heritage field itself and, indeed, to the interpretation of our pasts.
In concentrating upon themes and issues, the book is expressly
theoretical in tone: it is not intended as a guide for practitioners on
how to 'do' heritage nor does it recommend particular ways of
managing the heritage. Nor yet should it be considered as an
examination 'primer'. Rather than offering representative examples
of heritage practices, it considers such practices in terms of the
meanings they hold and the consequences they produce. The book
therefore draws upon some current approaches to theorizing
material culture and archaeological practice to present to readers
some ideas about how we understand and relate to the remains,
sites, structures and buildings that have come into our present from
the past.
The book is aimed particularly at students of archaeology,
history or museum and heritage studies at undergraduate and
postgraduate level. It may prove of use to part-time and continuing
education students and to those following more advanced studies
who find a need to engage with heritage issues. Although designed
as a work-text for students, it will also hopefully provide a useful
introduction for the more general reader with an interest in
archaeology and the material heritage.
Coming to heritage out of archaeology, the book has a
deliberately archaeological slant, which may be different from that
taken by those who come to heritage out of social history or other
related fields. You may also expect it to be very different from those
who approach heritage as a branch of leisure, tourist or environmental
studies. While there is some affinity - perhaps inevitably -
to museum studies, there will be some significant differences from
that field too. By 'archaeology' is meant the study of the material
remains of the human past, from the most ancient to the most
recent. It focuses on material remains, which means those with
some physical presence in the world, and does not include the study
of the past through texts, or at least not exclusively. 'Material
remains' are not limited here to buried objects and features but
include also standing monuments and buildings of all types,
whether presently in use or not. The term includes objects in
museums, in private hands and those not yet discovered. More on
definitions will be found in Chapter 1 and throughout the book. All
told, the seven chapters are designed to cover the main areas of
heritage, which is an area of increasing importance in our world,
and a complex and wide one too. The core issue - common to all of
what the book has to say - is the notion of the relationship between
the interpreter of the past (the historian or archaeologist) and the
wider world. The latter can be called 'the public' for the moment;
although in Chapter 4 it will become evident why the concept of
'the public' is not an easy or simple one to understand or apply.
The overriding themes of the book are twofold. The first is that
the heritage is a product of a process best described as 'categorization':
the ability to place particular things in certain conceptual
boxes, separating them out from all other things in the world and
consequently thinking about and treating them differently from the
other things in the world. What is called 'the heritage' is just one
such conceptual box. The heritage is thus as much a human artefact
as any of the individual things that comprise it. The second theme
concerns the purpose of the heritage: what we create heritages for
and what we can then do with them. Any number of possible
purposes spring to mind, but only one is perhaps valid. That is, that
any heritage or heritages we create should enhance our understanding
of who we are and what we do, and increase our enjoyment and delight in the world we jointly inhabit. If it serves to separate us
from that wider environment - by seeking to mark us out as 'special'
or 'different' or 'superior', or indeed as 'inferior' - then it is failing
in its purpose. Heritages are always 'ours': it is not exclusively
mine, nor exclusively yours; like our combined histories, it is
something we have in common and which we share with all others.
Failure to share the heritage - and thereby ourselves - is to deny the
heritage its purpose.
As a work-text the book is divided into seven substantive
chapters. These are preceded by a short interlude which considers
the types of literature and ways of talking about heritage generally
encountered in the field; it also provides a brief introduction to
current trends in archaeological theory for those not already well
acquainted with the field. Each substantive chapter is divided into a
number of key points, indicated by sub-headings. Each of these is
reiterated as 'Summary Points' at the end of each chapter and at the
end of this section there is also a list of suggested further reading.
The texts cited are those which have - one way or another -
inspired the thoughts presented in the chapter. The specific content
of the book derives from lectures given over a number of years to
students of various institutions, among them Cambridge, York,
Leicester and Goteborg Universities, and also from papers
delivered to audiences at conferences in Italy, Latvia, Portugal,
Spain, the UK, the USA and South Africa.
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