Marketing Heritage

Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past

Edited by Yorke Rowan, Uzi Baram

Publication date:

01 September 2004

Length of book:

328 pages

Publisher

AltaMira Press

Dimensions:

234x173mm
7x9"

ISBN-13: 9780759103412

What are the implications of mass tourism and globalization for the field of archaeology? How does this change popular understandings of the past? Increasingly archaeological sites worldwide are being commodified for a growing tourist trade. At best, expansion of programs can aid in the protection and historic preservation of sites and strenghten community identities. However, unchecked commercial development may undermine the integrity of these same sites, replacing local interests with corporate ones, economically and culturally. Within this volume, original case studies from well-known sites in Cambodia, Israel, England, Mexico, and North America are presented to address the complex interaction between archaeology and nationalist, political, and commercial policies. This book should appeal to archaeologists, applied anthropologists, tourism and economic development specialists, and historic preservationists alike, as well others with an interest in the preservation of archaeological sites as historic locales.
This book will rightly make you question the social forces at play in marketing heritage, the politics of of representation apparent in particular pasts, and the way sin which commodification affects your own views about what you see and reach about heritage sites.