Time, Memory, Place and Land: Social Meaning and Heritage Conservation in Australia

One of the challenges facing heritage conservation practice in Australia is how to deal with the forms of social meaning that different community groups, families and individuals attribute to places and landscapes through their lived experiences, memories and associations. Conventionally, heritage conservation has focused on fabric with less emphasis on the non-material aspects of cultural heritage. There is, however, increasing recognition that intangible values play an important role in how people interact with their social and cultural environments and the importance of these values impact on the ways in which people respond to conservation needs.

In this paper we explore issues of experience, memory and time depth in relation to people’s connection to place and landscape, based on our experiences of working in indigenous, colonial and migrant heritage across Australia. There are three main themes: 1. The integrating value of ‘landscape’ to connect tangible and intangible values. 2. The importance of privileging recent time and living memory 3. Respecting connections in place management. We conclude with some emerging challenges in managing for all heritage values. We refer to several case studies throughout this paper to illustrate these themes.