Mapping, Documenting, Cataloguing
Cortijos, Haciendas y Lagares
The cataloguing of a Cultural Asset “is the first driving force of every action of protection” (Román Fernández-Baca, 1996).
The primal action of protection and therefore of safeguarding. Cataloguing necessarily includes documentation as well as geographic and cartographic identification of the asset.
A catalogue is “an organized list in which books, documents, people, objects… that are interrelated, are included or described individually” (RAE Dictionary, 2020). Including a Cultural Asset in a catalogue implies its identification as an asset in the first place. That gives it visibility socially, enables public recognition of its heritage dimension and must involve its dissemination.
Cataloguing requires documenting, deepening the knowledge of the Asset. The documents must be scientific and aimed to the determination of its heritage values. Heritage characterizing is the main objective of the catalogue. A process that is open and gets feedback from the rest of actions of heritage management.
Characterization integrates the different scales in which the asset stablishes interactions, from the object to the landscape, immaterial and physical. This wide and complex interrelations is where sustainability and built heritage must get together.