Recent controversy over the role of BP in funding cultural icons from the Royal Shakespeare Company to the British Museum, and the question of repatriation of Ethiopian artefacts from the Maqdala fortress held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, remind us of the contentious place of heritage within society. Often it is a commodity to be exploited and manipulated, as well as protected and understood. New Book Chronicle for August takes a broad overview of some recent volumes whose shared theme is the complex and often problematic issue of heritage. Defining ‘heritage’ has long been difficult. Since Article one of UNESCO's Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (UNESCO 1972) defined cultural heritage as monuments, buildings and sites that are of outstanding universal value, there has been recognition of the need for wider definitions, which include heritage's intangible manifestations, such as oral traditions, ways of life, crafts and traditional festivals. Tunbridge et al. sum it up neatly when they say that “all heritage should properly be regarded as an intangible cultural construct” (2013: 369). Such broader definitions have become enshrined in legislation and treaties, most notably the Faro Convention (Council of Europe 2005), adopted in 2005, which recognises the diverse nature of heritage as extending to cover all aspects of the interaction between people and places through time as well as its centrality to peoples’ identity and wellbeing. The convention recognises every person's right of access to the cultural heritage of their choice, while respecting the rights and freedoms of others. Translating such values across different societies and peoples while implementing the democratic principles of Faro, is, however, highly challenging. The six volumes discussed here are broadly unified by the themes of the commodification of heritage, the protection afforded it by legislation and its use as a tool of unification, control or justification. Some deal with the public's engagement with heritage, others with the complex relationships between people and their material past. What unites them is an examination of heritage through the lens of identity, nationhood and engagement.
Glen Hooper's volume centres around the concept that heritage is made rather than identified, and is negotiated and constantly evolving rather than a rigid truth to be discovered. In his Foreword, Paul Shackel goes to the heart of why heritage is so important and at the same time so divisive: “heritage implies integrity, authenticity, and stability, and is often used to clarify the past so that it may be deployed in the present” (p. xi). He goes on to identify the ways in which existing power relations can be reinforced through heritage as a means to legitimise a particular past. Ostensibly a legacy of traditions and culture, heritage can easily be turned into a tool that reinforces power dynamics and legitimises established hierarchical views of societies and cultures. These issues are explored and problematised by a broad range of contributors whose chapters are diverse in their approaches but united by the theme of the dynamic nature of heritage.
The social practice of assigning cultural value is the focus of Bella Dicks's chapter; she considers, in particular, how this value is assigned and who its authors are. Taking a social practice approach to heritage, Dicks examines multiscalar processes of encoding employed at heritage sites relating to socio-political solidarities. Through the case study of a Welsh mining heritage centre, Dicks unpacks the social practices of ‘producing’, ‘visiting’ and ‘inheriting’ the past. In doing so, she reveals the complexity of interests and power dynamics that are mobilised in these processes. Crucially, she determines that value is not inherent in things, but rather is accorded to them. While those who are inheritors of heritage are the most likely to have a vested interest in its production, it is often outsider producers who commodify and materialise the value of the culture. At the Welsh mining centre, for example, the ex-miners valued the machinery and tools of the mine and wanted to preserve these at the centre, but designers and interpreters considered these materials as unattractive clutter and felt they would spoil the aesthetic of the centre. This privileging of some aspects of heritage over others can erode existing solidarities and increase local divisions; the co-opting of heritage can be divisive. Dicks emphasises that heritage-making is motivated by present-day agendas, meaning that very selective elements of the past are made into heritage. Contemporary purposes of heritage-making can be exclusive or inclusive, thereby reproducing modern-day power dynamics. Despite being produced in contexts where there are multiple social identities, Dicks finds heritage to be “a classed practice” (p. 17). It often invites identification with the stories of elite individuals while leaving marginalised populations invisible. In an inversion of its more typical intention of unification, heritage can therefore potentially instil discord.
Kathleen Brown-Perez investigates the outcomes for peoples and cultures when their heritage is suppressed. She considers the treatment of the more than 800 tribes of Indigenous Americans and looks at ways that culture can be erased without physical destruction, through attritious processes of assimilation and reinforcement of generalised and inaccurate understandings of peoples and cultures via media and even education. On the one hand, Indigenous peoples are viewed as antiquated and irrelevant, while on the other America has “a romance with Native American people and the way [they] were” (p. 26) that prevents them moving forward with contemporary America. The role of heritage in this story is to contribute to the fight for cultural survival by providing opportunities to learn about the Indigenous peoples of America. Brown-Perez finds these opportunities to be frequently focused on historiography rather than the peoples themselves, or failing to highlight adequately the role of the U.S. government in what is effectively the eradication of entire cultures. A ray of hope is offered in the increasing numbers of Indigenous peoples involved in museum and heritage centres, and the interest of non-Indigenous academics in more accurate curricula.
Joshua Hagan documents a much more overt attempt to construct an idealised national history, heritage and memory in his chapter on ‘Historic Preservation in Nazi Germany’. The interventions detailed in this chapter reveal the architectural reshaping of cities, towns and villages to match the built environment to the nation's heritage. The ideology behind this was motivated by a desire to cleanse the landscape of anything that jarred with the stated values of clarity, honesty and decency—which of course masked the broader genocidal aim of achieving a perceived “racial purity of the national community” (p. 69). The project highlights the ways in which a veneer of heritage protection can be used to reshape cultural history.
Despite these accounts of the manipulation of heritage, Hooper draws some positive conclusions, maintaining that heritage sites can equally be foci for change and positivity capable of enhancing considerations of self and other.
Our next two volumes develop some of the themes raised in Hooper's volume by examining the ways in which heritage presentation developed in its earliest forms. Both chart the emergence of antiquarianism and the establishment of museums, one focusing on Mexico and the other on North America. Miruna Achim examines the National Museum of Mexico as a node where politics of different levels—local, national and international were being enacted. Taking on the Herculean task of recounting the museum's emergence through scattered fragments and records that are far from complete, she provides a chronological retelling of the development of the museum in a compelling narrative that makes light work of some heavy political and theoretical material. Charting the growth of the museum and its collection through a biographical lens, the chapters follow developments in the institution that are enmeshed with the lives and careers of the main protagonists such as Lucas Alamán, minister of internal and external relations, Isidro Icaza, the museum's one time curator, and José Fernando Ramírez, the keeper of the archive.
The narrative takes us from a time when antiquities had multiple uses and values—from commercial to religious, aesthetic to functional spolia—to the adoption of these antiquities as the objects of scientific study. Alongside this transition a conviction grew among antiquarians and scholars that the Indigenous peoples could not be the descendants of ancient Americans because they did not understand or appreciate them. This was despite Indigenous peoples providing the vast majority of the labour in guiding, excavating and transporting objects.
Achim shows how the antiquities themselves were subject to a “concerted effort to silence and obscure all other meanings and uses” (p. 255) except to form a national collection that could represent something intrinsically Mexican. Achim sees in the development of the National Museum of Mexico an example of the agency of individuals and their relationships with objects and heritage. She traces the route by which Mexican collectable antiquities became objects of serious study, but also “objects around which the story of Mexico's triumphant republicanism began to be written” (p. 15).
Taking a similarly narrative approach, and using as its vehicle the so-called Kentucky Mummy—a desiccated female body discovered in Mammoth Cave in the south-eastern USA—James Snead's volume explores the cultural encounter between Euro-Americans of the nineteenth century and the material culture or ‘relics’ of the Indigenous peoples. Snead looks at the role of archaeology in shaping the American landscape and argues that encounters with and interpretations of Indigenous culture helped to shape local and national identities. In a similar way to the appropriation of Mexican antiquities, the Kentucky Mummy and other remains had a crucial role in fuelling American antiquarianism and influencing attitudes towards Indigenous people.
Snead's volume follows the journey of the Kentucky Mummy along the eastern seaboard of the USA. The touring remains bridged a gap between the knowledge of scholars who privileged written sources and that of frontier settlers who regularly encountered Indigenous material culture. The aim of this volume is to understand “how the relations of practice among antiquarians and archaeologists in the nineteenth-century United States played a key role in mediating the public experience of American antiquities” (p. 8). Snead describes a reluctance among antiquarians to attribute any significant archaeological monuments to Indigenous people, preferring instead to conclude that they were built by classical civilisations—the Scythians, for example—and labelling the ruins of ancient settlements with Latin names such as Sacra Via and Capitolium. This echoes the findings of Brown-Perez, with Indigenous culture being subsumed or transmuted into something more palatable for the European settler community. It also resonates with Achim's work, which revealed the doubts expressed by antiquarians that modern American Indians could be descended from the ancient Americans.
There was a lack of recognition of the value of relics in understanding the history of America, and the Kentucky Mummy played a pivotal role in fuelling antiquarianism in the early nineteenth century. The remains captured the public imagination and sparked institutional competition to collect similar material. The mummy, however, was viewed more as a capital than an intellectual gain. Private collections of antiquities proved not to be useful for studying American antiquity, and the Smithsonian's attempt to centralise remains failed. Ultimately, it was the establishment of the Bureau of Ethnology by the U.S. Congress in 1879 that provided both the budget and necessary staff to reconcile the ways that the different groups interacted with the American past. Despite this, it was not until 1990 that Indigenous human remains came to be protected by law under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The act states that the remains and associated objects of Native American people remain the property of their lineal descendants. The act has limitations, however: it applies only to federal or tribal land: remains discovered on private land are exempt from its protection. Snead's volume stops short of exploring contemporary approaches to the heritage of Indigenous peoples and it would be interesting to reflect upon how the events of the nineteenth century helped to shape current perspectives.
The protection of heritage and associated practical considerations are the focus of a volume of papers edited by Stuart Campbell, Liz White and Suzie Thomas. The central theme is aspects of heritage preservation that are neglected in legal frameworks currently designed to protect cultural heritage. Contributors were tasked with identifying practical challenges in managing heritage that are either poorly served by legislation or impossible to legislate for, and ways in which heritage-protection laws may have unintended consequences. Despite the diversity of approaches, the papers have an emerging theme on which they all agree: “how do [heritage practitioners], as a profession or collection of related professions, deal with groups who may feel the interests of archaeology (often viewed within the profession as equating to a wider ‘pubic good’) is inimical to their own aims [sic]” (p. 3).
Continuing the theme of the treatment of the dead as a heritage commodity, Liz White navigates the policies designed to resolve disputes over the retention and display of human remains. Her focus is largely on Indigenous populations, but also pagan groups. White cites as an example the case of Kennewick Man, the prehistoric (c. 9000 years old) skeletal remains of a man, discovered in Washington on the banks of the Columbia River. Native American peoples claimed him and demanded reburial under the NAGPRA act. It was argued, however, that the remains were too old to draw direct lineage with modern populations and therefore were not protected by the act. What followed was a 20-year dispute between scientists and Native American groups. Ultimately, DNA evidence was used to prove a closer genetic link to Native American peoples than other modern populations, and Kennewick Man was finally reburied by the Indigenous population in 2017. The broader issue investigated by White is the treatment of human remains, regardless of their origin or ancestry. Considering several high-profile debates around the display, and in some cases the sale, of human remains, she investigates concepts of abuse of power, breaches of professionalism and insensitive exploitation of corporeal remains. These debates have led to legislation being passed in many countries, including the UK (The Human Tissue Act was passed in 2004 with the Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums following quickly afterwards in 2005). White sees the shift in attitudes towards ethical treatment of human remains as a global trend that can, at least in part, be traced back to calls for repatriation of human remains issued by Indigenous groups the world over.
Dealing with aspects of heritage as diverse as management of underwater cultural heritage (Riikka Alvik), treasure hunting and metal-detecting (Tomáš Milchalík; Stuart Campbell; Pieterjan Deckers; Jostein Gundersen; Ignacio Rodrígeuz Temiño et al.), as well as the excavation, retention and display of human remains (Liz White), this volume is broad-ranging in its approaches to heritage and its European coverage. It considers the conflicting values in heritage management, including some of the uncomfortable aspects of contested heritage and the ethics of heritage protection in conflict zones (Suzie Thomas). The ideals of good practice stated in the Valletta and Faro Conventions prove difficult to transpose onto the everyday processes of protecting heritage in conflict zones. Looking to the future, Suzie Thomas speculates on the competing values that will come to shape archaeological heritage management. She calls for a pragmatic approach to dialogues around heritage in order to find solutions or compromises that can be implemented in practicable ways.
With increasing demands for the disciplines of archaeology and history to demonstrate their impact in terms of benefit to society (e.g. economic, social, cultural, environmental or shaping public policy), the communication of research to the wider public has become increasingly important. Our final two volumes detail ways of engaging the public with archaeology and history. The theme of heritage ownership and protection continues in these books, which raise awareness of the use and exploitation of ‘public’ history and archaeology.
Katherine Erdman's Public engagement and education is a call to arms to protect a collective past through public involvement. With chapters focusing on how to engage school-age children (Charles S. White; Katrina Yezzi-Woodley et al.; Elizabeth C. Reetz et al.), students (Phyllis Mauch Messenger), and the older generation (Katherine M. Erdman), the book encourages interaction with a very broad public. It also includes discussion of how to engage with the past through writing, including creative fiction (Lewis C. Messenger Jr), and a guide to navigating heritage stewardship in the digital age (Jodi Reeves Eyre & Leigh Anne Ellison). A chapter by Geralyn Ducady outlines the difficulties, especially as a foreign archaeologist, of engaging with local communities in Belize who were fatigued by visits from ‘outsider’ researchers collecting data but never sharing results with them. Lessons learned were the necessity to facilitate the formation of grassroots heritage groups in local communities, the importance of cultural understanding and sensitivity, and an awareness of the politicisation of archaeology in some regions. These lessons are surely applicable to most archaeological studies. Beginning from the premise that, done well, archaeology can be a tool that transcends boundaries, helps to create social justice and is an excellent way of teaching cultural sensitivity, Erdman's volume brings together case studies that combine to form a handbook for encouraging responsible engagement in archaeology and stewardship of heritage.
Faye Sayer's Public history: a practical guide explores what we mean by public history, and aims to consider the practical and methodological differences between public and academic history. The premise of the book is that public historians bridge the gap between history and heritage. Public historians are viewed very much as mediators between the source material and the public, ensuring that the multiple vocalities of history are all part of a narrative of the past rather than privileging a single authorised version of history. Sayer considers the interplay between public history and public archaeology; examples of both run seamlessly throughout the volume, highlighting the blurred boundaries between archaeology and history, and the difficulties in disentangling them.
Sayer devotes a chapter to museums, archives and heritage centres that examines how these collections are presented and managed. She sees heritage centres, particularly museums, as representing the dominant cultural and national identities, and therefore being able to control the public's understanding of the past, which essentially influences national thought. As displays are largely shaped by the input of individuals, such as a curator, they are necessarily subjective and never inconsequential. Sayer notes that “curators and archivists often walk a narrow path between being marketing tools for the nation and its political agendas and representing the public” (p. 20). A further chapter deals with communicating history to the public and explores its ethical and moral implications. This chapter investigates types of display and interactive methods designed to engage the public, and the changing pressures on heritage organisations, including financial and political, that drive the need to reassess methods of communication with different communities constantly. The concept of community is examined more closely in Chapter 6, which challenges the notion of a temporally stable and geographically coherent community. In reality, heritage centres serve multiple communities who may define themselves in numerous ways. The projection of a community identity on groups by outsiders often conflicts with the reality. Sayer maintains that successful community projects require consideration of alternative power relationships and collaboration from all stakeholders. They ultimately need to balance the representation of multiple values and the maintenance of historical accuracy. Sayer's volume offers comprehensive coverage of public history and its current practice. Supported by case studies and ‘day-in-the-life’ reports from professionals, this text is an excellent guide to history, in its broadest sense, beyond the academic sphere. The volumes by Erdman and Sayer are especially important in the context of increasing emphasis being placed on impact in the Research Excellence Framework undertaken by higher education funding bodies in the UK and beyond.
The themes emerging from all of these volumes focus heavily on the use of heritage to reinforce, manipulate or obscure identities in the present, and the problems inherent in both protecting and presenting the past. Faced with the complexities of multiple narratives and contested claims to the past, the heritage professional has a substantial task in representing that past to the public. The breadth of the debate and the increasingly self-reflexive nature of the heritage community is, however, encouraging, and by highlighting the issues and engaging the public, these volumes help to ensure that, through a process of self-reflection and awareness of the need for vigilance in guarding against the misuse of heritage, the multivocalities of the past are both heard and represented.
This list includes all books received between 1 March 2019 and 30 April 2019. Those featuring at the beginning of New Book Chronicle have, however, not been duplicated in this list. The listing of a book in this chronicle does not preclude its subsequent review in Antiquity.
