VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

This study focuses on the Silk Road, which was registered as a transboundary UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014. While much research has been conducted on this theme, the fact that the component properties of the site are located only in China, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, and that it consists of only land-based assets, points out the need to apprise the Silk Road from the perspective of the marine silk road (MSR) in order to evaluate it from a broader geographical perspective as a shared heritage. In a previous study, the authors focused on the MSR and organized the types and characteristics of related cultural heritage through questionnaire surveys of administrative authorities in coastal and neighboring countries. One of the important findings was that the exchanges of civilizations through MSR had spread to inland areas, and there was diverse cultural heritage related to MSR in inland and non-coastal countries. In this study, we expanded the scope to include inland areas and non-coastal countries of the MSR and set the period up to the modern era, aiming to examine the potential of the Silk Road as a world heritage that spans a broad temporal and spatial axis. Our findings suggest that the MSR functioned as a borderless network that spans a wide area beyond regions and countries. By evaluating the Silk Road from both land and marine perspectives in an integrated manner, we propose a new World Heritage framework as a universal and inclusive shared heritage that can include a variety of properties.