Nepal Heritage Documentation Project

NHDP’s first commitment is to historical monuments that are spread across the Kathmandu Valley. These monuments still play important roles in active social and religious habitats in the old town of Patan. However, many of them are endangered due to the aftermath of the 2015 earthquakes, urban transformation, and dramatic demographic changes that come hand in hand with economically and socially changing lifeworlds. The project documents their historical and anthropological ‘biographies’ as well as their current states and uses. Supported by the charitable fund Arcadia, the project both produces and is founded on expertise in extensive heritage documentation fieldwork in Nepal, data management and the development of DANAM since October 2018. All of its content is available in an open access format and thus for free online. Unique material has been assembled and produced anew through the substantial efforts of the NHDP team and fellow experts/collectors. With more heritage documentation field work underway, the database accommodates a growing number of datasets that are being reviewed by renowned experts and scientific personnel from Nepal, Germany and internationally. The spirit of sharing and open access carries us forward: as happy as we are to share our own data, we are even further enriched by the spirit with which many researchers and institutions have so kindly shared their (mostly unpublished) historical or other material information related to intangible heritage with us. We are indebted to institutions such as the department of Archaeology (DoA), the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust (KVPT), the Nepal Picture Library, and numerous individual researchers such as Niels Gutschow, Wolfgang Korn, Rajendra Shakya, Nutan Sharma, Ulrich von Schröder and Bruce Owens, to mention but a few.