Preface
As our friend and colleague Thongsa has written in his foreword, we are both passionate about the cultural heritage of the Lao People's Democratic Republic, a landlocked and often overlooked nation wedged between Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, and China in the heart of mainland Southeast Asia. From the magnificent Khmer ruins at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Vat Phou to the mysterious stone containers of the Plain of Jars, and from the elegant French colonial architecture of the capital city, Vientiane, to the charming World Heritage Site of Luang Prabang, Laos offers the casual visitor a glimpse into the history and culture of the Southeast Asian region, and the opportunity to meet the people who may have the biggest smiles in the world. To the obsessed scholar, the country offers fertile, and often untouched, ground for study. While the archaeological sites of Cambodia have been the focus of hundreds of millions of dollars of work in the past thirty years, and the temples, sites, and cities of Vietnam have been studied in great detail by both Vietnamese and foreign scholars, there are few who have devoted themselves to the heritage and history of Laos.Kris first visited the caves in 1995, as part of a two-week trip through Laos, at a time when a journey around the country meant dodgy airline flights, brown food with no trace of green anywhere, quirky hotel rooms, and virtually no other visitors with whom to share the haunting rituals of the monks gathering alms in the early morning, the extraordinary architecture of the temples, and the charming and welcoming Lao people. Brian got there before she did, first visiting in 1993 when he was the manager of the Lao-Australian archaeological and conservation team that worked at the Tam Ting caves from 1992 to 1997. Kris has returned virtually every year since 1995, either alone or as a lecturer with groups, and has witnessed the many changes, most for better although some not, that have taken place in the country. Brian has devoted a significant portion of his professional career in the past years to Laos. While there are others with deeper knowledge of Lao history and art, we doubt that there are any who care more about the heritage of the country than we do. We hope that this book, which we have written based on the work done by the Lao-Australian archaeological and conservation team in the 1990s and on our research into the caves and their history, will provide a useful framework for all level of visitors to the caves to understand their beauty, history, and significance, and the compelling reasons why they must be conserved.
About The Author
Brian J. Egloff is an adjunct professor at the University of Canberra and research affiliate with the School of Culture, History and Language, The Australian National University, his alma mater. For his PhD, Egloff conducted research into the prehistory of Eastern Papua that led to a position as deputy director of the Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery. More recently he was president of the International Committee for Archaeological Heritage Management, ICOMOS. His most recent book considers the illicit trade in cultural property, Bones of the Ancestors: the Story of the Ambum Stone, from the New Guinea Highlands to the Antiquities Market to Australia.
Kristin Kelly spent eighteen years at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles before moving to India to work for the government of Punjab State on a heritage center devoted to the history and culture of the Sikhs. She then returned to the US, where she now works as a freelance researcher and writer for museums and foundations. She earned an AB in history of art from Bryn Mawr College, and a PhD in art history and archaeology from Columbia University. Kelly is the author of The Extraordinary Museums of Southeast Asia (Harry N. Abrams, 2001).
About The Book
Sacred Caves of Tam Ting (Pak Ou), Luang Prabang, Laos: Mystery, Splendor, and Desecration is the story of the caves, of the collabora-tive international conservation project, and of what happened after the project closed in 1997. It places the caves in context and explains their significance and beauty. The book is both a cautionary tale about the importance and fragility of material cultural heritage, and a message of hope for the future of heritage conservation in the region. The Tam Ting (Pak Ou) Caves, are located some twenty-five kilometers north of the World Heritage Site of Luang Prabang (Laos). In 1992, as Laos was beginning to open up to the world, the University of Canberra and the Department of Information and Culture of the Lao People's Democratic Republic began a five-year collaboration on the conservation of the two caves and on the hundreds of Buddha statues that were found there. The many old, beautiful Buddha images, some life size, were conserved, the infrastructure of the caves rebuilt, the Lao professional staff trained, and site signage erected. The team conducted all work to the highest standards permitted by the circum-stances. But ten years after the close of the conservation project, many of the beautiful Buddha figures were gone, taken from their home and yet to be recovered.
Art (290)
Biography (235)
Buddha (1979)
Children (98)
Deities (48)
Healing (34)
Hinduism (56)
History (551)
Language & Literature (469)
Mahayana (413)
Mythology (92)
Philosophy (465)
Sacred Sites (115)
Tantric Buddhism (90)
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