Nature as Curator: Cultural Heritage in the Anthropocene
Nature as Curator: Cultural Heritage in the Anthropocene

Summary/Abstract: The paper is an attempt to reflect on the status of cultural heritage in the age of the Anthropocene in connection to new materialism theories. The questions that are posed concern the condition of material artifacts and monuments that are being transformed naturally and postnaturally, a character of those metamorphoses, as well as potential strategies for heritage threatened by the spectrum of destruction. Theses are illustrated within an example of intensified processes of (post)natural erosion at the archaeological site of Petra, Jordan. Considerations serve as a ground for reevaluation of the concept of material cultural heritage with an application of selected lens coming from new materialism (vitalistic materialism, agential realism and nomadic subjectivity). The reflection on the dynamism and biologism of heritage allows eventually to connect the new ontology of objects with the alternative ways of protection and care of the monuments.

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