The Jodensavanne Archaeological Site: Jodensavanne Settlement and the Cassipora Creek Cemetery

Twenty-five years after being included in the Tentative List of Suriname, this serial property was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2023. “The Jodensavanne Archaeological Site: Jodensavanne Settlement and Cassipora Creek Cemetery”, is comprised of two 17^th-century component parts that are historically interconnected, namely the remnants of the former Jewish Settlement named ‘Jodensavanne’ and the Cassipora Creek Cemetery, the latter being a remnant of an earlier Jewish settlement. They bear an exceptional testimony within the Atlantic Sephardic diaspora of a Jewish civilization in Suriname that was granted the most extensive arrangement of privileges and immunities (territorial and communal autonomy) known in the early modern Jewish world, and that existed in a slave society and a frontier zone.

The story of this nomination intends to inspire countries, especially in the Caribbean to continue preparing new nominations despite the many challenges faced in preparing a nomination dossier, but also to showcase the importance and impact of financial support of donors among other things, to facilitate the nomination process.

Nomination process

A vital inventory of all gravestones at the property, not explicitly aiming at World Heritage nomination, was executed from 1999 to 2002, with the support of Rachel Frankel, Aviva Ben-Ur, Philip Dikland and many others under the leadership of Guido Robles, the former Jodensavanne Foundation board president.

From 2002 onwards to 2023, several actions were undertaken to prepare a nomination dossier. The very first draft nomination dossier dates to 2003, but this was far from being a draft. In 2008 the Jodensavanne Foundation successfully received funds from the Netherlands Funds-in-Trust (NFiT) at UNESCO for the development of the “Jodensavanne and Cassipora Cemetery Management Plan 2008-2012”, the first management plan to be developed for the property.  The development of the Management Plan started in 2007 and was finalized in 2008, under the direction of Harrold Sijlbing of the SANTOUR Foundation (Suriname Alliance for Nature Conservation and Sustainable Tourism). The Plan was essentially meant for the daily management of the site, but also for its proposed nomination for inscription on the World Heritage List.

The preparation of this Management Plan was not possible without the consultation and assistance of a wide range of individuals and organizations such as the board of the Jodensavanne Foundation, local community leaders, villagers, women’s associations, plantation owners, tourism organizations, indigenous associations, Afro-Surinamese associations, local district authorities, holiday resort owners, Jewish community members and many more. Various documents have been reviewed during the preparatory process and lengthy debates have contributed fundamentally to the plan. A tourism survey was conducted, while workshops, public hearings, and meetings on location as well as in the capital city Paramaribo with indigenous and African slave descendants from neighbouring villages and plantations, have been instrumental means to acquire broad consent from relevant stakeholders. A final stakeholder meeting was executed in the neighbouring village of Redi Doti to accommodate all interested parties and to achieve general approval for the Management Plan, including the demarcation of the serial property and its buffer zones. Finally, thanks to limitless patience and lengthy debates and negotiations with the local communities, an agreement (Memorandum of Cooperation on joint management of the cultural property) was reached in 2007 and 2008 between the Jodensavanne Foundation and the village council of Redi Doti, which marked a unique moment in the history of the land rights issue of Surinamese Indigenous communities.^[1]

Ten years after the first draft version of the nomination dossier, UNESCO co-organized Caribbean Training Course in the Preparation of Nomination Dossiers was held in March 2013 in Antigua and Barbuda under the framework of the World Heritage SIDS programme. After this training course, the Jodensavanne Foundation prepared an updated but far from completed draft nomination file. Despite the incompleteness of the dossier, the Foundation decided in September 2013 to submit the draft for review by the World Heritage Centre and in October 2013 the State Party received valuable comments and suggestions to revise and complement the nomination dossier.^[2]

During the UNESCO Meeting on Capacity Building on Heritage Conservation in the Caribbean Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) held in May 2014 in St. Maarten, the ‘Philipsburg Declaration and Action Plan on Caribbean Capacity Building Strategy for the Caribbean SIDS’ was approved by the participating countries, including Suriname. In this Declaration, SIDS State Parties were encouraged to undertake specific actions. Suriname for instance, was stimulated to advance the nomination of its second cultural property by January 2015. At that time, the Jodensavanne Foundation made important steps to complement the nomination dossier by conducting an aerial and land survey of the nominated property, making an inventory of the attributes, conducting archaeological research through the involvement of the Anton de Kom University of Suriname, and the development of maps of the property.^[3]

Eager to move forward with the nomination dossier, the Foundation implemented a project named “Preparatory support for Jodensavanne, Suriname” in 2017, which was once again financed by the UNESCO NFiT within the framework of supporting “Shared Heritage”. The project consisted of conservation and research activities at the former 17^th-century Jodensavanne settlement. The conservation part aimed at necessary conservation measures to minimize the deterioration of the historic wooden grave markers of the African-Creole Cemetery at Jodensavanne, while the research part of the project consisted of obtaining more sophisticated archaeological equipment (a Ground-Penetrating Radar, GPR) to collect, record and analyze data of subsurface structures and street plan of the Jewish settlement for a better understanding of the settlement structure. Based on this project a new nomination submission date was set by 2019, but was postponed to 2020, and later to 2021. The nomination was eventually submitted in January 2022, followed by an ICOMOS technical evaluation mission which visited the nominated property from 5 to 9 September 2022 and recommended that the property be inscribed on the World Heritage List.

The nomination process for “The Jodensavanne Archaeological Site” was a lengthy and challenging process, but perseverance paid off.  On 24 September 2023, the World Heritage Committee at its extended 45^th session in Saudi Arabia inscribed the property on the World Heritage list, based on criterion (iii), making it Suriname’s third world heritage site. This important milestone is not an end, but rather the beginning of a new chapter in enhancing and protecting the Outstanding Universal value (OUV) of this intriguing property, as the NFiT is aiding this new World Heritage Property by financing further archaeological investigations for the period 2024-2026 to gain a better understanding of the settlement structure and the residential history.

Extended 45th session © UNESCO

Involvement of the university, local communities and volunteers

Worth mentioning is the involvement of the Anton de Kom University of Suriname during the preparation of the nomination dossier. In 2015-2016 History students of the Faculty of Humanities minoring archaeology conducted archaeological excavations at the Military Post Jodensavanne. The findings of the archaeological investigations were incorporated in the nomination file. The excavations were done as part of an Archaeological Field School at Jodensavanne which resulted in the graduation of three students with Jodensavanne as their major topic.^[4] 

Also, the engagement of local communities and volunteers ^[5] during the execution of projects should be memorated as important contributions to the nomination process.

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