Page 84 - Manual for Activities directed at the Underwater Cultural Heritage

While the Rules concern activities directed at under- water cultural heritage, such activities are only a part of the wider heritage field and of wider heritage policies. A standardized approach to preliminary assessment – across the range of different sites and purposes– adds to the possibilities for comparing sites and for prioritizing protection, research and monitoring, both within a region and across national borders. Maritime cultural heritage research is by definition an international discipline: submerged landmasses may have joined presently separate na- tions. Ships were built to cross maritime borders. Sea routes connected people, markets and cultures. Common standards for assessment are therefore an asset.
Assessment of significance
One of the aims of a preliminary assessment is to establish the significance of a site. This is required in Rule 14, but it does not define what significance is; nor could it. Like beauty, significance cannot be defined in legal terms. Nevertheless, although it is difficult to strictly define, significance is quite easy to understand. In relation to a site, an object or a story, significance is the quality that makes it meaningful or of consequence, for a person, for a group, or for humanity as a whole. It is precisely because of its significance that something is regarded as heritage, as a legacy to be preserved and passed on to future generations. That is why significance drives heritage management, interventions and protection. It was in fact in recognition of the universal ‘significance’ of underwater cultural heritage that a convention for its protection was called for in the first place.
The assessment of significance has an effect on all subsequent choices and management decisions. It:
• determines whether a site is − considered heritage;
− inscribed in the inventory;
− listed in a specific protection scheme;
• determines what opportunities are recognized; • prefigures
− the sentiments of potential ‘stakeholders’;
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Preliminary work