Systematically Thinking About Heritage

Heritage work requires collaboration across disciplinary specialties and with the people who create, use, and hold heritage. Communities of practice—like preservationists, interior designers, and historians—inherently rely on systems for structure, organization, relationships, boundaries, and identity. Systems thinking approaches are essential in rapidly changing circumstances. Modeling a complex interdisciplinary system of dynamic parts challenges heritage specialists to consider origins, implications, and consequences distant from, but linked to, heritage itself. Thinking about heritage as part of a system identifies a range of new opportunities and contexts for using and supporting heritage. This essay’s purpose centers on application—in how we use heritage in making decisions—rather than theory. Using a personal story about a longcase clock, the essay demonstrates how systematically thinking about heritage changes the focus of heritage work. The proposed heritage–human–ecology system model emphasizes the interaction of heritage and living.