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priscilla 1Crumbling Wonders of the World
May 31st 2010 02:27
This article on Newsweek takes a look at various popular ancient sites around the world which for various reasons are slowly crumbling away.
Here are the top conservation concerns at some of the sites, alternatively view the full article here.
Comments are by Doug Comer, a president at archaeological management organization ICAHM, and Gustavo Araoz, who heads up ICOMOS, an association of conservation professionals working on cultural heritage sites.
Petra has two main enemies: people and water. Named one of the wonders of the natural world in 2007, it now attracts hordes of tourists, up to 800,000 a year by some estimates, who sit on the steps of the theater and rub up against the walls of the Siq (the narrow gorge leading to Petra’s most famous temple), eroding inscriptions carved by stone masons thousands of years ago. “These are embellished with symbols of various deities—both from the Arab and Hellenic traditions. The ones at human height are going to be eradicated because people rub up against them and erode them,” says Comer. Without adequate toilet facilities at the site, he adds, people have been known to wander off and use the tombs to do their business, producing problematic (and unseemly) chemical reactions with the stones. On the structural front, the development of massive tourist infrastructure in the nearby town of Wadi Musa has disturbed ancient water systems, a big danger in an area prone to flash flooding. Where terraces used to carry water away to be soaked up by the soil, now the surfaces near Petra are being turned into less-absorbent parking lots. Since Petra is made of sandstone, which acts like a sponge, it soaks up the minerals in that backed-up water, which can then form crystals and ultimately push the stone itself apart.
The Taj Mahal is in good shape structurally, says Araoz, but has been plagued by another annoyance: Agra’s incredible traffic jams. Since the Taj Mahal was built with pristine white marble, air pollution that creates acidic rain can stain and then eventually erode the stone. Once the problem is spotted, it can be fixed with various stone repair tools, but the original can never fully be restored. At the Taj Mahal, the damage isn’t yet visible to the average tourist’s eye, but scientists have noted enough of a problem for the World Monuments Fund to put the site on its watch list.
Once an imperial city, Angkor has fallen into disrepair. After the Khmer Rouge killed nearly all the country’s intellectuals in the 1970s, the country’s archeology experts were reduced from about a thousand to merely two. Without anyone to protect the site, says Comer, the jungle reclaimed it. Now humongous tree roots have overtaken entire buildings, a difficult problem to correct, since killing the tree can damage the building’s structure. In recent years, the government has put notable efforts into revitalizing Angkor, recognizing it as an asset as it builds up its tourist economy. But without the resources to manage the urban development around it--or to keep tourists from climbing all over the structure--there are questions as to whether the new attention has done harm or good. The government isn’t the only one eying the site as a cash cow. According to Comer, poor management has left much of Angkor’s invaluable antiquities wide open to looting. In the markets in neighboring Bangkok, he says, vendors have tourists select knick-knacks from a book, then send someone over the border to grab the items and sell them off. Carved reliefs are especially popular; in many cases, the faces are simply chiseled off.
The report card on the Great Wall is mixed--by necessity, since the wall isn’t a single structure, and construction varies from place to place. The areas where tourists usually go tend to be in good shape, since they are built of solid stone. But large segments of the wall were built with earthern architecture, like adobe, and are more vulnerable to the elements. Some areas have begun to look more like a long mound than a wall. Araoz says Chinese authorities are on top of the problem, as much as they can be, given the epic length of the wall. They’re applying treatments called sacrificials, coatings that can be replaced as they wear away, preserving the structure inside from erosion. But even this must be handled with care, says Araoz, since it can defeat the purpose if excess water ends up being trapped inside.
The pyramids at Giza are not the structures conservationists spend their time fretting about. Rather, says Araoz, the biggest issue is the urban encroachment of the city of Cairo. At one point, the Egyptian government proposed building a road that would have gone straight through the site, but UNESCO objections put a halt to the plan. “When you are at the back of Sphinx, looking in direction Sphinx is looking, you’re staring right at the edge of the city,” he says, arguing that such development destroys the spirituality of the visit. Such development can have unintended consequences, too. Three years ago, Egyptian authorities realized sewage dumped in a nearby canal was causing a rise in the water table underneath the Sphinx, reaching only 15 feet below the statue. Flakes of limestone began to peel of the surface as moisture was drawn up into the stone. Workers installed pumps to divert the water, but the Sphinx remains the top concern.
Here are the top conservation concerns at some of the sites, alternatively view the full article here.
Comments are by Doug Comer, a president at archaeological management organization ICAHM, and Gustavo Araoz, who heads up ICOMOS, an association of conservation professionals working on cultural heritage sites.
Petra - Jordan
Taj Mahal - India
Angkor - Cambodia
Great Wall - China
Giza - Egypt
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