No future in archaeological heritage management?

Abstract

Although the future is mentioned frequently in overarching aims and visions, and it is a major drive in the daily work of archaeological heritage managers and indeed heritage professionals more generally, it remains unclear precisely how an overall commitment to the future can best inform specific heritage practices. It seems that most archaeologists and other heritage professionals cannot easily express how they conceive of the future they work for, and how their work will impact on that future. The future tends to remain implicit in daily practice which operates in a continuing, rolling present. The authors argue that this needs to change because present-day heritage management may be much less beneficial for the future than we commonly expect.

New and Emerging Challenges to Heritage and Well-Being: A Critical Review

“…They also state "that the heritage sector lacks a thorough engagement with questions concerning the future benefits of cultural heritage and thus concerning the appropriateness of present-day practices and policies in heritage management". This is still very much true today [60]. Cultural theorist Patricia Wise succinctly expressed this at the local level in communication with the authors in 2016 [61]:…”

Slow science for fast archaeology

“…If we are to grant anticipation as much importance as we have to demonstration, we also have to grant equal importance to the various forms of speculative thinking (e.g. Högberg et al 2017;Ståhl et al 2017;Reilly 2019;Marila, forthcoming). In this context, speculation has importance beyond its role in hypothesis-testing, and speculation becomes a way to intensify the multiplicity of alternative ways of appreciating the world (Debaise 2017).…”

July/August Print Issue: The Sections Edition: Anthropological Futures

“…However, most archaeologists have not articulated the precise relevance of our work to the future. By and large our work tends to focus on studying and curating objects and spreading knowledge about the past, with a strong, underlying preservation paradigm (Holtorf 2014;Högberg et al 2017). This has changed to some degree in the twenty-first century with the influence of postmodernism and the postprocessual critique, and the rise of critical heritage studies-an area of enquiry that focuses on the role of the past in the present and that focuses on heritage as a process embedded in contemporary social and political relationships.…”