This volume examines two main topics of the Transdisciplinary Research Area (TRA) “Past Worlds and Modern Questions: Cultures across Time and Space” at the University of Bonn: cultural intangible heritage and communication. The authors focus on the interrelations of these topics by analyzing past cultural, political, social, and economic constellations from broad geographical and historical perspectives. The contributions aim to overcome the canonical timeline anchored in Eurocentric history, affecting two areas of investigation in particular: Museum studies, which has been transformed in recent decades by new ways of thinking about and doing museum work, as well as concepts of understanding communication as a historical process of transfer that occurred during the so-called premodern age.
