Taking Archaeology out of Heritage

1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4438-1442-3
Verlag: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 250 Seiten

Archaeology has, on the whole, tended to dominate the development of public policies and practices applicable to what is often referred to as “heritage”. This book aims to examine the conflation of heritage with archaeology that has occurred as a result. To do so, it asks whether archaeology can usefully contribute to critical understandings of heritage, which, the volume contends, must consider heritage both in terms of what it is and the cultural, social and political work it does in contemporary societies. Archaeologists have been very successful in protecting what they perceive to be their database—a success that owes much to the development and maintenance of a suite of heritage management practices that work to legitimize their privileged access to, and control of, that database. However, is archaeological data actually heritage? Moreover, does archaeological knowledge offer a meaningful reflection of “the historic environment”, in terms of the uses, values and associations it carries for the various and different communities or publics that engage with that environment/heritage? The volume brings together academic and field archaeologists, academics from heritage studies and community activists from the UK and Europe more generally to debate these issues.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Waterton, Emma

Smith, Laurajane

Über Autor(innen)

Dr Laurajane Smith is Reader of Heritage Studies at the University of York. She has authored: Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage (2004); Uses of Heritage (2006); and co-authored (with Emma Waterton) of Heritage, Communities and Archaeology. She has edited Cultural Heritage: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies (2007), and co-edited Intangible Heritage (2009), Issues in Management Archaeology (1996), Women in Archaeology (1993), Aboriginal Involvement in Parks and Protected Areas (1992). She is also editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies.

Dr Emma Waterton holds an RCUK Academic Fellowship in Heritage and Public History, Keele University. Publications include the co-authored volume (with Laurajane Smith) Heritage, Communities and Archaeology (Duckworth 2009) and the co-edited volume (with Steve Watson) Culture, Heritage and Representations (Ashgate forthcoming). She is also assistant editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies.