CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Al-Hamdi, Nasser |
|---|---|
| Title | Decay and Abandonment of the Old Villages in the Western Highlands of Yemen |
| Summary | The western highlands region of Yemen is home to numerous abandoned villages, scattered on mountain summits, together with terracing and other material reflections of agricultural traditions and customs from the Yemeni rural landscape. These abandoned villages represent a long and continuous settlement process since their emergence in the Bronze Age. From this period onwards, the birth of such settlements and the continuous cycle of decay, abandonment, and rebirth continue to the present day. These ongoing processes greatly contribute to the formation and preservation of rural landscapes, including abandoned villages. With the emergence of heritage preservation in the nineteenth-century West, the traditional practice of preserving material remnants of the past witnessed an accumulation crisis, driven by the fear of losing material cultural memory and its meanings. Some practitioners of heritage preservation now suggest finding new ways to replace certain traditional practices by allowing the natural processes of decay and change to occur, with limited intervention, in order to preserve the cultural memory associated with heritage objects. This research adopts a post-preservation practice approach to the physical heritage of the old abandoned villages, as these villages have succumbed to entropic forces represented by natural, social, and political factors. These forces have contributed to the current rural landscape, characterized by its abandoned villages, in the western highlands region of Yemen. This research proposes documenting the inherited knowledge that shaped these villages by conducting further studies related to tangible and intangible cultural heritage in the region. Additionally, it suggests establishing documentation projects for these abandoned villages before their physical disappearance in the near future, in order to preserve and continue the cultural memory for future generations. |
| Supervisor | Choyke, Alice; Laszlovszky, József |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/al-hamdi_nasser.pdf |
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