VIRTUAL Barcelona
Abstract
Somapura Mahavihara is an 8th-century Buddhist monastery and a world heritage site in a remote part of northwest Bangladesh. This monastery is praised among global scholars for its outstanding architectural characteristics, construction system, and mind-blowing ornamentation details. The twenty-two-hector area of the masonry construction shows a captivating detail of the terracotta art of Bengal. The walls of the entire monastery were claded with thousands of terracotta plaques of emblematic iconography representing Vajrayana Buddhism which was erected and flourished in Bengal during the four hundred years reign of the Bengali Pala dynasty. In 2016 the ICOMOS Bangladesh, UNESCO World Heritage, and Republic of Korea Fund in Trust Program initiated a revival of the material culture of terracotta art of Somapura Mahavihara. They tried to include local potters in heritage management. In a pilot project, the Department of Archaeology along with the World Heritage community trained selected potters from the nearby villages in terracotta art with the hope to continue the heritage identity in the locality and include local community in heritage management. The project failed as the local potters did not have enough enthusiasm to continue or include that art in their livelihood. The fundamental gap between the existing terracotta plaque of Somapura Mahavihara and the attempt to revitalize that art among the local community was the lack of understanding of heritage identity. The famous terracotta art of Somapura was not a heritage that the local potters could connect with, even though those were a significant contribution of clay art. Through a mixed methodology of ethnographic fieldwork and literature review, this research discusses the reason for the failure to incorporate local potters in the heritage management process of Somapura Mahavihara while understanding the meaning of heritage in material culture.
Pushpita Eshika, PhD is a heritage professional and a researcher at Arkansas State University. After graduating in Architecture from Khulna University, Bangladesh, Pushpita pursued a master’s in architecture at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, focusing on the architectural morphology of historic Buildings of Bangladesh. Her Ph.D. work emphasized the underlying relationship between humans and built heritage. Besides her research work, as a graduate assistant, Pushpita has earned hands-on experience in critical heritage analysis and management, and ethnographic field studies.