treasures. The Cultural Preservation Program is also an effective instrument of Germany's international cultural relations and educational policy. This strategy of cultural conservation as a means of promoting stability in crisis states and contributing to crisis prevention has become ever more important in recent years.
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2015. “Archaeologists restore early Islamic caliph's palace on the shores of the Sea of Galilee”. EurekAlert. Posted: June 2, 2015. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/jgum-are060215.php

Preserving endangered Middle East cultures, including early Christian

Key moments in the development and interaction of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other religions are being preserved through Syriaca.org, an international collaboration edited by scholars at Vanderbilt and Princeton universities.

The Syriac Gazetteer, an online geographical dictionary, is the first in a series of reference works launched by Syriaca.org to document and save ancient and medieval Middle Eastern cultural heritage now threatened by civil war and political instability.

The Syriac language is a dialect of Aramaic once used widely throughout the Middle East and Asia. Syriac was an important language in the spread of Christianity, according to David A. Michelson, assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Vanderbilt and general editor of Syriaca.org. Jesus and many early Christians spoke a related dialect of Aramaic, and the Gospels were translated into Syriac at a very early moment in the history of Christianity. In the Middle Ages, Syriac-speaking communities could be found in what today would be Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, India, Central Asia, Mongolia and China.

The Syriac Gazetteer contains descriptions of more than 2,400 places relevant to the study of Syriac. These entries, written in English, Arabic and Syriac, range from ancient centers of Syriac culture such as Edessa, located in what is modern-day Turkey, to Piscataway, N.J., where Syriac scholarship is still being produced by heritage communities.

Michelson uses the term "Syriac heritage communities" to refer to a number of different contemporary Aramaic minority populations who have connections to the historical Syriac cultures of the Middle East. These communities include ethnic and religious populations who identify variously as Syriac, Assyrian, Aramean, Maronite, St. Thomas Christians, Chaldean Catholic, Antiochian Orthodox, Syro-Malabar Catholic, the Church of the East, and a number of other groups.

"Although Syriac heritage communities have survived through the years as minority enclaves in the Middle East and Asia, these communities and their religious and cultural heritage remain relatively unknown in the West," Michelson said. "The study of Syriac has received little attention until now, but scholars are beginning to realize these sources hold immense value for increasing our understanding of the historical relationships among Jews, Christians and Muslims."

Researchers estimate that more than 10,000 manuscripts or manuscript fragments written in Syriac survive today around the globe. For much of the 20th century, Syria and Iraq were home to some of the largest Syriac communities in the region, but they have experienced significant displacement and destruction of their cultural heritage during the past decade.

"The current civil war in Syria has had a devastating toll on all segments of the Syrian population," Michelson said. "Many in Syria's minority communities have been forced to evacuate their homes in fear for their lives." Michelson described the situation as also perilous in Iraq. "Minority communities have become particularly easy targets for violence," he said. "These communities have increasingly turned to emigration in the face of these threats. With such disruption and migration, there is a real risk that minority communities will not be able to maintain their unique cultural identities."

Syriaca.org's online tools serve a broad audience interested in the Syriac cultural heritage, including researchers and students in Middle Eastern studies, classics, medieval history, religious studies, biblical studies and linguistics. In addition, the online portal is available for use by Syriac heritage communities and the public. All resources of Syriaca.org are published in a free and open format using Creative Commons licenses.

Thomas A. Carlson, a postdoctoral research associate in medieval Middle East history at Princeton University, co-edits The Syriac Gazetteer with Michelson. Peter R. L. Brown, the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Emeritus at Princeton chairs the editorial committee for Syriaca.org. Technical design of the project was completed by Winona Salesky, independent consultant, and Thomas Elliott, senior research scholar, New York University.

Vanderbilt Divinity students who have worked on Syriaca.org include Anthony Davis, Dan Greeson and Tucker Hannah, all second-year students pursuing a master of theological studies. Other participating students are Erin Minta Johnson, in her first year in the same master's programs, while Justin Arnwine is a first-year master's student in the Graduate Department of Religion.

The Syriac Gazetteer is funded as part of the "International Balzan Prize awarded to Peter Brown by the Fondazione Internazionale Balzan. Michelson was selected as a junior scholar to co-direct the project as a part of the award terms. The National Endowment for the Humanities and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have also provided funding for Syriaca.org.

Interested individuals can explore The Syriac Gazetteer by browsing the interactive map. Readers can also search for specific types of places such as churches or topography.
________________
References:

Science Daily. 2014. “Preserving endangered Middle East cultures, including early Christian”. Science Daily. Posted: April 24, 2014. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140424143420.htm

Preserving endangered Middle East cultures, including early Christian

Key moments in the development and interaction of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other religions are being preserved through Syriaca.org, an international collaboration edited by scholars at Vanderbilt and Princeton universities.

The Syriac Gazetteer, an online geographical dictionary, is the first in a series of reference works launched by Syriaca.org to document and save ancient and medieval Middle Eastern cultural heritage now threatened by civil war and political instability.

The Syriac language is a dialect of Aramaic once used widely throughout the Middle East and Asia. Syriac was an important language in the spread of Christianity, according to David A. Michelson, assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Vanderbilt and general editor of Syriaca.org. Jesus and many early Christians spoke a related dialect of Aramaic, and the Gospels were translated into Syriac at a very early moment in the history of Christianity. In the Middle Ages, Syriac-speaking communities could be found in what today would be Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, India, Central Asia, Mongolia and China.

The Syriac Gazetteer contains descriptions of more than 2,400 places relevant to the study of Syriac. These entries, written in English, Arabic and Syriac, range from ancient centers of Syriac culture such as Edessa, located in what is modern-day Turkey, to Piscataway, N.J., where Syriac scholarship is still being produced by heritage communities.

Michelson uses the term "Syriac heritage communities" to refer to a number of different contemporary Aramaic minority populations who have connections to the historical Syriac cultures of the Middle East. These communities include ethnic and religious populations who identify variously as Syriac, Assyrian, Aramean, Maronite, St. Thomas Christians, Chaldean Catholic, Antiochian Orthodox, Syro-Malabar Catholic, the Church of the East, and a number of other groups.

"Although Syriac heritage communities have survived through the years as minority enclaves in the Middle East and Asia, these communities and their religious and cultural heritage remain relatively unknown in the West," Michelson said. "The study of Syriac has received little attention until now, but scholars are beginning to realize these sources hold immense value for increasing our understanding of the historical relationships among Jews, Christians and Muslims."

Researchers estimate that more than 10,000 manuscripts or manuscript fragments written in Syriac survive today around the globe. For much of the 20th century, Syria and Iraq were home to some of the largest Syriac communities in the region, but they have experienced significant displacement and destruction of their cultural heritage during the past decade.

"The current civil war in Syria has had a devastating toll on all segments of the Syrian population," Michelson said. "Many in Syria's minority communities have been forced to evacuate their homes in fear for their lives." Michelson described the situation as also perilous in Iraq. "Minority communities have become particularly easy targets for violence," he said. "These communities have increasingly turned to emigration in the face of these threats. With such disruption and migration, there is a real risk that minority communities will not be able to maintain their unique cultural identities."

Syriaca.org's online tools serve a broad audience interested in the Syriac cultural heritage, including researchers and students in Middle Eastern studies, classics, medieval history, religious studies, biblical studies and linguistics. In addition, the online portal is available for use by Syriac heritage communities and the public. All resources of Syriaca.org are published in a free and open format using Creative Commons licenses.

Thomas A. Carlson, a postdoctoral research associate in medieval Middle East history at Princeton University, co-edits The Syriac Gazetteer with Michelson. Peter R. L. Brown, the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Emeritus at Princeton chairs the editorial committee for Syriaca.org. Technical design of the project was completed by Winona Salesky, independent consultant, and Thomas Elliott, senior research scholar, New York University.

Vanderbilt Divinity students who have worked on Syriaca.org include Anthony Davis, Dan Greeson and Tucker Hannah, all second-year students pursuing a master of theological studies. Other participating students are Erin Minta Johnson, in her first year in the same master's programs, while Justin Arnwine is a first-year master's student in the Graduate Department of Religion.

The Syriac Gazetteer is funded as part of the "International Balzan Prize awarded to Peter Brown by the Fondazione Internazionale Balzan. Michelson was selected as a junior scholar to co-direct the project as a part of the award terms. The National Endowment for the Humanities and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have also provided funding for Syriaca.org.

Interested individuals can explore The Syriac Gazetteer by browsing the interactive map. Readers can also search for specific types of places such as churches or topography.
________________
References:

Science Daily. 2014. “Preserving endangered Middle East cultures, including early Christian”. Science Daily. Posted: April 24, 2014. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140424143420.htm

Research in Southern India Provides a Sweet Look at Preservation of Ecological Knowledge

A well-known proverb states that, "It takes a village to raise a child." According to Kathryn Demps, it also takes a village to preserve ecological knowledge in upcoming generations.

Demps, A Boise State University visiting assistant professor in anthropology, studies behavioral and evolutionary ecology in small-scale societies. Her latest project looks at the honey-gathering Jenu Kuruba tribe in South India and how its cultural knowledge is being preserved, or lost, in our modern world.

"What we learn from others -- our culture, skills, values, beliefs and knowledge -- is passed through the generations," she said. "How it is passed down can change the body of knowledge."

Demps noted that in today's race toward homogenous societies, indigenous knowledge is being lost even faster than languages.

One example is medicinal specialists. In the 1980s, the first hospital in the area populated by the Jenu Kuruba opened; 1985 was the last year for a recorded medicinal ceremony. Gurus didn't train more apprentices because no one wanted to learn, and as a result, the knowledge has been completely lost in just one generation.

The Jenu Kuruba comprise a band of small communities located in the forested Kodagu District. For generations, young men from the tribe have collected wild honey by nimbly scaling massive trees. Because honey is in such high demand in the cities for its purported medicinal qualities, it fetches a high price and is an important part of the local economy.

But the skills needed to harvest this precious commodity are at risk of dying out. Several former honey-gathering communities were moved away from the forests in an attempt to create national parks, and those that remain (thanks to special rights from the government to live in the forest and collect non-timber products) are now sending children to school during the day, drastically affecting how, or even if, they learn necessary honey-gathering skills.

Prior to construction of the local school in the 1970s, children rarely received a formal, western education. While the average level of education is still low, most children are spending at least a few critical years learning new skills at the expense of traditional, indigenous knowledge.

"Kids need to learn how to climb trees and how to make big, smoky torches from sticks wrapped in green leaves," Demps said. "They have to learn to climb onto the branches and cut off the honeycomb. There also are ritual things like the honey-collecting song that is supposed to appease the bees and show brotherhood."

Locals learn at an early age to scale trees by shimmying 100 feet up the trunk, pressing their feet flat into the bark and using their arms to pull themselves ever higher. Young boys pick this up by playing a traditional climbing game called mara cothi, which means "tree monkey" and is similar to an arboreal version of tag. Because the climb can be so dangerous, young men often leave offerings at the base of a tree, asking for a blessing for a safe climb.

More skilled gatherers also need to know how to work with the bees, coaxing the queen into a new hive, gathering the honey or calming a troubled colony. This is especially important given that the largest honeybees in the region are massive compared to the average Idaho varieties, and pack a powerful sting.

Demps and fellow researchers are evaluating data collected from almost 200 local residents ages 6-65 in order to understand what residents know at various ages, and who they learned it from.

"If we know what people are learning, and how they are learning it, we can make recommendations that may remove conflicts affecting traditional knowledge," Demps said. "For instance, giving children just five or six days a month off of school can make a big difference. That has been shown to be enough time for children to learn the skills they need to collect honey but still learn western knowledge. They also can learn how to collect forest foods for better nutrition as they are out hunting and gathering, as well as medicinal knowledge and how to manage the environment so that they are less likely to deforest the area."

Demps has published two papers based on her research and is working on another based on traditional knowledge and schooling. She hopes to eventually write a book examining the tribe's traditional life ways that draws on various firsthand accounts over the past two centuries.
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References:

Science Daily. 2012. “Research in Southern India Provides a Sweet Look at Preservation of Ecological Knowledge”. Science Daily. Posted: November 30, 2012. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121130151610.htm

Great Wall of China Twice As Long As Thought

The Great Wall of China is more than twice as long as originally believed, according to the first definitive archaeological survey of the iconic ancient defensive structure.

Released by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH), the survey began in 2007, mapping every trace of the wall across 15 Chinese provinces.

It emerged that the wall is much longer than previously thought. Indeed, it measures 13,170.6956 miles, or 21,196.18 km. A preliminary study released in 2009 estimated the wall to snake 5,500 miles, or 8,850 km across the country.

A total of 43,721 heritage sites were identified during the survey, "including stretches of the wall, defense works and passes, as well as other related Great Wall facilities and ruins," Tongo Mingkang, SACH deputy chief, said.

Known to the Chinese as the "Long Wall of 10,000 Li", the Great Wall is the world's largest human-made structure -- a series often overlapping fortifications made of stone, bricks and earthen works whose construction begun as early as the 7th century BC.

The defensive structure was first linked up under Emperor Qin Shi Huang in about 220BC. to protect the ancient Chinese empire from marauding tribes from the north.

Since then, many dynasties have maintained and renovated the wall. The majority of the existing structure was reconstructed during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

Today, only 8.2 percent of the wall built during the Ming Dynasty is intact, with the rest in poor condition, said the report.

Listed as a Unesco world heritage site in 1987, the wall has been heavily damaged from human activities, infrastructure development and tourism.

A large amount of the wall has collapsed and in some sections, only its foundation remains, the five-year survey concluded.

"The saving and preserving of the Great Wall's relics should not be delayed," the report stressed.

By 2015, the SACH will establish general guideline for protection of the Great Wall and set up a monitoring system to ensure an effective preservation, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
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References:

Lorenzi, Rosella. 2012."Great Wall of China Twice As Long As Thought". Discovery News. Posted: June 7, 2012. Available online: http://news.discovery.com/history/great-wall-china-long-120607.html

Helping to conserve Albania's cultural heritage

Heritage Without Borders (HWB), a newly established social enterprise founded at UCL (University College London) adopts an innovative approach to capacity building where communities require help and support to conserve their cultural heritage.

Following the success of HWB’s recent international projects in Turkmenistan and Bosnia and Herzegovina it has now been awarded £25,000 by the Headley Trust to run a conservation summer school in Albania.

HWB matches museum and conservation professionals with people who need help to conserve, interpret and use their heritage. Through HWB communities in countries lacking heritage resources can tap into specialist skills and practical training that would otherwise be impossible to obtain due to financial and geographical constraints. Meanwhile, qualified volunteers from the UK engage in an active collaboration with their hosts which leads to an exciting exchange of ideas. This experience gives HWB volunteers an experience that radically changes their outlook and transforms their future employment opportunities.

Sarajevo summer school

In September 2011, HWB ran a conservation summer school at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. There were 26 attendees from Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Serbia, including students from the local Institute of Archaeology. The course was run by three skilled HWB volunteers, including a professional conservator (Dominica D’Arcangelo) and two conservation students from the UCL Institute of Archaeology (Nicola Harrison and Carmen Vida).

The week long course in Sarajevo gave participants the opportunity to learn about how preventive conservation is relevant to their daily work and provided practical solutions to their issues around collections care with funding and space shortages. Participants said they valued the experience of being able to meet and talk with other colleagues facing similar challenges. Likewise, HWB volunteers expressed how much they learned through their first-hand interaction with other museum professionals and university students from the participating countries.

Funding from the Headley Trust

The Headley Trust was so impressed with the success of the project in Sarajevo that they have agreed to give Heritage Without Borders funding to carry out a further summer school in Albania in 2012. This support will allow HWB to pay for accommodation, travel and subsistence for all local participants as well as for the HWB volunteer team. In addition, it is planned that additional follow-up projects will be run in regional museums. Long-term mentoring and support will also be provided through the programme.

‘Heritage Without Borders operates a unique model where collaborative problem solving, communication and cooperation provides the key to long-term sustainable solutions,” said Dominica D’Arcangelo, HWB Co-Director. “In Sarajevo we learned first-hand how building a professional network extends benefits beyond the immediate group of project participants. It has also become apparent in HWB’s first projects that students and heritage professionals who are early in their careers value the opportunity HWB gives them to build their confidence and skills.”

Comments from summer school participants in Sarajevo Included:

“On the first day I saw how this can help me in my work… The most fun thing during this school was packing [museum objects] and using some things that I didn’t know could be used…I will also try to organise collective education for my colleagues and I hope that my knowledge that I learned here can pass to my friends and colleagues from my museum…” Stevan Salatic, regional museum in Trebijne

“It is nice now that we [participants from the course] are close. We can collaborate more – we can exchange ideas and help each other.” Tatjana Mijatovic, National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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References:

Past Horizons. 2012. "Helping to conserve Albania's cultural heritage". Past Horizons. Posted: February 4, 2012. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/02/2012/helping-to-conserve-albanias-cultural-heritage

Pastoralists in drought-stricken Kenya receive insurance payouts for massive livestock losses

As livestock deaths mount, a small group of herders in Northern Kenya’s Marsabit District is first to benefit from program that tracks forage conditions via satellite

In the midst of a drought-induced food crisis affecting millions in the Horn of Africa, an innovative insurance program for poor livestock keepers is making its first payouts today, providing compensation for some 650 insured herders in northern Kenya's vast Marsabit District who have lost up to a third of their animals.

Known as Index Based Livestock Insurance or IBLI, payouts are triggered when satellite images show that grazing lands in the region have deteriorated to the point that herders are expected to be losing more than 15 percent of their herd. The current readings for which indemnities are now being paid show that between 18 and 33 percent of livestock have been lost to drought this season.

"It's terrible that we are seeing this level of loss, but gratifying that the policies are doing what they are supposed to do, which is to help herders avert disaster when weather conditions dry up pasture lands and animals begin to perish," said Isaac Magina, head of agriculture insurance at UAP Insurance Ltd.

"When you look at a 33 percent loss, that is a significant portion of the asset base of any business and it would be difficult to survive without insurance," added Magina.

The insurance project was developed in partnership by the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Cornell University and the Index Insurance Innovation Initiative (I4) program at the University of California at Davis. Commercial partners Equity Bank and UAP Insurance Ltd. implement the program. The IBLI project is funded by USAID, the European Union, the British Government, the World Bank, the Microinsurance Facility and the Global Index Insurance Facility.

The Marsabit District alone is home to some 86,000 cattle and two million goats and sheep that generate millions of dollars in milk and other products and serve as the main source of sustenance and income. ILRI estimates that up to one-third of all livestock in the region have perished during the current drought.

In East Africa, an estimated 70 million people live in the drylands, and many of them are herders. In Kenya, the value of the pastoral livestock sector is estimated to be worth US$800 million. And the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in Eastern Africa, which takes a regional approach to combating drought in six countries of the Horn, estimates that over 90 percent of the meat consumed in East Africa comes from pastoral herds.

Under the terms of the policy, insured herders are compensated for any losses above 15 percent, with the 15 percent threshold acting as a sort of deductible. For example, a cattle herder who lives in an area with a livestock mortality rate of 33 percent receives a payout covering 18 percent of his or her animals. With cattle valued at about 15,000 Kenyan shillings (Ksh) per head (about US$150), an insurance policy covering 10 animals, or 150,000 Ksh in cattle, would pay out at about 27,000 Ksh (about US$270).

When the 15 percent deductible is factored in, compensation ranges from three percent in areas where the drought has been more moderate to 18 percent in the areas where herders were hit particularly hard. But in an indication of the severity of the drought, all of the areas where the policies were sold have exceeded the 15 percent mortality threshold that triggers a payout. Thus far, the policies cover about 1,100 animals – mostly cattle, but some goats and sheep and a few camels, as well.

The payments are being dispatched in the middle of a humanitarian crisis endangering 12 million people in the Horn that is prompting a call for new ways to manage food security risks in East Africa's arid drylands. For example, a recent report from ILRI has found that the pastoral approach to livestock production, in which herders make do with marginal lands by regularly moving their herds, could be very effective at averting weather-related food shortages. ILRI experts believe that in arid and semi-arid regions, keeping livestock could be a more effective coping strategy than cultivating crops – if herders have options for reducing their vulnerability to drought.

"Drought insurance is one important way to help livestock keepers maintain food security even in very harsh environments," said Andrew Mude, the IBLI project leader at ILRI. "Insurance is not by itself sufficient," he added, "But if it is accompanied by other risk-reducing strategies, such as better access to grazing lands and watering areas, then the pastoralist approach, which some people dismiss as a backward lifestyle of the past, emerges as a very effective way to meet future food needs."

Mude said that it is too early to tell just how the payouts from the policies will affect food security and other welfare indicators. For example, it's not yet clear how many herders will use the compensation to replace animals lost to the drought. But Mude said one major success thus far is that the livestock mortality index that is at the heart of the program appears to be working. The fatality rate predicted by the satellite assessments of forage loss is tracking very closely surveys of animal deaths on the ground.

That's crucial because using freely available satellite images of pasture lands to accurately predict animal deaths overcomes a major barrier that has bedeviled past efforts to provide livestock insurance in poor regions: the prohibitively high costs and logistics of confirming animal deaths in herds that roam across vast distances in extremely remote areas.

"This is all still a work in progress," said Jimmy Smith, director general of ILRI. "But the fact that our relatively inexpensive approach to estimating livestock deaths seems to be accurate could open the door to making livestock insurance widely available in many parts of Africa."

Going forward, experts believe a key issue will be whether livestock insurance in East Africa would be commercially viable by itself or whether its ability to protect herders from the impact of prolonged drought might justify some level of financial support from governments or donors, as agricultural insurance programs in Western countries often do.

"This is asset insurance for animals that are the centerpiece of livelihoods, providing a stream of income and nutrition for years and years," said Mude. "The investment in insurance based asset safety nets protecting these herds could have a more cost-effective welfare impact over the longer term than other forms of response such a food and cash assistance."

"This insurance scheme is a great example of how partnerships with the private sector can lift people out of poverty and provide long-term solutions to food crises," said Andrew Mitchell, the British international development secretary.

"To many farmers, losing their cattle means losing everything, as they are not just a source of income but are their only source of food. Support from Britain and others means that more than 600 herders in Northern Kenya can buy more cattle to replace those they have lost. This means they are better able to cope with this and future devastating droughts."
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References:

EurekAlert. 2011. "Pastoralists in drought-stricken Kenya receive insurance payouts for massive livestock losses". EurekAlert. Posted: October 21, 2011. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/bc-pid102011.php