The Symbiotic Relationship of Conservation and Value

Physical and intellectual access to heritage is shaped by conservation through a longterm, cyclic and symbiotic relationship of representation and intervention (or lack of it). This informs future use and representation. Value (which may be assigned for different reasons) makes heritage. All heritage is valued for varied reasons. Some argue that heritage has inherent value; this is not covered in this paper. Some values are preferred over others in decisions on what to use or conserve. The process below describes a number of different recurring phases in this relationship, which differs with different kinds of heritage: 1. Various agents change heritage; 2. Change affects valued elements of heritage; 3. Valued elements affect how change is perceived; 4. What is perceived as damage affects decisions about conservation interventions; 5. Conservation affects which valued elements are most likely to be preserved; 6. Preserved elements influence how heritage is represented; 7. New forms of representation will affect future conservation decisions. Historically, how heritage has been represented has affected how an object is preserved. This affects later representation and use, making the relationship symbiotic. INTRODUCTION Direct physical and intellectual access to heritage is the product of a range of decisions and events that span its whole existence. It is continually affected by the decisions and actions we take, or do not take, as conservators. This paper aims to identify common turning points and rites of passages of different kinds of heritage to reveal a common process that varies with different circumstances. The process revolves around two aims of heritage conservation understanding historic material and preserving historic material. We try to understand and interpret heritage to reveal now what the world was like, and we preserve heritage in order to keep the material reality so that we can interpret it: representation and intervention. Furthermore, we must represent in order to intervene, and we intervene through those representations. For this reason, it is the relationship between change and value in the preservation of heritage that is the common link, not the physical changes or the values themselves. This relationship may be fast-moving or gradual and each may influence the other in equal or unequal, simultaneous or cyclical ways. This paper will describe each phase in the process, illustrating how the consequences, whether considered positive or negative, leave their imprint on future decisions about conservation. Figure 1 illustrates how these phases move in relation to each other. It is difficult to offer complete examples of the whole process, since the alternative realities of decisions that have not been made will never be known. Therefore the choice of examples illustrates different types, scales and periods of heritage. Some of these decisions might not be made today, but this paper is intended to set out a process that encompasses time frames in which societal values may have changed, and which all contribute to the current condition and value of heritage. When seen together, a pattern emerges that demonstrates that phase changes are not isolated from each other. Consequently, the same examples of heritage may be used to illustrate more than one part of the process, demonstrating how relationships become inter-twined.