Review old nomination and compile data to complete the nomination of the transboundary site of Chelchol Ra Orrak, Wet El Daob Me A Wet El Beluu and The Mangyol Stone Money Bank

Objectives

The Yapese stone quarry sites were inscribed on the Tentative Lists of Palau and of the Federated States of Micronesia in 2004. Both States Parties submitted a transboundary nomination for these sites in 2010, but the file was deferred in 2011 by the World Heritage Committee, in order to deepen the comparative analysis and further justify the Outstanding Universal Value of the site.

• extend the boundary of the nomination to include other quarry sites;
• inventory Yapese stone money in the various stone money banks in Yap State and conduct a comparative analysis with other stone works in the region, in order to justify the Outstanding Universal Value of the Yapese quarry sites and confirm the exchange in cultural practices, norms and values.

Results

Initial work began in 2014 when the Palau team conducted an island-wide ethnographic data collection of any known oral histories connecting Palau and Yap regarding the Stone Money period in Palau. These data aimed at providing information that these cultural places were still important today as they were thousands of years ago. This report was completed in September 2014.

A consultant from Hawaii was contracted to further improve and expand the comparative analysis and the management plan of the site. Japanese professionals also conducted field research activities from April to July 2015 on other stone money banks in Yap for comparison purposes with the Mangyol Stone Money Banks site.

Establishing ownership and determining boundaries remain an issue. Inventory of sites in Palau, and the boundary definition deriving from it, is a difficult challenge because oral histories told of places where Yapese would settle or quarry but did not reveal locations of sunken stone moneys or how many there were.