Revealing the Invisible: The Heritagization Process of the Underwater Environment
Revealing the Invisible: The Heritagization Process of the Underwater Environment

Summary/Abstract: Cultural heritage is not a given concept, it is a social construct. Thanks to the development of the SCUBA divingtechniques, the XXth century saw the gradual heritagization of the underwater environment, with the emergenceof the concept of "underwater cultural heritage" whose most relevant outcome is the 2001 UNESCO Convention onthe Protection of the Underwater Heritage. However, the analysis of six case studies from the Mediterraneancontext shows how the process of institutionalization of underwater archaeology is not completed yet. Moreover,the general public still does not perceive ancient objects lying beneath the water as their heritage. The case of theinvisible underwater heritage was the perfect example which showed how, in order to build a powerful culturalobject (Griswold, 1987: 4), it is necessary to make it really accessible to people and, especially, linked to apowerful narrative. The analysis was developed using the Cultural Diamond (Griswold, 2004: 16) as a descriptivemodel and Schudson's (Schudson, 1989) five dimensions as an analytical tool.

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