Terra Cognita, Down and Under, Living Stones and the Sound of Stones

Only one year after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage was adopted (2003), “Museums and Intangible Heritage” was the theme for the General Conference of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), 2004, in Seoul, Korea. In its program announcement, a new challenge for the museums community was raised:

Living in the realm of natural and social environments, people create both tangible and intangible heritage formations that express the continuity of life in all its diversity. It is widely acknowledged that museologists across the world have so far paid great attention to collecting, preserving, researching, exhibiting and exchanging tangible objects, both cultural and natural, in establishing museums as places for research, community development, heritage interpretation and public education.

Culture manifests itself not only in tangible forms but also through intangible elements. It is transmitted from generation to generation by means of language, music, theatre, attitudes, gestures, practices, customs and a whole range of other forms of mediation, as well as objects and places in which the ideas of human beings are located… . The worldwide museum community now recognizes that it will have to pay significant attention to intangible cultural heritage as well as tangible resources by fostering interdisciplinary approaches. In the preservation of the totality of heritage resources, museums should continue to further their core business of collection, preservation, research, exchange, exhibition and education.… ¹

The International Committee for Museums and Collections of Natural History (NATHIST), also focused—next to “Ethics” and “Biodiversity” –on “Intangible Heritage”. Gerhard Winter, secretary (1998–2004) and chair (2004–2010) of ICOM NATHIST asked in his letter of invitation the question:

We manage nature scientifically in taxa, but all over the world people established their own and maybe quite different “criteria”, e.g. according to the medical value or according to the importance for daily life. People make rocks sing and many traditions are centered on animals, plants, rocks and water. How to present these intangible values in natural history museum? ²

The contributions related primarily to intangible cultural heritage relative to a natural environment, while others concentrated on intangible elements in a museological context. ³ Hans-Albert Treff of Germany in his speech “Intangible Heritage: Remarks of a Philistine” underlined that “an unburdened term (Intangible Heritage) for the ICOM Conference would have been a great challenge to put the “intangible heritage”, as created by nature itself, into a debate”. In fact, he volunteered a first definition of “Intangible Natural Heritage” by distinguishing it from “Intangible Cultural Heritage”. Ongoing discussions showed the difficulty in differentiating cultural –from natural heritage.