Presenting Archaeology and Heritage at a UNESCO World Heritage Site: Gorée Island, Senegal

Abstract

ABSTRACTGorée Island is Senegal's first site on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is associated with the infamous Atlantic slave trade, and over the past few decades, Gorée has become a prime destination for global tourism, particularly for the African diaspora from the New World but also for many Europeans and African nationals. Today, Gorée is a forum where different stakeholders battle over the role, place, and significance of the island in the Atlantic slave trade and its enduring legacies in the present. While Gorée owes much of its reputation to its heritage, including architecture, archaeology, and monuments, recent controversies over site preservation and policy compliance raised questions about heritage presentation and consumption. This article analyzes stakeholders’ attitudes toward archaeology and heritage to gain insights on how they are presented and consumed by different stakeholders and eventually destroyed by them as well. The discussion shows ambiguous attitudes toward site presentation and preservation, which might be linked either to stakeholders’ subjectivities or hypocrisy or to poor and uncoordinated communication strategies by heritage professionals.