The purpose of preserving cultural heritage is to enhance our awareness of who we are, where we come from, and where we are going. The world is changing at extraordinary speed. Our heritage is under assault on many fronts: biological, environmental and cultural. Our world’s diverse cultural heritage is being rapidly replaced by an homogeneous global industrial culture. As we deal with these changes, it is imperative that we retain our cultural heritage and its valuable diversity either as a clear memory or, where appropriate, as a vital, living part of it.

Cultural objects are a material form of memory carrying evidence of all the complex historical and cultural forces that created them. Preserving and understanding such heritage requires a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach. All cultural events are the result of the infinite number of forces that generate them. We attempt, within our means, to study objects and cultural events from as many disciplines as are relevant.

We’ve directed our efforts at a singular territory, the hill town of San Gemini in the central Italian region of Umbria. Our approach to studying culture is to thoroughly explore one particular place or object and then to follow the threads that connect it to events in the larger world. Focusing on one place has allowed us to better understand the cultural fabric that carries the objects we study. In this way we are able to accomplish two things: first, we generate knowledge and work that is useful to this particular town; and second, we learn about patterns of cultural interconnection, an important tool in preserving cultural heritage that can be applied anywhere in the world.

The process of studying and preserving our cultural heritage must be not be left only to experts but must be a process that engages our whole society. Any intelligent and curious person, regardless of background or expertise, can actively participate and profit from such study by bringing their effort, ability, experience and perception to our thinking process.