Chubut,Argentina: a contested Welsh ‘first-place’

Abstract

In an attempt to escape British hegemony, the Welsh established a Patagonian colony in 1865, in what is now the Chubut Province of Argentina. The historical struggles the immigrants faced upon settling the land are rooted in the landscape and commemorated in different versions of Patagonian regional history through provincial museum narratives that serve as a method of solidifying Welshness in Chubut. Contemporarily, the local tourism industry constructs the Welsh as the first settlers in the region, while minimally representing predecessor groups like the indigenous communities or Spanish colonials. Curiously, the representation of these other heritage communities throughout heritage displays actually serves to bolster the Welsh ‘first-place’ claims over the region. These tensions are seen throughout community-based museums in the region that assert a locally rooted hybrid identity by acknowledging local historical diversity, while simultaneously recalling and emphasising the [Welsh] homeland heritage. This paper explores how ‘first-places’ can be a source of symbolic conflict, while simultaneously serving as a dynamic, heritage construction mechanism. This research investigates how the Welsh diaspora negotiates its identity through the mobilisation of heritage, to make claims about the Chubut Province as a symbolic Welsh first-place, as well as broader Argentine heritage.     

The Greek-Albanian Archaeological Project on Maligrad: Shaping the Cultural Heritage in the Tri-National Zone of the Great Prespa Lake

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the collaboration of the Greek-Albanian Archaeological Expedition with the local community of the tri-national district (FYROM-Greece-Albania) of the Great Prespa Lake, in South-eastern Albania, conducted by the Institute for the Transbalkanic Cultural Cooperation (Greece) and the Institute of Archaeology of Tirana (Albania). It is argued that local cultural heritage, including the heritage of the archaeological past, can play a significant reconciliatory role in an extremely delicate national and environmental landscape throughout the work of all the bipolar participants: locals and ‘foreign experts’.     

Digging Holes in Popular Culture: Archaeology and Science Fiction Miles Russell (ed.) with a Prgace by Douglas Adams

Abstract

The heritage management policy in the UK is to delegate management and protection of scheduled ancient monuments to quasi-autonomous heritage agencies. These agencies are an improvement on what preceded them: the dry, conservative and underfunded Ministry of Works. However, by analysing the way in which Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments manages the castles in North Wales one can see that the current system has many inherent failings. Underfunding, a lack of commitment to education and preservation and the artificial division of responsibility along modern pseudo-national boundaries are evidence that the current policy has run its course and now needs to be re-thought. Furthermore, there must be more effort made to present a more inclusive heritage by accepting that the heritage sites in Wales exist within a multicultural Britain and a world of shared human experience. Emerging as a model for future heritage management is Denbigh Castle in North Wales. The site was abandoned in 1998 after Cadw decreed that it did not generate enough income. Subsequently rescued by the local council, it is now thriving. Denbigh stands as an example of how a heritage site can be integrated with the local community that has lived in its shadow for hundreds of years.     

Protecting historic Hanoi in a context of heritage contestation

Abstract

Since the introduction of the doi moi (renovation) policies in 1986, economic liberalisation and modernisation have led to redevelopment pressures on the cultural heritage of Vietnam's cities. A lively debate has ensued, most notably in the capital. Hanoi, about what is worth keeping. The views of international and local developers are opposed to the ‘Vietnamese heritage only’ of the most narrowly nationalistic of politicians and planners. The complicated decision‐making environment is made more difficult by the presence of Western planning advisers who argue for the protection of the French and Russian layers in Hanoi's cultural landscape. This is part of a long history of heritage contestation and redefinition in Hanoi which largely reflects the succession of political regimes controlling the city. Consideration of key philosophical and practical issues is timely given the current intervention by the Australian Hanoi Planning and Development Control Project team which is helping shape the future of a variously‐defined ‘historic Hanoi’.     

Cultural landscape protection in Australia: The Wingecarribee Shire study

Abstract

The concept of cultural landscapes as remarkable windows onto the past, and rich historical documents that can be read has gained increasingly wide acceptance in Australia over the past few years. Allied to this, and informing it. is the way in which landscape as a cultural construct plays a major role in attachment to place and sense of Australianness. The understanding of cultural landscapes as a setting where human history is on display is a community movement as well as a professional one. This paper reviews one particular study which focused on heritage evaluation of an historic rural landscape and moves for its protection.     

Analysing Heritage Landscapes with Historical GIS: Contributions from problem-based inquiry and constructivist pedagogy

This article examines a practical classroom experience using GIS technologies to analyse aspects of a local heritage landscape. An inventory of historic buildings comprising architectural and construction details was revised in the field and then analysed using GIS software. Elements of the geographies of these buildings were displayed using thematic mapping and students used these maps to develop explanatory hypotheses and to suggest policy options for future management of the heritage landscape. Practically, the project demonstrated the contribution GIS can make to historical geography methods, engaged students in an externally supported research partnership working with real-world data, and suggested directions for local public policy formation. Pedagogically, the project demonstrated that historical GIS can be used effectively to shape problem-based inquiry and constructivist learning.     

Between universal spaces and unique places: heritage in Universal Studios Singapore

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a case of Singapore's latest theme park, the Universal Studios Singapore (USS). While theme parks are commonly perceived as money-making entities providing entertainment to the masses, the study argues that heritage is an equally important dimension of a commercial theme park's development, identity and profile. As a heritage-rich environment, the USS is a tourism landscape shaped simultaneously by the forces of corporate heritage and local cultural considerations. ‘Glocalization’ – the interaction of global and local forces – offers a conceptual insight into understanding how themed environments are created and marketed as tourism destinations welcoming to all and yet distinctive to its community and locality. Caution, however, is also sounded as to whether an international attraction can or should ever be ‘too local’ at the risk of diluting its global brand name and broad-based appeal.     

Constructing places for the market: The case of Newcastle,NSW

Abstract

Cities with a heritage of heavy industry, such as Newcastle (NSW), face an insecure future as they undergo economic restructuring. The identities of cities are being refashioned by entrepreneurial urban governments, as part of a three‐pronged attempt to market their territories. A social construction approach reveals the problematic nature of these symbolic reconstructions, their partiality, the reduction of heritage to a commodity, and the eliding of socio‐economic disadvantage. The new post‐industrial identity for Newcastle disinherits working people, ignores the local indigenous peoples, and trivialises the role of women. The richly layered urban landscape and historically constructed narratives – the local heritage – have been cynically appropriated and transformed for the purposes of place marketing. The rhetoric of post‐industrialism conceals poverty and alienation, and the associated physical restructurings are displacing service‐dependent populations.     

Wak’a/shrine making and pilgrimage tourism in Copacabana,Bolivia

Abstract

The cultural landscape of the town of Copacabana and nearby ancient sites on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, have functioned as magnetic places of pilgrimage from Inka times to the present. They are analyzed as landscape constructions through the eyes of political and religious authorities as well as through those of the common pilgrims in a bottom-up perspective from Inka to Colonial times and to the present. Methodologies used are study of pertaining archaeological data and Colonial documents complemented by ethnographic interviews and participant observation. The data demonstrate how the past is redefined in the present as local heritage in a landscape perceived as Andean as well as Christian. Throughout Andean history, Copacabana has been the land terminal for pilgrims to set over to the Islands of the Sun and Moon to visit empowered shrines (wak’as) viewed as places of emergence of the Sun and the first humans. This pilgrimage was fabricated into state ideology by the Inka from ca. A.D.1450–1550. After the Spanish invasion, Copacabana became the seat of a widely revered Virgin who attracts pilgrims from all over Bolivia and southern Peru. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in early August 2015 and 2017 during one of the pilgrimages. Most visitors identify as pilgrim-tourists and many walk to five spatially distinct but thematically related wak’ as at which the past coalesces with the present and the secular with the divine in passionate and colorful performances for family wellbeing. Discussions center on the limited spatial control of the Catholic Church and on the growing practice of making new wak’as in Andean terms to the Virgin at selected landscape features outside of town as a form of popular heritage. Findings demonstrate that local Aymara people are not passive Colonial victims but selectively adopt from their conquerors what they hope may help alleviate poverty.     

Living with Heritage: The Potentials of and Pressures on the Heritage Landscape of Gwollu,Upper West Region,Ghana

Abstract

The impact of development has been identified as one of the most pressing concerns in heritage management in Africa. At the same time, heritage has also been recognized as having the potential to bring tourists, and thus growth, to local economies. Communities that wish to benefit from the latter have to balance developmental pressures against the preservation of heritage, and various sectors of the community may view these priorities differently. In this paper, I discuss some of the potentials of, and pressures on, the heritage landscape of Gwollu, a town in Ghana's Upper West Region. I use Gwollu's brickmakers as a case study to illustrate the small-scale everyday development that can have a lasting impact on a town's heritage resources, and how internal divisions within communities may affect the heritage tourism process.     

The gardens of Dunroamin: History and cultural values with specific reference to the gardens of the inter‐war semi1

The study of landscape and garden history is now well established and is beginning to widen its focus. The importance of the vernacular garden both as an expression of popular culture and as an important element in the contemporary environment is beginning to be recognised and is forcing a reappraisal of the concepts of heritage and a reassessment of established recording techniques and methodologies. This paper is part of a study of one type of popular garden and looks particularly at the contemporary response to the gardens of the inter‐war semi‐detached house and at their role as complex social and cultural artefacts.     

The construction of heritage: The domestic context and its implications

Abstract

A fundamental question in heritage studies is how heritage is constructed, how selection processes operate to transform some places, objects and practices into heritage and not some others. A significant site for heritage construction is the family and its relation to its material culture. The present Survey analyses how individuals within families relate to favoured objects and shows that the creation of material identity is crucial to a family's sense of wellbeing. However a gender difference emerges; for men the passage of time produces significant objects which are valued accordingly, but for women, objects are the passage of time. This has a significant impact on what eventually emerges as family heritage, and consequently upon how public heritage is created.     

Teaching Archaeological Heritage Management. Towards a Change in Paradigms

ABSTRACT

The concept of archaeological heritage management (AHM) has been key to wider archaeological research and preservation agendas for some decades. Many universities and other education providers now offer what is best termed heritage management education (HME) in various forms. The emphasis is commonly on archaeological aspects of heritage in a broad sense and different terms are often interchangeable in practice. In an innovative working-conference held in Tampere, Finland, we initiated a debate on what the components of AHM as a course or curriculum should include. We brought together international specialists and discussed connected questions around policy, practice, research and teaching/training, at local, national, transnational and World Heritage levels. In this article we take the Tampere discussions further, focusing especially on the meaning, necessity, implications and prerequisites of interdisciplinary HME. We offer our thoughts on developing HME that reflects the contemporary aspects and needs of heritage and its management.     

Communities and archaeology under the Soufrière Hills Volcano on Montserrat,West Indies

Abstract

The volcanically devastated landscape of Montserrat and its social fabric comprise what Maria calls a “traumascape”—a site of tragedy and catastrophe that is also a place of coping and resilience. How Montserratians engage with trauma is evident in how they remember their recent and historical pasts, and in how they are reinventing aspects of their heritage in order to sustain a distinctly Montserratian identity for the future. Such a process of coping presents challenges for conducting archaeology in collaboration with the community. In this article, we describe the experiences of a recently established project on the island (Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat) and discuss the potential for, and the obstacles involved in, developing longer-term, sustainable forms of collaboration between archaeologists and local Montserratian communities when facing the unusual circumstances of volcanic disaster and hazard.     

Commitment,Objectivity and Accountability to Communities: Priorities for 21st-Century Archaeology

Abstract

It is no longer possible to ignore the unprecedented levels of destruction resulting from development projects imposed by multinational corporations and governments. In this context, it is important to address the role archaeology and related professions, such as heritage management, play from the perspective both of the threat to physical heritage and our relationship with affected communities. This paper explores ways in which professionals can learn to work in a mutually accountable way with communities opposing destructive development, and together seek alternatives to development which threatens lives, livelihoods, culture, and environment. Case studies from the Boyne Valley and Tara in Ireland, Il?su dam in Turkey and the Oaxaca valley in Mexico, illustrate some of the issues. The implications of the growing privatization of professions, particularly for communities in the Third World whose poverty undermines their power to refuse even the most globally devastating developments, making it imperative that professionals look again at what we aim to accomplish and how much we are actually accomplishing it. As professionals we cannot afford to be ignorant of what communities want, need and are entitled to in order to develop and flourish. Archaeology and people's cultural roots are not separable from these questions.     

The entanglement of the heritage paradigm: values,meanings and uses

This paper explores the ways in which heritage as a practice and concept has been used and diverse meanings and values ascribed to heritage by different claimants, using the medieval site of Ani in eastern Turkey as a case study. On one hand, the site marks a point of conflict between Turks and Armenians, with the heritage and the past of the site playing an important role for identity making and construction of national narratives, as well as developing what might be seen as the authorised heritage discourses for both sides. On other hand, the local community around the site has developed a different relationship to the site Ani because of their daily relationship with its landscape and built environment. This has revealed meaning and values embodied in the site that are beyond the national and political level. This paper considers to what extent the built environment in particular, can play a role in identity making and add to the political tension. It also examines how the value and meaning of a heritage site can be distinct for local communities from national political meanings and uses, and, as a consequence, can be used to resist authorised heritage discourses.     

Relationality and territoriality: rethinking policy circulation of industrial heritage reuse in Chongqing,China

ABSTRACT

Following the adoption of a socialist market economy in 1978, the Chinese city has accommodated radical changes in its urban industrial landscapes. In contrast with the large-scale reuse of industrial landscapes in the eastern Chinese cities, inland China has been witnessing the rapid disappearance of industrial heritage. The disparity of heritage conservation outcomes across urban China raises questions about why some leading cities conserve their heritage better or more readily than others, and why the same planning ideas, policies, and practice borrowed from elsewhere cannot be easily transferred or copied in the western cities. This paper applies the relational and territorial approach developed in the literature of urban policy transfer and mobilities to heritage studies. By conducting a case study in Chongqing, this paper examines how industrial heritage reuse has travelled as a global concept with its Chinese precedents to Chongqing, and why the idea has been diluted in the local context. The Chongqing case reveals that the heritage idea has travelled globally and nationally from eastern China and has mutated in respond to local circumstances. It is thus argued that the consequence of industrial heritage reuse can best be understood through a combined approach of relationality and territoriality.     

Middle of nowhere: contesting rural heritage at the World Famous Gopher Hole Museum

Abstract

The World Famous Gopher Hole Museum in Torrington, Alberta, Canada, is a rural museum located in a relatively isolated hamlet of less than 200 people. Inside the museum, small diorama boxes feature taxidermied gophers dressed in tiny clothing and posed as townspeople dining in restaurants, shooting pool and chatting at a beauty parlour, among other activities. Drawing on methods stemming from critical museum theory, critical rural studies and critical heritage studies, this article analyzes the ways in which both local residents and visitors from outside the region understand the museum, considering why it is indeed world famous, attracting over 5000 international tourists each year. It argues that the Gopher Hole Museum succeeds in part because its organisers are active agents who take pride in the museum without attempting to refute the sometimes negative responses to it, or control the ways in which outsiders interpret it. The museum in Torrington is a complex ‘open text’ that both employs and critiques the conventional methods used in natural history and heritage museums to offer multiple narratives about childhood, heritage and rural life, addressing local people as well as tourists.     

Crossed gazes over an old city: photography and the ‘Experientiation’ of a heritage place

Abstract

The paper analyses a group of photographs of the old city of Porto, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The photograph is used as a medium to elicit the ways different social agents experience and relate to Old Porto as a heritage place. The photographs were collected as part of a wider research project on the way sense of place of Porto’s old city was differentially constructed by local inhabitants, tourists and the City Council. Illustrated postcards were also analysed. The findings demonstrate the usefulness of this particular form of image-based ethnographic research in understanding the forms in relation to a heritage lived-in place.