Monumental Heritage of the Three Gorges Dam
Background
This piece is a report I created as a final project for Monumental Pasts: Cultural Heritage and Politics, the first true archaeology class that I took here at Stanford, early in my sophomore year. The class focused on heritage studies and looked deeply at the role of UNESCO as the premier world heritage organization. For this project, I drew on my Chinese heritage and created an exhibition that examined the construction of the Three Gorges Dam and its impact on heritage conservation, local ecology, and population relocation.
Reflection
This project was a first introduction to both applied anthropological theory and also to the mode of science communication that is the museum exhibition. As an avid museum lover, this project gave me the space to think about what things were most impactful for me when I visited an exhibit, something that is reflected in the design choices that I made, including the interactive games and physical representations of things like the Yangtze and the Three Gorges Dam. In particular, the spatial organization of an exhibit is now always at the back of my mind when I go to museums.
Content-wise, however, this project reflects how new to the practice of archaeology I was, as the exhibit seems to only encapsulate what I've learned as a foreigner about the project. Though there is a brief acknowledgement of this in the paper, it lacks much of the theoretical depth that I've gained since I completed this project, and I would love to revisit this idea now. Because of its geographical basis, this exhibit's format is easily adaptable and can be customized to focus on a wealth of different issues, and I would love to be able to implement the core ideas at some point in the future, whether with the Three Gorges Dam or focused on another environmental issue.