Full text: New perspectives to save cultural heritage

188 
CIP A 2003 XIX th International Symposium, 30 September - 04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey 
1.3 Petroglyphs and Pictographs 
Around the base of the rock are approximately 80 sites 
containing rock paintings or peckings. Some of these sites have 
been developed for visitor access while others are restricted to 
authorised men or women, and others are registered as Sacred 
Sites and governed by Acts of Parliament. The Plan of 
Management recommended that these sites be documented and 
conserved as many are threatened by visitors, wasp nests, water 
damage, dust and animal presence. A project was undertaken 
in 1999 to document these sites, and a report was prepared that 
included data in a format suitable for incorporation into the 
Park Management’s Geographic Information System (GIS). 
The report also included some multimedia material to give an 
indication of the potential for contemporary information 
technology’ to store and manage data like images, drawings, 
maps and tables. This small addition to the report was the seed 
for the development of a unique cultural heritage information 
system. 
1.4 The Cultural Site Management System 
As a result of the initial documentation project, it was decided 
to develop a computer based cultural site management system 
(CSMS) capable of providing information for the day-to-day 
management of the rock painting sites, and providing a safe 
keeping place for the ‘intangible’ heritage of the Anangu people 
(the use of‘intangible’ will be discussed later in this paper, the 
term here is used only for convenience). The system can store 
video, maps, forms, drawings, images, and audio in an indexed, 
web-browser based information system. 
The first release of the system was installed at Uluru in late 
2002, and is currently being populated with data. 
2. PHOTOGRAMMETR1C RECORDING PROJECT 
The rock painting and pecking sites in the overhangs and on the 
rocks around the base of Uluru were documented in 1999 using 
a combination of photogrammetry, photography, and hand 
drawing (Ogleby, 1999). All sites have UTM coordinates as a 
result of a combined GPS/GLONASS survey performed at the 
same time. 
The photogrammetric recording undertaken on site used both a 
film-based camera for the record photography and a digital 
camera for the provision of survey control. This innovative 
approach ensured that the maximum number of sites could be 
documented in the limited time available, there being no need 
to use conventional surveying equipment to coordinate the 
small targets used to control the photogrammetry. 
The primary record was obtained using a modified Hasselblad 
500ELM camera with 50mm lens, and 100ASA colour 
transparency film. The 100ASA film has small grain size, 
which allows for a high level of detail to be contained in the 
photographs. The film has been processed by a custom 
laboratory, ensuring consistency of quality and good archival 
qualities. The men’s, women’s and public sites were processed 
separately, and the restrictions on gender access was maintained 
by the processing laboratory. The resolution of the 100ASA 
film also allows high resolution digital scans to be acquired 
from the images if required. 
Small plastic targets were affixed temporarily to the rock 
surface away from areas of pigment and/or sensitivity so that a 
network of coordinated control points could be obtained. The 
targets were removed after the photography. They were 
unnumbered, but are annotated on reference photographs. 
Figure 2: Typical recording session showing T-bar, Hasselblad, 
flash and targets on the rock surface 
The method used to transfer arbitrary coordinates to the targets 
uses a calibrated T-bar and multiple, convergent digital images 
of the target array. These images were acquired with a Kodak 
DC210 with a metric calibration, and are solely for the 
provision of survey control (they have been exposed and framed 
for this purpose, they do not form part of the primary record). 
Coordinates are transferred from the T-bar to the targets using a 
bundle adjustment photogrammetric solution via the Australis 
software system developed by the Department of Geomatics 
(Fraser and Edmundson, 2000). 
The photographs, control images and coordinates are kept in a 
fire-proof safe at the Park headquarters. 
3. THE ‘INTANGIBLE’ CULTURAL HERITAGE OF 
‘COUNTRY’ 
There have been formal developments recently regarding the 
documentation of‘intangible’ cultural heritage, in particular the 
preparation of the 2003 ‘Preliminary Draft Convention for the 
Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage’ by UNESCO 
(UNESCO 2003a). This Draft recognises the importance of 
intangible heritage, and recommends methods be developed to 
preserve this component of the culture of humankind. 
The Intangible Heritage Unit of UNESCO’s Cultural Heritage 
Division defines intangible heritage as being “... oral 
traditions, customs, languages, music, dance, rituals, festivities, 
traditional medicine and pharmacopoeia, the culinary arts and 
all kinds of special skills connected with the material aspects of 
culture, such as tools and the habitat’ (UNESCO 2003b). The 
role of the division is perhaps best summed up by the phrase ... 
a link between the safeguarding of the tangible and 
preservation of the intangible heritage (ibid), which is also an 
apt description of the aims of the project discussed in this paper. 
However this separation of tangible and intangible cultural 
heritage is not appropriate at Uluru (and many other places for 
that matter), heritage is a connected whole where the visible 
signs of ‘culture’ (say the rock paintings) are merely one 
manifestation of the life and beliefs of the people, and an 
integral part of tjukurpa. There are songs, dances, stories and 
behaviours that form part of the Uluru story. The separation of 
song and dance from the rock paintings and the fauna is 
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