Monastery Mapping Documentation Project

Within its priority to support preservation of Mongolia’s unique heritage the ACM initiated and has started the implementation of the Mongolian Monasteries Documentation Project, with generous support of the US Embassy in Mongolia, Rathbone Trust, KHAN Bank, Sue Byrne, Mrs.J.Oyungerel, president of ‘Pertovis’ Company and the Western Union.

The project aims to preserve the cultural heritage of Mongolia and document oral history relevant to the heritage sites and to develop a user friendly source of information of the all the monasteries in Mongolia that exist and existed prior the Repression period of the 1930’s.
Within the framework of the project, six survey teams were recruited to accomplish the goal. Each team visited and documented up to four provinces. Thus, approximately 1200 sites were visited and documented in over 300 sub-provinces throughout Mongolia. Around 200 old heritage sites were discovered and documented, and approximately 200 temples and monasteries that were established since the 1990s were documented.

Site identification often depends upon the memory of Mongolians who were young at the time of the purges; many of them are now in their seventies and eighties and will soon no longer be able to assist in the identification and documentation efforts. Therefore, the documentation of oral history was one of the main goals of this project. A key component of the project implementation are the interviews with around 70 elderly people over the age of 70, recorded by the survey teams.

Upon finishing work in their allotted provinces, survey teams returned to Ulaanbaatar with completed survey forms, recordings, and photographic evidence.  With the assistance of the technical supervisor, the teams are currently digitizing the survey forms (into PDF files) and the audio recordings (into MP3 files).  They will use the results of the surveys to populate the fields of the final database. The official completion and the public launch of the project will take place in April 2008.