Toward a Complexity Framework for Heritage Futures: Famagusta, its Armenian Church and SHIFT

Abstract

As a working definition, we consider heritage as the treasure of human experiences (i.e., the comprehensive storage system of human knowledge and values). To make heritage organized, accessible, and useful in our increasingly complex society we envision a new science of heritage, seen as a state-of-the-art multidisciplinary domain, which investigates and pioneers integrated action plans and solutions in response to, and in anticipation of, the challenges arising from heritage issues in society: conservation, capturing, access, interpretation, and management. We propose, in this chapter, to observe heritage through the lens of complexity and study emergent properties in human-heritage-landscape systems that typically have many strongly interacting players. Under the programmatic title SHIFT (Sustainable Heritage Impact Factor Theory), we aim to investigate and identify how heritage data can be distilled into knowledge, so as to support political decision-making with scientific methods and evidence to reinforce the identities and values of all stakeholders.