How we source and scope these pages
The source tiers, the region/period/community scoping, and the rules for disagreement and for withholding that the LumaLark culture pages follow.
Scope of these accounts
- Period
- Contemporary (2000 onwards)
- Region
- World
Direct answer
Every statement on a culture page points to a specific source and to a specific place in it, and not every kind of source can carry every kind of statement. A museum collection record or a published scholarly work can support a historical or attribution claim; a crowd-edited encyclopaedia entry cannot, and is kept only as a lead to follow up.
Each page is scoped by region, period and community or institution. Where those cannot be pinned down, the page says so rather than reaching for wording such as an ancient tradition. Where sources disagree, the disagreement is written into the body of the page, not into a footnote.
The rules on this page are LumaLark's own.
They are modelled on instruments written for other parties: the ICOM Code of Ethics addresses museum professionals, the UNESCO 2003 Convention places its obligations on States Parties, and the Traditional Knowledge Labels are a tool for communities to state their own terms.
Citing them is not a claim that any of them has approved anything here, and it is not a claim that we hold a community's authorization. We cite them because we chose to hold ourselves to what they ask of the parties they do address.
What each source tier is allowed to support
This table scrolls sideways on narrow screens.
| May not support | May support | Tier | What counts |
|---|---|---|---|
| What a material does for a wearer | Historical context and institutional convention | A | Institutional records and published scholarship: museum catalogues, standards bodies, intergovernmental documents, academic monographs, a community's own institutions, a named trade body's own published roster |
| What a material does for a wearer | Historical context and institutional convention, alongside or in place of an A-tier source | B | Trade and specialist publishing with an identifiable editorial process |
| Origin or attribution statements on its own | Editorial leads only, and the wording that someone states this | C | Crowd-edited or tertiary reference works |
| Any historical claim, and any statement of general practice without a denominator | Individual attestation, observation within a stated sample, and present-day market usage | D | Community postings and market listings |
Sources for the statements on this page
- INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF MUSEUMS (ICOM) — Locator: C.6
- Code of Ethics — Locator: Introduction, para. 1
- Labels — Locator: What are the Labels?
- Labels — Locator: Traditional Knowledge Labels
- TK Labels — Locator: Permission Labels section
- Text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage — Locator: Article 15
- Text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage — Locator: Article 2, paragraph 1
- Traditional Cultural Expressions — Locator: Section 1
- Traditional Cultural Expressions — Locator: Section 1
Contemporary and market statements
Statements about how something is used in a present-day market are held to the same source rules as historical ones, and are labelled as market usage rather than as history. Where a statement rests on community postings rather than on an institution, the page may say only that individuals expressed it or that it appeared in a stated sample.
Without a denominator and a sampling method on record, a page does not report proportions or describe anything as general practice.
When sources disagree
Disagreement is written into the body of the page. Where the sources cannot be reconciled, the page presents them side by side and does not pick a winner; the page is marked as contested so that the disagreement travels with it. Where an identity, an attribution or a use boundary cannot be established at all, the page is not published and the material is not linked to any product.
What these pages will not do, and what that is modelled on
These pages do not state what a material does for the person wearing it, do not present a religious or communal practice as available for purchase, and do not claim any form of blessing or consecration for a product. A culture page mentioning a material never writes that mention back into the material's factual record.
Where a tradition belongs to a living community, LumaLark does not decide on that community's behalf what may be shown. The four instruments below are the ones we modelled that limit on. Each of them is addressed to someone else, and citing one is not a claim that it has approved anything here.
The UNESCO 2003 Convention defines intangible cultural heritage and asks States Parties to ensure the widest possible participation of the communities, groups and individuals that create and maintain it, an obligation on states which we read as a standard worth meeting anyway.
WIPO's work on traditional cultural expressions records that such expressions form part of the identity and heritage of the community they come from. The Traditional Knowledge Labels published by Local Contexts are a tool for communities to state their own rules about access and use; their Permission Labels indicate what a community has itself approved.
LumaLark holds no such label and has applied for none. The ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums sets standards for museum professionals, and the collection records this section relies on are produced under it. That limit is not left to goodwill. It is written down, and it applies in two places.
We keep a list of subjects we hold material on but have not written up. Where such a subject belongs to a living community, it is marked as one that may not be shown until that community's own institutions authorize it, and the body that would have to be approached is named.
The marking does not lapse on its own. None of those subjects has been approached yet, which is why none of them appears on any page. The pages that do exist are held to the same principle in a different way: every symbol, term or practice a page is built on carries its own written boundary, stating what LumaLark will and will not do with it.
So a subject's absence from that list does not mean nobody weighed it. What is unwritten is on the list; what is written is bounded on the page itself.