Contextualizing Authenticity and Integrity in the Context of World Heritage—An Asian Expert View

Adding to the existing indicator of ‘authenticity’ to assess the conditions of cultural heritage sites, the term ‘integrity’ was introduced as another indicator into the World Heritage system officially in 2005, while integrity remained the sole indicator for natural heritage sites. How to differentiate and apply these two concepts in parallel to assess the conditions of sites? This became a constant query for experts in dealing with cultural heritage sites. Are these concepts of authenticity and integrity clearly defined and demarcated in the system for use by experts, in particular by non-native speakers? For international discussion, one of the challenges is language constraints, i.e. how to translate and correlate these international wordings in our local structure of heritage practice—terms that otherwise might remain in a very abstract sphere, forever unused in local practice. This chapter examines the history of authenticity and integrity applications in the World Heritage system and analyzes how the complications in the usage of the two words were created and why they remain to date.