The Burra Charter gives a central role to cultural significance (Marquis-Kyle and Walker 1992).

See Tainter and Lucas

(1983) for a critical history and analysis of the significance concept, and Tomlan (1998) for a collection of views
appraising and criticizing the significance concept in the context of historic preservation in the United States.
The operational, applied context of this research is the model process for conservation planning used by the Getty
Conservation Institute (see Figure 1). This model, which is similar to others employed around the world by
conservation agencies and professionals, draws on a collective body of knowledge and experience accumulated over
decades of application.
Value-based management is the coordinated and structured operation of a heritage site with the primary purpose
of protecting the significance of the place as defined by government authorities or other owners, experts, and other
citizens or groups with a legitimate interest in the place.
A note on terminology: methodologies refers to strategies for assessing heritage values; examples of two different
methodologies would be ethnographic research and cost-benefit analysis. The term tools, as used here, refers to
specific research protocols to implement a methodological approach; examples of tools would be oral history, expert
iconographical analysis, or contingent valuation analysis.
These definitions parallel the distinction made in the field of environmental conservation between held values
(the principles or ideologies that guide environmental professionals and advocates in their work or that constitute
the cause of environmentalism) and assigned values (assigned by people and groups to the natural resources
themselves).
Typologies of the values of natural resources provide an interesting analogue to these heritage value typologies. See
Kellert ( ) and Rolston ( ), as well as Satterfields paper in this volume.
A third major category of values could well be added to this frameworkthat of ecological values. Ecological value,
as defined here, stems from the role a heritage site may play in constituting or sustaining a natural ecosystemas,
for instance, in shaping the flow of water or other natural resources or in maintaining species habitat. An
archaeological site could be part of a highly valued coastal environment or watershed. As such, these ecological
values could fall into both sociocultural and economic value categoriesbut they relate to different sets of
stakeholders. Because these values and stakeholders can play a significant role in decisions about a site, ecological
values may in some instances warrant classification as a separate category of heritage value.
A deeper exploration of the ecological values of heritage sites is beyond the scope of this papers argument.Similar
breakdowns have been made in Frey ( ), Throsby ( ), and a World Bank report (Serageldin and Steer ).
Externalities are a third important kind of economic value ;they are a spin-off of the other types of economic
values.Externalities are consequences of transactions and other decisions regarding use and nonuse values, and they
are generatedfor better (positive externalities) and for worse (negative externalities). In the sense of heritage values,
externality values result from transactions involving the use and nonuse values of heritage as described above.
Examples are the travel costs associated with visiting a heritage site or the increased price of land adjacent to a
conserved site. For more background and detail, see the papers by Mourato and Mazzanti and by Throsby in this
volume.
The terms market and nonmarket are used here as synonyms for use and nonuse. I believe that this association
makes these categories more understandable and accepted among noneconomists, and it follows directly from the
clear description David Throsby gives in his paper herein.
See n. .
Another important distinction between types of humanities and social science methodologies is that of positivist or
phenomenological (and, more recently, postpositivist).The positivist/postpositivist distinction is different from the
quantitative-qualitative question but is not unrelated to itquantitative or qualitative methods can be either
positivist or postpositivistand it sheds particular light on the issue of methods for gauging heritage values. Positivist
methods assume a value-free, objective perspective. They exchange scientific certainty for value sensitivity.
Phenomenological or postpositivist methods, by contrast, embrace the values and politics surrounding any
epistemological effort. By embracing value differences and representing the contexts of phenomena being studied,
postpositivist methods should be part of any approach to assessing heritage values. This is not to say that positivist
methods have nothing to contribute to heritage value assessment, but one can say that a strictly positivist
assessment would yield a decidedly partial account of the range of heritage values. See Denzin and Lincoln ( )
and Frankfort-Nachmias and Nachmias ( ).
The political consensus is for broader participation. Note that this consensus is driven by a Western notion of
democracy and will not be accepted or relevant in some cultural contexts. The position adopted here is to advocate
broader participation without imposing it.
See, for instance, the strong base of research and application reflected in Sanoff ( ).
For instance, unstructured, one-on-one interviews might be best suited to eliciting the spiritual values of a site; the
economic use values of the same site would be more susceptible to an economic impact study of tourist
expenditures.
More recently, conservation decision makers have alsoturned to economic analysis and anthropological/community
involvement tools to strengthen the information base for their decisions.
For fragments of the writings of these and other figures from the history of the conservation field, consult the Getty
 Conservation Institutes Historical and Philosophical Issues inthe Conservation of Cultural Heritage (Stanley-Price,
Talley, and Vaccaro ). Some historical accounts and summaries of individual contributions to the history of
architectural conservation are available in Jokilehto ( ).
Development is used here in the World Bank sense of integrated social and economic programs for poverty reduction
in disadvantaged areas of the globe. For more detail, see the World Bank Web site outlining its various programs to
advance development: www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/ thematic.htm .
Interdisciplinary fields such as human geography, material culture, vernacular architecture, and American studies
embrace the idea of a diverse choice of methodologies and a catholic approach to using them.
See www.cr.nps.gov/aad ; see also Lows paper in the present volume.
Two Web sites offer information and a wealth of examples on and rapid rural assessment ( ) approaches:
The Institute of Development Studies, based in England (www.ids.ac.uk/ids) and the United Nations University
(www.unu.edu/unupress/food ). See also Bell and Morse ( ) for a summary. . The overlay mapping of
landscape architect and planner Ian McHarg is an example of a methodology developed through mapping (McHarg
).

Publications of Common Ground (www.commonground. org.uk) include Greeves ( ); for an example of mental
mapping of communities as an educational tool, see the Getty Research Institute project Mapping Local
Knowledge (available at www.getty.edu/research/programs/ public/lllk/ ).

This discussion of economic methods builds on the outline of issues and methods published in Economics and
Heritage Conservation (Mason ). The work of economists to measure cultural values is not dealt with
exhaustively here, even though economists efforts to deal with cultural value constitute one of the critical issues in
this research.

Economic methods and concepts are surveyed in Throsby ( ), in Klamer and Zuidhof s paper in Mason
( ),and in Throsbys and Mourato and Mazzantis papers in this volume.
 . More detail is presented in Throsby ( ).
. Throsbys development of sustainability principles for heritage
conservation is built on the notion of heritage understood
as a form of cultural capital. The capital metaphor is
potentially quite useful. It brings to the surface the need to
invest in heritage and to expect a flow of benefits from it.
Likewise, it highlights the reality that trade-offs must be
made (not everything can be conserved), the reality that values
must be balanced, and so forth. The notion of cultural
capital, like values, could become a way of linking many
of the issues raised in this researchstrategic, methodological,
political, professionalbecause it converts all types of
heritage into a generalized unit (cultural capital), enabling
one to compare conservation resources, processes, and decisions.
The downside is that the capital metaphor suggests
that heritage is in some manner exchangeablewhereas
conservation professionals generally subscribe to an a priori
definition that all heritage is unique and not exchangeable.
This concept of substitutabilitya fundamental part of the
concept of capitalis therefore problematic. One way of
tackling this problem is making distinctions about heritage
that is seen as tradable and therefore perfectly substitutable
with other forms of capital and even consumable,
versus heritage that is sacred and not substitutable. The
idea of tradable or nonsacred heritage highlights the fact
that conservation inherently involves trade-offs against
other social investments and priorities. This understanding
requires that heritage and conservation be seen not in
isolation but, rather, as thoroughly embedded in larger
social contexts.
. The tradable/sacred distinction is outlined in English Heritages
( ) discussion paper on sustainability. It also aligns
with the argument made by David Lowenthal and others
that heritage is a changeable set of things. In order for
heritage to remain relevant to contemporary society, some
things have to be continually valorized and added to theheritage, while other things are devalorized and, in effect,
destroyed. Therefore, heritage implies destruction, just as it
implies conservation. See Lowenthal in Avrami, Mason, and
de la Torre ( ).
. There is an extensive literature on indicators used in sustainable
ecological development. Bell and Morse ( ) and Hart
( ) are excellent sources on this.