Technology and Humanities: Some Reflections on the Future of Afghan Cultural Heritage

In Afghanistan, as anywhere else, cultural heritage is threatened not only by intentional destruction or negligence but by a kind of ingenuous faith that technology has a productive value in itself. This creates a false dichotomy. While humanities cannot be divorced from technology, even more so, technology cannot work in the field of humanities without scientific planning based on a rigorous humanistic culture. Archaeology creates and analyzes archaeological records; speed and accuracy are being sensibly increased by more and more sophisticated tools such as total station theodolites, GPS, GIS, and 3D-laser scanning. Art history is not a mere list of beautiful artifacts, but rather an analytical process that aims at framing art in history, that is, recognizing the cultural, aesthetic, and social value of visual forms of communications. Its horizon is being progressively expanded by digital archiving and sophisticated physical-chemical analyses. However, not even the most sophisticated tool kit can provide accurate — and, what is more, usable — data collection without a “humanistic” understanding that is interdisciplinary in nature and evaluative and orientative in praxis. This is in-so-far as it establishes connections, organizes conceptual frameworks, envisages new research lines and actions, monitors the progress of the latter, and evaluates their outcomes. Cultural heritage is a reconstruction that implies a workflow process, starting from digging and/or surveying, consolidating and preserving physical materials, and correctly collecting data in order to make them accessible for further analysis. Then the data have to be correctly filed, interpreted, and published. The final goal is not merely preserving tangible objects but safeguarding their intangible value — that is, making their cultural and historical meaning survive into the present. The article analyses multiple case-studies on how extraordinary discoveries, which are noticeably expanding and even changing our knowledge of Afghan cultural heritage, would have passed unnoticed without a rigorous study of the codes, signs, and signifying systems encapsulated in the art objects.