And heritage for all! . . .But what is "heritage"

‘Heritage’ is everywhere. The term is familiar to us all, whether we work professionally with issues of ‘heritage’ or not for the term has equally become part of the public sphere, part of civic consciousness and discourse. It’s wielded un-problematically and nonspecifically, and gets attached to just about everything and anything. From national pride, to natural resources worldwide, from patriotism of the nation to personal creation, from what we wear to what’s in our genes. Indeed, an entire ‘heritage industry’ is becoming increasingly pervasive, whether we watch historical dramatizations on cable television channels, visit heritage ‘theme parks’ in York, UK or Williamsburg, Virginia, cringe at the crumbling of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, or peruse popular periodicals at the newsstand. As Lowenthal (1996:1) describes the ascendancy of term, ‘the cult of heritage’ is the new world ‘popular faith’. Everyone seems to have an interest in heritage – a heritage for all!

Yet what is ‘heritage’? The pliancy of the term denudes any concrete sense of just what heritage is. What is meant when this term is used in academic, public and policy realms? Just whom does it involve – beyond heritage managers and outspoken stakeholders – and how does this ‘stuff of the past’ register its influence in the everyday lives of people? We know that heritage is largely associated with identity at various realms of inclusion, from a sense of personal ancestry through to ethnic definitions and national traditions (Anderson 1983, Hobsbawn 1983, Meskell 2001). Other related concerns involving heritage - land ownership, religious and economic value and so forth – appear derivative to establishing identification. This ‘first order of business’ of identity formation depends upon anchoring claims to the materials of heritage in order to satisfy requirements of authenticity and possession (Rowlands 2002). Once identity is firmly established via proxy of connections to authentic things and places, then a whole host of other claims of heritage can be amassed. These range from the Australia aborigines petitions for restitution of land as part of the Australian Land Rights Movements (Smith 2004b) to the contentious ‘ownership’ of ‘Kennewick Man’ on the part of Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (Watkins 2000). However (or if ever) claims based upon identity are pursued, the very movement towards recognition of unique identities, towards multiculturalism in society and politics, is a trend accelerating commensurately in response to the homogenizing influence of an increasingly global, networked society (Giddens 1991, Jameson 1984, 1992). Yet as soon as we begin to pin down ‘heritage’ as the material objectifications of authenticity and possession underwriting identity, the concept morphs again. This is because in functioning as a guarantor of identity, an exclusive identifier of whatever degree, heritage is often invoked as synonymous with cultural property, with something that may be owned analogously to neo-liberal legislation governing private property (Brown 1998, Smith 2004a). This ‘personalization of the past’ for purposes of possession has even raised the real possibility (particularly in Canada where relevant rulings have already taken place) of copyrighting cultural property under intellectual property rights (IPR) legislation (Nicholas 2004). Based upon the legal precedents of the United States Copyright Act of 1976 and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 2000, objects of heritage may be deemed to be “original creative works” protected by copyright, “designs, materials or other inventions” protected by patents, or even afforded protection through ‘branding’ with (cultural) trademarks (Vogt-O'Connor 2000). Such future possibilities are intensely debated. On the one hand, it is a measure for indigenous cultures and small communities to co-opt the very legal framework supporting the trans-national corporations that very often impose their economic will in local regions (Brown 1998). Or it may be viewed as the closing down, through the exclusive rights of usage much of the past and even contemporary culture to scientific understanding. Either way, propelled by more and more local appropriations for identity formation, heritage is becoming to be seen as an inalienable right, framed very much like the right to personal property (Lowenthal 1996, Rowlands 2002).

Even as ‘heritage’ begins to be firmly associated with cultural property owned by particular groups of individuals and harnessed as the physical instantiations of identity, it quickly eludes even this expanded and increasingly complex definition. This is because heritage freely crosses the divide of nature and culture as when it is argued to be a ‘non-renewable’ resource. This argument, as Strathern (1999) analyzes it, is based upon the same logical principles as the arguments for biodiversity protection on the part of the environmental or green movement. Much effort is spent on arguing for the saving of cultures, of preserving what is left of the world’s heritage. Because once it is gone, much like a grey whale, such cultural phenomena are gone forever. Without such rhetoric, the entire Cultural Resource Management (CRM) phenomenon, given initial impetus through post-World War II legislation in the United State and now responsible for the majority of worldwide archaeological activities (Smith 2004:4-6), would not exist. Likewise, there would certainly be less funding for archaeology that appeals to this rising anxiety on the part of the public to preserve nature and culture the way ‘it was’ before (modern) human intervention. It is no coincidence that the largest international organization established to safeguard heritage combines natural and cultural properties on its World Heritage List (Leask 2006a, UNESCO 2005). This organization, established in 1972 as part of the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), undersigned by more than 180 nations and currently listing more than 800 World Heritage Sites (WHS), was convened to ‘ensure the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations of cultural and natural heritage of outstanding universal value (Leask 2006a, UNESCO 2005). On top of a nature-culture conflation, there arises the added ambiguity over international definitions and jurisdiction of heritage as being of ‘universal value’ versus the previous considerations of heritage being local and personal property. Unsurprisingly there has arisen controversy over the implementation of WHS status which center around the idea of universal and international heritage versus local communities and stakeholders’ opposition to such nomination (Leask 2006b). Such admirable attempts at preservation on a world scale abut deeply personal and local values and affiliations with these ‘sites’. It is often viewed as another form of appropriating heritage located in particular places by trans-national interests and values. Such contestations frequently form over the designation of the boundaries of WHS and the ‘buffer zones’ surrounding them which are mandated by World Heritage management plans (ibid.:24).

Teotihuacan, Mexico is an excellent example. While few would contend that Teotihuacan, Mexico, inscribed in 1987 on the World Heritage List, does not materially embody ‘a heritage’ significant on the world scale, the delimitation of the ‘buffer zones’ of Perimeters B and C surrounding the principal prehispanic urban metropolis has had tremendous impact upon the populations of the surrounding pueblos. The World Heritage Convention requires as a part of WHS listing that the buffer zone of these perimeters be integrated into a coherent, heritage management plan. The responsibility of these plans fall to the relevant agencies of the state sponsor, in this case the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). But the management plan for Teotihuacan’s ‘buffer zone’ has very real, localized and personal consequences. Within these perimeters, there is either an abeyance on any further building construction – private or public – or the stipulation that new constructions are permitted only through INAH’s oversight. Locally, this policy is highly contested as it affects, directly or indirectly, the growing population of more than 70,000 in the Teotihuacan Valley. In terms of heritage, it appears to be a practical consequence of ‘universal value’ over-riding local concerns associated with Teotihuacan. Such an inheritance for the population of Teotihuacan will be a focus of the case study in Chapters 6 and 7. More generally, Mexico has an historical legacy of attempting to integrate its large indigenous and mixed (mestizo) population into modernist projects of the nation which downplay cultural diversity (Purnell 2001, Trigger 1984, Vasconcelos 1925). With a wealth of archaeological sites, much of this effort was focused upon disassociating local populations from a heritage formulated in terms relevant only to modern archaeology and the state’s strong nationalist programs (Caso 1958). Indeed, Teotihaucan was the site of just such a concerted effort in the 1920’s by Manuel Gamio (Gamio 1922). This was an important milestone project both in term of archaeological research at Teotihuacan, and in terms of disentangling local residents from the archaeological zone due to the perceived priority of the site for universal, archaeological value. This will be further discussed in Chapter 4. But there are changes occurring both in terms of how Mexico involves local populations in heritage management on a national level, principally due to a re-evaluation of its law governing heritage management (la Ley General del Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación), with an increased concern to promote great ‘community outreach’ (Franco y González Salas 1999), and locally at Teotihuacan through a series of community ‘open houses’ at the Center for Teotihuacan Studies (now defunct) where many of the tension mentioned above is publicly aired. This greater participation in the World Heritage Site will be discussed in Chapter 7.

Despite the ambiguity of just what ‘heritage’ is, or perhaps because of this very chameleon-like quality, there is no longer doubt that cultural heritage forms the fulcrum for a variety of interests in the past and present. A resource mobilized for identity construction on the nationalist, diasporic, or purely personal scale, heritage is also increasingly being framed within international and universal interests appropriate to an inter-connected, mobile and globalized world context. As a purveyor of the past, the discipline of archaeology would seem to be bolstered by such concerns with a global past. Nevertheless, it is my central argument that these very engagements with a broadening range of interests and uses of the notion of heritage pose fundamental questions for the discipline of archaeology. The most critical is refracted through the tendency sketched above to fold positions that are framed as oppositional into a singular notion of heritage. Private or public, personal or universal, copyrighted or ‘fair use’, global or local. Many of these issues are being acknowledged and tackled in the growing literature (Hale 2002, Hodder 2002, Labadi 2007, Little 2007, Merriman 2004a, Meskell 2002a, Millar 2006) on ‘public’ (McDavid 1997, Merriman 2004b), ‘multivocal’ (Anyon 1995, Gnecco 1999b, Hodder 2004) or ‘community archaeology’ (Little 2007, Marshall 2002, Millar 2006). Foremost amongst these questions, and the most debilitating for archaeology, has been the creation of an impasse between an ethics to include more public participation and determination over a personal and local sense of ‘their heritage’, and the ‘universal’ (Euro-American) principle of objective knowledge. Furthermore, while I will consider in detail the most explicit example of this dilemma, such abutment of ethics and epistemology is wrapped up into heritage management policy on the national and international level (Smith 2004). The World Heritage Convention is a good prognostication of what the future of heritage management will be (for better or for worse). As such, the dilemma demands careful attention because it extends both beyond litigious contexts to global policy decisions and strictly academic concerns to private sector cultural resource management.

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