Dam Construction Projects and Cultural Heritage, Interaction or confrontation? (A Case Study of Kangir Dam in Ilam Province)

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Assistant Professor, Iranian Center for Archeological reseach, (ICAR), Tehran, Iran

10.22034/farhang.2021.133913

Abstract

Kangir Dam is one of the border dams in the west of the country that was flooded in the winter of 2015. The consequences of this intake were the destruction of several important cultural sites, the evacuation of communities inside the reservoir of the dam, along with the unwanted and forced migration of the residents of the dam to other places. Meanwhile, there are many challenges in various social and cultural fields (archeology, ethnology and language and dialect) for the construction of dams. And the most important issue is that by carrying out such development projects and forced resettlement of the affected families, what will happen to the cultural structure of these communities and their antiquities and background? And how should one respond to its consequences? Identifying the positive and negative effects and consequences of the construction of Kangir Dam based on the author's studies and field observations and providing a sample evaluation report as a case study, in order to use experts in other projects and to highlight the role of cultural heritage studies in development projects, are the main purpose of this research.

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