A new(ish) way of considering Historic Preservation

I still have a blog, really!

Part of the reason I haven't been writing more is that I've become really really busy again. I've gone back to graduate school, this time for Historic Preservation. My girlfriend is trying grad school out for the first time; she's doing Architecture and working 16hr days, 7days/week. I don't know how she's doing it, but she is. Luckily, our programs are in the same building so we can eat lunch together.

Engaging with the philosophical and ethical aspects of Historic Preservation is somewhat new to me. My previous experiences have been practical/material, or legal/policy-related. However, a lot of the philosophical/ethical issues have been addressed in past classes I took on anthropology and museum studies, so this stuff is fairly comfortable, just not exciting.

Something that came up in a random research dive is the Ship of Theseus Paradox, or more simply the Theseus Paradox. In it's shortest form, the philosophical paradox reads:

"If an object composed of multiple parts gradually has its parts replaced over time, at what point does it cease to be the original object, and becomes a new object?"

I was absolutely gobsmacked that I had never encountered this concept in its named, simply-stated form, as I had been unwittingly been addressing this paradox since my first year of college! The first class I took as an undergraduate was called "Primitive Skills in the Modern World," where we demonstrated and discussed traditional skills like pottery, woodcarving, and hair-braiding to each other. My undergraduate adviser is a renowned expert in the making and throwing of stone-tipped spears, and he guided my senior research in non-synthetic, traditional adhesive recipes.

More after the jump...
My favorite paper from my first run at graduate school was a discussion of what I termed "ethnographically-accurate replicas," museum display objects made in the same manner as the original. In that paper, I argued that the return of museum objects to descendants of their original owners, followed by the creation of replicas made in the same manner, would be an ideal way for museums to proceed in the future. From my subsequent experiences working on and in historic buildings, my belief in the superiority of this approach is strengthened.

A building is not a static object. It is a collection of multiple dynamic systems responding to our use and the surrounding environment. Components expand, contract, and move with heat, cold, and moisture, and thus parts need replacement. A more dramatic example of this cycle of loss and renewal is the Ise Grand Shrine in Japan, which is ritually destroyed and rebuilt every twenty years. Is it the same building? From the Japanese perspective, the answer is essentially "Yes."  However, this perspective was not widely acknowledged internationally until 1994, when the Nara Document on Authenticity was drafted. The key passage for this blog entry is from Article 11:

"..the respect due to all cultures requires that heritage properties must considered and judged within the cultural contexts to which they belong.."

Theseus' Paradox is now dependent on whether the culture recognizes it as a paradox, or simply the nature of existence. After all, the cells of our body replace themselves completely after about seven years. Either we humans are all ships of Theseus, or we are not.

Perhaps it is best to say that neither our physical substance, nor the physical substance of so much of our heritage, is what matters. What matters about us are the mental characteristics that make us unique, and what matters about historic buildings is the perpetuation of the crafts, techniques, etc that are needed to create and maintain that building. Of course, many of our historic buildings are made up of nonrenewable, or effectively nonrenewable, components. These old-growth timbers and blocks of stone from exhausted quarries should be protected using all reasonable means, but everything else can, and eventually must, be repaired or created anew by someone. And wouldn't it be most educational if repairs and replacements were fabricated in the original manner?

I think that's where my life is going.