Introduction

As its dictionary definition indicates, heritage is something inherited from the past. Attaching the adjective ‘cultural’ defines its scope more precisely, relating it to inherited things that have some cultural significance, where the term ‘cultural’ is used both in its broad anthropological and in its more specific artistic interpretation. Three types of cultural heritage can be identified:

• built or immoveable heritage, such as buildings, monuments, sites or locations, including groups of buildings and sites found in historic city centres;

• moveable heritage, such as artworks, archives, artefacts, or other objects of cultural significance; and

• intangible heritage, existing as works of music or literature handed down to us from the past, or as inherited practices, language, rituals, skills or traditional knowledge that communities and groups recognise as culturally important.

Although the term heritage invokes images of the distant past, some heritage items may be of quite recent origin; for example, the Sydney Opera House, a building identified as being of World Heritage significance, was only completed in 1973.

Simple economic concepts such as scarcity and opportunity costs can be readily applied to the analysis of decisions concerning cultural heritage. What can be preserved and what cannot?