Preserving heritage sites promotes local identities and strengthens their link with local communities. It also raises pride that encourages locals to invite others to visit and celebrate. It is thus crucial to involve all parties in managing heritage sites to ensure sustainability. Such principles are challenging if the subject is a pilgrimage site due to its moral association with different cultures embracing the religion. The presentation/interpretation of the historical attributes in pilgrimage sites is crucial to reflect their religious association as well as to respect historical facts. Accentuating authenticity also strengthens the bond of the believers. The mandate is then protecting those valuable attributes, which are usually marginalized due to the tyranny of some spiritualties and to the admission of large numbers of pilgrims to raise economic profits. The research evaluates those contradictions in selected pilgrimage sites: Makkah in Saudi Arabia, Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and Fushimi Inari Shrine in Japan. It applies the Nara Grid to verify the authenticity of their historic attributes and to confirm that the conditions of pilgrimage in the three sites drastically differ from what they originally were. This paper points to the reasons that led to these differences, the impact on the authenticity of values and attributes, and the status of the cultural heritage if managed away from the participatory process. The research aims to draw on the results of scientific analysis of the current situation of those sites to decipher the management deficiencies affecting the authenticity of their historic attributes.

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This is a review of a project aimed at assisting the Libyan Department of Archaeology with the conservation and management of their mosaic heritage. Over the course of a year we undertook an evaluation trip along the coast of Libya and then put on two workshops for the Department's staff to help build capacity. The workshops disseminated complementary content on the protection of mosaics and their management to two different contingents: managers and technicians. The teaching was intended to empower Libyans by giving them the confidence to make simple and sound decisions, and to encourage them to join more formal training courses run by major international organisations.

ABSTRACT:Documenting the physical characteristics of historic structures is the first step for any preventive maintenance, monitoring, conservation, planning and promotion action. Metric documentation supports informative decision-making process for property owners, site managers, public officials, and conservators. This information serves also a broader purpose, over time, it becomes the primary means by which scholars, heritage professionals, and the general public understand a site that radically changed or disappeared. Further, documentation supports monitoring as well as the character-defining elements analysis, relevant to define the values of the building for the local and international community. The awareness of these concepts oriented the digital documentation and training activities, developed between 2016 and 2017, for the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities (BACA) in Bahrain. The developed activities had two main aims: a) support the local staff in using specific recording techniques to efficiently document and consequently preserve built heritage sites with appropriate accuracy and in a relatively short period; b) develop a pilot project in collaboration with BACA to validate the capacity of the team to accurately document and produce measured records for the conservation and management of Bahrain built heritage. The documentation project has been developed by a multidisciplinary team of experts from BACA, Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS), Carleton University, Canada and a contracted researcher from the Gicarus Lab, Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI) in Italy. In the training activities, the participants have been exposed to a wide range of recording techniques, illustrating them the selection criteria for the most suitable one, according to requirements, site specifications, categories of values identified for the various built elements, and budget. The pilot project has been tested on three historical structures, both with strong connotations in the Bahrain cultural identity: the Shaikh Isa bin Ali house, Aljazzaf house and the Siyadi Majlis. These two buildings, outstanding examples of Bahrain architecture as well as tangible memory of the country history, have been documented employing several digital techniques, including: aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry, rectifying photography, total station and 3D laser scanning.

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