ALIGHT · Antartic Living Heritage

The project will shed light on the potential Antarctic living heritage, building tools to map the cultural diversity of the continent. Antarctica is the only continent on Earth with no native human population, territorial demarcations, or urbanization. The human presence is historically recent, beginning approximately two centuries ago. Since 1960, the occupation of Antarctica by people has been officially regulated by the Antarctic Treaty to occur only temporarily, by seasonal rotation, based on scientific proposals, and to generate a very low impact on the environment. Due to the Treaty, logistical cooperation between countries and the coexistence of teams from different nationalities became a notable fact at the Antarctic Scientific Stations. These aspects contribute to the development of a unique set of cultural expressions on the continent, which have never been systematically studied before and, consequently, are apart from protocols for safeguarding global intangible heritage. To begin to overcome this separation, this project pursues the construction of research guidelines oriented to the case of Antarctica and a cultural map using ARCHES, an open software platform belonging to the Getty Foundation based on Geographic Information System-GIS. ARCHES is a software for managing cultural heritage, which, in addition to the geolocation of cultural elements, allows different types of data processing. The guides for this research will be built based on anthropological methodology and ethnographic data collection, and will take into account global cultural and heritage policies recommended by organizations such as UNESCO. The map will be an open tool, prepared to be shared, completed, and improved by future initiatives. Thus, the project will initiate an important inventory to identify and safeguard the Antarctic living heritage, provide resources for society to better understand how people live in Antarctica and how cultural expressions have been generated there.