As more and more people are recognizing the need for accurately representing the story of the United States in public narratives, especially those told at museums and historic landmarks, heritage studies is emerging as an important program of study in universities across the country. These two collections are timely and valuable resources on the theory and practice of heritage education and its relationship to the discipline of archaeology. History and Approaches to Heritage Studies explores the historical development of cultural heritage theory and practice, as well as current issues in the field. This volume brings together archaeologists who are deeply engaged with a range of stakeholders in heritage management and training. Chapters contain useful reflections on working with descendant communities, local residents, community partners, and students in a variety of settings. With a focus on pedagogy throughout, topics include the importance of critical thinking skills, how technology has transformed education, gender issues in archaeology, minorities in heritage careers, NAGPRA and ethics education, archaeology field schools, and e-learning. Pedagogy and Practice in Heritage Studies presents teaching strategies for helping students think critically about the meanings of the past today. In these case studies, experienced teachers discuss ways to integrate heritage studies values into archaeology curricula, illustrating how the fields enrich each other. They argue that encouraging empathy can lead to awareness of the continuity between past and present, reflection on contemporary cultural norms, and engagement with issues of social and climate justice. These practical examples model ways to introduce diverse perspectives on history in pre-college, undergraduate, and graduate contexts. Emphasizing the importance of heritage studies principles and active learning in archaeological education, these handbooks provide tools to equip archaeologists and heritage professionals with collaborative, community-based, and activist approaches to the past. Volumes in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

This is the first volume specifically dedicated to the consolidation and clarification of Heritage Studies as a distinct field with its own means of investigation. It presents the range of methods that can be used and illustrates their application through case studies from different parts of the world, including the UK and USA. The challenge that the collection makes explicit is that Heritage Studies must develop a stronger recognition of the scope and nature of its data and a concise yet explorative understanding of its analytical methods. The methods considered fall within three broad categories: textual/discourse analysis, methods for investigating people’s attitudes and behaviour; and methods for exploring the material qualities of heritage. The methods discussed and illustrated range from techniques such as text analysis, interviews, participant observation, to semiotic analysis of heritage sites and the use of GIS. Each paper discusses the ways in which methods used in social analysis generally are explored and adapted to the specific demands that arise when applied to the investigation of heritage in its many forms. Heritage Studies is a seminal volume that will help to define the field. The global perspective and the shared focus upon the development of reflexive methodologies ensure that the volume explores these central issues in a manner that is simultaneously case-specific and of general relevance.

Preservation of natural and cultural heritage is often said to be something that is done for the future, or on behalf of future generations, but the precise relationship of such practices to the future is rarely reflected upon. Heritage Futures draws on research undertaken over four years by an interdisciplinary, international team of 16 researchers and more than 25 partner organisations to explore the role of heritage and heritage-like practices in building future worlds. Engaging broad themes such as diversity, transformation, profusion and uncertainty, Heritage Futures aims to understand how a range of conservation and preservation practices across a number of countries assemble and resource different kinds of futures, and the possibilities that emerge from such collaborative research for alternative approaches to heritage in the Anthropocene. Case studies include the cryopreservation of endangered DNA in frozen zoos, nuclear waste management, seed biobanking, landscape rewilding, social history collecting, space messaging, endangered language documentation, built and natural heritage management, domestic keeping and discarding practices, and world heritage site management.

In a sweeping survey of archaeological sites spanning thousands of years, Heritage and the Existential Need for History asks fundamental questions about the place of cultural heritage in Western society. What is history? Why do we write about the events of yesterday and set up memorials for them? Why do we visit places where momentous things have happened? Maud Webster takes readers on a journey from Bronze Age Mycenae through the Greek Dark Ages, from Medieval Rome through the Italian Renaissance, and from Viking Sweden to Restoration-period England and Civil War America. Combining archaeology, history, and psychology, Webster explores themes including literacy and text, monumentality and spoliation, and death and identity. She traces the human need for history at two levels—the collective, here shown through archaeological evidence, and the individual, shown through written records and the behavior they document. Webster’s robust cross-examination of artifacts and texts, and the illustrations drawn from this methodology, attest that locating our history helps us anchor ourselves, for multiple purposes and from varying perspectives, and that the drive to write and build histories is an enduring part of the human experience.

Historic sites, memorials, national parks, museumsewe live in an age in which heritage is ever-present. But what does it mean to live amongst the spectral traces of the past, the heterogeneous piling up of historic materials in the present? How did heritage grow from the concern of a handful of enthusiasts and specialists in one part of the world to something which is considered to be universally cherished? And what concepts and approaches are necessary to understanding this global obsession? Over the decades, since the adoption of the World Heritage Convention, various e~crisese(tm) of definition have significantly influenced the ways in which heritage is classified, perceived and managed in contemporary global societies. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the many tangible and intangible e~thingse(tm) now defined as heritage, this book attempts simultaneously to account for this global phenomenon and the industry which has grown up around it, as well as to develop a e~toolkit of conceptse(tm) with which it might be studied. In doing so, it provides a critical account of the emergence of heritage studies as an interdisciplinary field of academic study. This is presented as part of a broader examination of the function of heritage in late modern societies, with a particular focus on the changes which have resulted from the globalisation of heritage during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Developing new theoretical approaches and innovative models for more dialogically democratic heritage decision making processes, Heritage: Critical Approaches unravels the relationship between heritage and the experience of late modernity, whilst reorienting heritage so that it might be more productively connected with other pressing social, economic, political and environmental issues of our time.

Pedagogy and Practice in Heritage Studies presents teaching strategies for helping students think critically about the meanings of the past today. In these pragmatic case studies, experienced teachers discuss ways to integrate the values of heritage studies into archaeology curricula, illustrating how the two fields enrich each other and how perspectives drawn from teaching public archaeology invite such engagement. The contributors argue for encouraging empathy, which can lead to awareness of the continuity between past and present; for reflecting on contemporary cultural norms; and for engagement with current issues of social and climate justice. These practical examples model ways to introduce diverse perspectives on history in pre-college, undergraduate, and graduate contexts while frankly assessing the challenges and pitfalls of these approaches. Emphasizing the importance of heritage studies principles and active learning in archaeological education, this handbook and its companion, History and Approaches to Heritage Studies, provide tools to equip archaeologists and heritage professionals with collaborative, community-based, and activist approaches to the past. Contributors: Susan J. Bender | Richard Effland | Ricardo J. Elia | Frances Hayashida | A. Gwynn Henderson | Elizabeth Kryder-Reid | Meredith Anderson Langlitz | Nicolas Laracuente | Shereen Lerner | Alicia Ebbitt McGill | Lewis C. "Skip" Messenger, Jr. | Phyllis Mauch Messenger | Amalia Pérez-Juez | Thomas Pluckhahn | Charles S. White Volumes in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

This book undertakes a comparative study of the history and development of legislative and administrative systems in operation today for the protection of archaeological monuments. With the exception of Scandinavia and the United Kingdom, no country adopted a positive policy towards the protection and conservation of its archaeological and historical heritage until the twentieth century. Moreover, it was not until the middle of that century, under the threat of wholesale devastation from extensive schemes for social and economic development, that the accelerating disappearance of the sites and monuments of Antiquity became the object of intensive study and legislation. Since then systems of cultural resource management have developed throughout the world. A range of countries (from Europe, America, Asia and Africa) representing a diversity of political and ideological systems - capitalist, socialist and ex-colonial - have been selected as being broadly representative of the variety of these systems. The case studies have been written by distinguished archaeologists and provide critical evaluations of the objectives and shortcomings of these systems.