August 26, 2011<\/p>\n
Mr. John L. Nua, III, Chairman
\nAdvisory Council on Historic Preservation
\nOld Post Office Building
\n1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 809
\nWashington, DC 20004<\/p>\n
Dear Mr. Nau,<\/p>\n
The UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage was adopted by the 31st general conference of UNESCO in November 2001. The Convention provides a guideline for managing activities related to underwater cultural heritage.\u00a0 Included in the Convention are the Annex Rules that outline best practices for responsible underwater archaeology and provide guides for research, documentation and responsible artifact care.\u00a0 The National Park Service and NOAA participated in the development of the Convention and Annex Rules.\u00a0 While there was not complete agreement about the Convention, all parties agreed that the Annex Rules provide an excellent international standard for the practice of underwater archaeology and stewardship of submerges sites.<\/p>\n
The Board of the American Institute for Conservation of Artistic and Historic Works (AIC) urges you to endorse the Annex Rules as a requirement for the practice of underwater archaeology and submerged heritage management.\u00a0 Celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2011, AIC supports historic preservation and the 3500 professional conservators practicing in the US.\u00a0 Preservation does not just mean saving the physical object for display in a museum but, in many cases more importantly, preservation means saving information about the object \u2013 where it came from, who owned and used it, when it was made or used, and how it came to be in an underwater site.\u00a0 This information tells the story of our past; the story brings history to life for the public.\u00a0 Preserving and making the stories accessible to the public provides an educational resource and heritage tourism venue.\u00a0 Conservators of archaeological artifacts can preserve the individual objects but need your assistance to encourage responsible and professional excavation, documentation, research and management of underwater cultural heritage sites.\u00a0 Please support and incorporate the Annex Rules, some of which are already practiced by Federal agency archaeologists, into the Council\u2019s guidelines and strategies.<\/p>\n
The Convention and Annex Rules are available on the UNESCO web site at http:\/\/unesdoc.unesco.org\/images\/0012\/001260\/126065e.pdf.\u00a0 Please let me know if you would like additional information or have questions about the Annex Rules or AIC conservators.\u00a0 Thank you.<\/p>\n
Sincerely,<\/p>\n
Meg Loew Craft
\nAIC, President
\nSenior Objects Conservator
\nWalters Art Museum
\n600 North Charles St.
\nBaltimore, MD 21201
\nmcraft@thewalters.org
\n410-547-9000 x629<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
August 26, 2011 Mr. John L. Nua, III, Chairman Advisory Council on Historic Preservation Old Post Office Building 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 809 Washington, DC 20004 Dear Mr. Nau, The UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage was adopted by the 31st general conference of UNESCO in November 2001. The Convention … Continue reading “AIC Releases Statement on the 10th Anniversary of the Adoption of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":1527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-disasters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}