By Madeline Bonner and Noah Price, Monuments Toolkit
Monuments Toolkit Program Associates Noah Price and Madeline Bonner spent a week exploring the modern town of Bergama as well as the ancient Hellenistic acropolis of Pergamon, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as Pergamon and its Multi-Layered Cultural Landscape. Tours of urban heritage sites, in-home visits to local craftspeople, archaeological site visits, and collaborative work with emerging cultural heritage professionals from around the globe were part of this year’s International Summer School of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) University Forum. The workshop theme, “Coexistence – Bergama: Rethinking Living Heritage in a Layered City,” prompted participants to consider how the layers of cultural heritage that have been established in Bergama throughout time intersect, overlap, and connect. The week-long event was organized by the ICOMOS Türkiye Emerging Professionals Working Group.
Participants from sixteen countries attended the summer school and about half of them were from Türkiye. This facilitated internationally-informed conversations rooted in cultural heritage practice within Türkiye and a deep knowledge of Turkish culture. Across professional and free time, participants formed friendships, shared traditional Turkish meals, and discussed the many layers of beauty in Bergama.
Rethinking Living Heritage in a Layered City
The overarching theme of “Rethinking Living Heritage in a Layered City” was broken into three subthemes: re-considering the urban integrity of the Red Hall and its surroundings, visioning the future of the Sümerbank industrial site, and transmitting the narrative of the multi-layered cultural landscape. The subtheme centered around the ruins of the ancient Roman Red Hall prompted participants to consider how the urban site can become part of the contemporary fabric of Bergama and be functionality integrated into the surrounding neighborhoods. A focus on the Sümerbank industrial site discussed the sociocultural importance of the site to many Bergama citizens whose lives centered around the place from 1960-2004. Subtheme participants were asked to consider potential futures for the portion of the Sümerbank site that is not being used by the Dokuz Eylül University Bergama Vocational School. Lastly, the final subtheme focused on methods for communicating the breadth of Bergama’s multi-layered cultural landscape to new audiences including the wider public. The layers of Bergama’s cultural heritage form a complex web including the Hellenistic, Roman/ Byzantine, Ottoman, and Republican built environment all intertwined with the intangible cultural heritage of Bergama, such as the traditions of carpet weaving and papyrus-making. Participants were tasked with considering strategies for conveying the multi-faceted narrative of Bergama and the surrounding area to the public.
Connecting Bergama to the Monuments Toolkit
Although the Monuments Toolkit primarily works with sites based in the United States, this experience allowed the Toolkit’s associates to explore other methods for place-based heritage interventions. The Toolkit’s specific pillar of reinterpretation is directly applicable to the Bergama’s UNESCO World Heritage Site inscription as a “multi-layered landscape.” Despite being established as such, the reality of cultural tourism to the area predominantly focuses on the ancient heritage, particularly the Hellenistic and Roman ruins as opposed to the built environment and longstanding traditions of the people developed in the Ottoman and Republican eras of the town.
Bonner and Price participated in the third subtheme focused on transmitting the narrative of these several layers due to its relatability to many historic sites in the United States. In recent years, heritage professionals have recognized the oppressive nature of some historic sites, noting how they uphold historical narratives of people and their ideals that have minoritized other communities. Furthermore, the elimination of or failure to tell the narratives of these minoritized communities at sites of heritage is as oppressive as idolizing specific perpetrators. Debates around controversial monuments are often rooted in a complex web of relationships and narratives through which people understand representations of heritage. Thus, participating in the Coexistence – Bergama workshop to analyze and provide strategies for how multi-layered narratives can be shared to wider publics in Turkiye had particular relevance to how the Toolkit might be able to operate with similar sites in the United States.
The reality of reconciling historic sites both in the U.S. and abroad is recognizing that there is no single one-size-fits-all approach. Some states have laws that forbid removal, relocation, or reinterpretation of monuments. Some communities, even if allowed by law, are resistant to changes that feel too dramatic. However, utilizing other tools in the storytelling of a site to complete the narrative, as suggested by the Toolkit’s associates in Bergama, offer a softer, yet still holistic approach.
Results of the Summer School
In order to transmit the multi-layered narrative of Bergama, Bonner, Price, and the several other heritage professionals within their subtheme developed a “before-during-after” approach. The “before” project sought to answer the question of “Why should you come to Bergama?” in a way that included the numerous layers of heritage as opposed to pointing to one specific site. The work also needed to demonstrate the prevalence of each of these layers to publics that may not have the opportunity to visit Bergama in person. Thus, a short form video series was created.
Within this short-form video series, the goal was to allow viewers to “Walk Through the Layers of Bergama,” witnessing the living heritage both holistically and with magnified views into specific heritage assets. In order to propose this campaign to the municipal government of Bergama, four sample videos were created:
- Walking Through the Layers
- Kermes, Bergama’s Annual Festival
- Local Food of Bergama
- Proposals for the Sümerbank Factory
The “during” subgroup focused on answering the question, “How do we encourage and assist visitors to create multi-day itineraries that teach them about the intangible and tangible cultural heritage of Bergama using a method that is respectful to the people of Bergama and sustainable for the city?” The proposed strategy was to do so through a digital platform and application that pointed visitors in the direction of experiences that engage with all types of heritage within the living city. This might include participating in a weaving workshop with a local craftsperson, enjoying a guided hike within the natural landscape, and sitting down for a traditional meal prepared by a family-owned business all in the same day. Each layer of the Bergama’s living heritage (music, food, architecture, craft, etc.) would be identifiable as a route or series of points in a digital map format. In theory, the strategy would encourage visitors to plan multi-day stays in the city in which they spend time co-existing with the people of Bergama and experiencing the many unique dimensions of Bergama culture.
The final subgroup, “after,” focused on answering, “How can visitors of Bergama leave their own layer of heritage on the city?” In order to ensure that visitors walk away with more knowledge than that of ancient ruins, they must understand specific aspects of the intangible culture that have been prevalent for nearly as long as the built environment. Thus, the final subgroup developed a plan to collaborate with local artists to allow visitors to participate in weaving canopies to be displayed on the major streets of the town. Not only does this project account for visitors learning about the artisanal practices of Bergama much more firmly rooted in the Ottoman and Republican history of the town, but it has practical benefits such as providing shade and a physical manifestation of their learning. In a way, these canopies serve as their own monument representative of all that a visitor might learn while at this World Heritage Site.
Conclusion
In an ideal world, any monument has permission to evolve and reflect the community that continues to uphold it. In societies that sometimes struggle with the effects of change, providing solutions outside of physical change to a monument can be just as effective in altering the narrative of a historic site. One might be able to argue that a statue or obelisk can only represent so much in the telling of a historical narrative, but the digital world allows us at least one method to ensure that no piece of history is left behind when we analyze a site’s importance to our past. It is in this sense that the United States has the opportunity to learn from much older nations that historic storytelling does not need to be abridged to be effective.