Creating Digital Heritage content: bridging communities and mediating perspectives

In this paper we focus our attention on an often overlooked aspect of digital heritage content, namely by whom how, and with what purpose such content is created. We evaluate digital materials that are anthropological and archaeological in nature, both digitized archives and newly created materials. In our work and efforts to understand and represent different cultural perspectives, we have encountered differences in cultural knowledge systems that have shown the need for cross-cultural consultation and communication as an essential first step in the creation of digital content for new systems of representation and knowledge transfer. Our efforts focus on developing a new educational framework that allows for knowledge exchange at different levels and between different entities, challenging the perpetuating hierarchical relationships between community and experts.