On 17 January, in Macerata Campania,1 a small town in southern Italy, the citizens repeat the ancient feast of St. Anthony the Abbot (in the local language, A festa ‘e Sant’Antuono). On this occasion, the citizens build huge boat-shaped floats, i.e. ornamental wagons dedicated to St. Anthony called carri di Sant’Antuono, on which the battuglie di pastellessa parade through the streets of the town, performing the ancient music of St. Anthony, accompanied by a percussion of barrels, vats and sickles. The battuglie di pastellessa are a local group formed of about 50 people called bottari (i.e. particular musicians called “barrel-beaters”) and coor-dinated by an orchestra leader known as capobattuglia. During the festival, over 1,000 bottari (young people, adults and even children) play percussions with barrels, vats and sickles, common tools for agriculture, to give life to the typical music of St. Anthony, commonly called pastellessa.\n

"In this region of many “lands” surrounded by water, knowledge of the land and its harvests is tied closely to identity and heritage. This section’s themes thus offer a closer look at how the knowledge of caring for the land and harvests is a way of feeling for the Pacific islanders. This ICH, in addition to coloring people’s interactions on the land and carrying expressions of respect, is a means of ensuring sustainability and prosperity.\nPacific islanders depend largely on the land and their harvests from it for their survival, but these also hold deeper meaning for life. To the people of Vanuatu, for instance, laplap soso'ur is more than an edible delicacy: it is a feature of their cultural identity and a means to bring people together across societal levels. Similarly, in Palau, the mesei taro fields are valuable property, but they are also much more in that these pieces of land are deeply connected to the identity of the people, particularly women, and figure prominently in the colorful oral histories of the Palauans. Both of these cases, along with the other themes in this section, reflect the profound value of ICH related to the Pacific islands and their harvests."

It had taken a few weeks for roads to be cleared of rockfalls and to be made safe enough for vehicles carrying essential goods and supplies in the wake of the June 2013 flash floods and landslides in the western Himalayan region, in particular the mountainous state of Uttarakhand. A small team from the specialist center that I was associated with, the Centre for Environment Education Himalaya, was traveling to a few of the villages that had been affected, which were also villages in which the center had been working for some years before the natural disaster. Those in the small group were anxious. There had been no way to contact people in the villages nor even local administrators in the sub-district offices. Phone lines had yet to be restored, and mobile phone towers were being slowly replaced. Had there been casualties amongst the groups the center had trained? Were homes and school buildings still standing? No-one would know until they reached.

One can say without any overstatement that, during the several last years, the significance of one of UNESCO category 2 center, the International Information and Networking Center for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO (ICHCAP), was essential in supporting the initiatives to safeguard the intangible cultural heritage in Tajikistan. It is known that, after the adoption of the UNESCO Convention on intangible cultural heritage safeguarding (2003), a wave of initiatives and efforts to safeguard intangible cultural heritage covered Central Asia, because there had been a process of self-recognition and changing opinions on spiritual heritage after the collapse of the USSR.

The scope of intangible cultural heritage related to human well-being is large. Many cultural practices, if not the majority of them, were designed by communities, groups and individuals for well-being purposes, be it physical or mental. Such practices are also intended to ensure the con-tinuity of the society over time and to maintain social order. According to Napier, those practices related to human body and soul are embodied in cultural systems of value (Napier 2014) that overwhelm them. The representations of those two components of the human being, body and soul, are tightly linked in traditional cultures. Thus, many cultural practices were designed for the well-being of both of them. They also mix therapies intended to bring about the relief of each and/or both. \n

Efforts for the sustainable development of human cultures, which is defined by UNESCO as its most important goal, have already affected our lives in many ways. Among others, the inheritance and development of ICH are considered unique to humanity and the quintessence of human life. Education plays a vital role in the process of cultural inheritance and development. In particular, the experiences and education we receive during elementary school as young members of a future generation have a critical and meaningful influence on our lives. The significance of ICH education for the sustainable development of humanity is evidently underlined in UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and its Operational Directives.

The artistic world of traditional culture of Central Asian peoples is determined by contents that lie in certain historical periods and, at the same time, remain outside history. Contemporary science allows us to study the originality of the art of people in Central Asia, which is important for an objective reconstruction of the general picture of the art’s evolution. Historical and social changes cannot be studied without a clear understanding of cultural integrity and the perception of the artistic laws of culture and its context in this or that socio-historical period.

Dance is not the creation of a single individual but an entire culture developed by many people through the ages, gradually changing and being polished over time. As such, it is a valuable cultural heritage that embodies the character and emotions of a people and reflects the spirit of the times. Each movement and each step in dance, therefore, impart a sense of the history and lives of people of the past. (File, 2013, pp. 9–10)\nMovement disciplines like dance and martial arts embody the cultural heritage in which they developed. This chapter aims to map part of Korea’s cultural heritage by identifying certain movement characteristics shared by both traditional Korean dance and some traditional Korean martial arts. This chapter will also show how adaptations to fit with modern trends, such as K-pop music, can cause a martial art to lose its traditional character.\nThis study employed ethnographic descriptive research, cross-referenced with written work. My findings are based on the first-hand experience of practicing Korean martial arts, dance, and percussion (hourglass drum), and are further enhanced by years of observing Korean movement disciplines such as dance performances and informal interviews with traditional choreographers, dancers, and martial artists. Through this, I have identified specific movement characteristics that are present in both Korean traditional dance and many Korean martial arts. It is important to note that there are many types of Korean traditional dance, ranging from court dances, folk dances, and religious or ritual dances. My focus has been on those movement characteristics shared by most of these dance forms, thereafter identifying similar movement characteristics found in several Korean martial arts. These characteristics are not always present in every movement; however, most of them are usually perceivable and it is their synergy that gives a Korean “flavor” to these traditional movement disciplines.

Vernacular martial arts (VMA) occupy a special niche within the diverse phenomena classified as martial arts. Cross-culturally, “Martial arts can be defined as systematic bodies of knowledge, belief, and practice that are associated with methods of attack and defense against … adversaries” (Green and Svinth, 2010, p. 331). On close examination, we learn that the behaviors we attempt to gather under this umbrella term are quite diverse, ranging from life-and-death struggles through rule-governed sporting contests to expressive forms, from globalized combat sports to localized martial culture. The systems that fall on the latter end of this spectrum I have applied the VMA label to, and among the various martial expressions these are the ones that most clearly qualify as intangible cultural heritage (ICH). The following distinctions are useful for the current discussion.

Ancient Koreans first adopted Chinese characters (hanja, 漢字) for widespread use in the middle of the 4th century, with the establishment of educational institutions and the import of Chinese books as textbooks. The Korean way of pronouncing Chinese characters was called dongeum (東音), and differentiated from the Chinese way. In 1443, Koreans created their own characters (hangeul). Since then, hangeul, Korean-Chinese words and Chinese characters have been used in combination.The mother tongue (vernacular) of Koreans from the ancient to the present has been part of the Altaic family. This mother tongue can be called the indigenous language (native Korean), distinct from Korean-Chinese (dongeum) words. Needless to say, Korean culture and indigenous language predate Korean-Chinese words. Thus, it is a meaningful task to seek the origins of intangible cultural heritage (hereinafter intangible heritage) in indigenous language.

Co-orgarnized by ICHCAP and Hue Monuments Conservation Centre (HMCC), this year’s Asia-Pacific ICH NGO Conference was held in Hue, Vietnam under the theme of ICH NGOs towards Sustainable Development of Communities.

The period of cultural awakening in Central Asia, which began in the Middle Ages six hundred years before the European countries, facilitated the development of a large group of genius scientists whose names were written in gilded letters in the annals of world history. One such genius is Abu Ali Ibn Sina, who blessed creativity on almost all fields of science and raised medicine to great heights. During the time of Abu Ali Ibn Sina (known in Europe as Avicenna), medicine in the Central Asia region reached perfection in all respects. It was strongly influenced by Greek, Roman, Jewish, Syrian, Arabic, Persian, Chinese, and Indian medicine, among which the ancient scientific and practical manual Avesta was the main point in this maturation process.\n