ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the Brazilian experience in the field of destruction and conservation of archaeological heritage. Before discussing any particular experience, it will be helpful to explore the different meanings attached to the concept of ‘cultural property’ or ‘heritage’. Romance languages use terms originating in the Latin patrimonium to refer to ‘property inherited from one’s father or ancestor, heritage, inheritance’, as was the case in Middle English. German uses Denkmalpflege, ‘the care of monuments’, while the English language adopted ‘heritage’, originally restricted to ‘that which has been or may be inherited’, but through the same process of generalization which affected the Romance ‘patrimony’ it too was to be used as a general reference to monuments inherited from past generations. In all of these expressions, there is always a reference to remembrance: moneo (Latin, ‘to cause or make to think’, in both patrimonium and monumentum), Denkmal (German, denken ‘to think’), and to the forefathers, implicit in ‘inheritance’. Side by side with these rather subjective and affectionate terms, which link people to their real or supposed ancestors, there is also a more economic or legal definition, ‘cultural property’, or ‘cultural assets’, as is usual in Romance languages (Italian, beni culturali), implying a less passionate and personal link between monument and society, so much so that it is treated as a ‘property’. As the definition of ‘property’ is a political one, ‘cultural property is always a political matter, not a theoretical one’, as Carandini (1979: 234) puts it.
