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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2014
A tjuringa – it is worthwhile repeating – is an oval plaque made of stone or mulga wood. It is both musical score and mythological guide to the Ancestor's travels. It is the actual body of the Ancestor … It is a man's alter ego; his soul; his obol to Charon; his title-deed to country; his passport and his ticket ‘back in’… If you smashed or lost your tjuringa, you were beyond the human pale, and had lost all hope of ‘returning’. Of one young layabout in Alice [Springs], I heard it said, ‘He hasn't seen his tjuringa. He don't know who he is.’
(Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, 1987)Introduction
The world is awash with heritage. Every town and village has some historic building or site, some collection of artefacts, or some local tradition or custom the preservation of which provides the inhabitants with a connection to their past. At the other end of the scale, the great museums and galleries of the world housing priceless art treasures, the historic cities, the monuments and sites to which countless tourists make pilgrimage, all represent an international heritage for which there is a vast and ever-growing demand. On the supply side, old buildings jostle for listing as heritage structures worthy of preservation and museums cannot keep pace with the range and number of artworks and other cultural materials queueing up for admission into their collections.
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