Intervention for conservation of Troglodytic Settlements

Conservation has been always an issue in cultural heritage and throughout interpretations of this issue has developed in different cases. Once efforts were toward proving this fact that cultural heritage is not a personal ownership and heritage but a public possession; similar to Hugo’s opinion that a building belonged to its owner from legal aspect but at the same time it was a public property from aesthetic point of view. Today however, we face this fact that cultural heritage is even world property. Therefore the issue of cultural heritage conservation has a particular important since it doesn’t belong to a person, a region or a country in present time but it belongs to all humans and future generations and its conservation is an imperative responsibility. Troglodytic architecture that is a refl ection of our ancestors’ geniuses and artistic abilities in their peaceful interaction with the nature holds a high status from archaeological, architectural, anthropological and economical point of view especially considering our modern energy crisis and their conservation has become a highly important issue. This paper aims to conduct a comparative study between several troglodytic sites, show their common features and similarities as well as their key differences with other sites. It then investigates challenges and problems that are present for the conservation of such sites and their aforementioned attributes and attract public attention to these issues. Neglecting such attributes and troglodytic sites’ characteristics in the execution of conservation process, would lead to employment of dysfunctional and destructive methods while at the same time some of these methods might seems useful and practical in other sites.