‘We are Still Here’: African Heritage, Diversity and the Global Heritage Knowledge Templates

Abstract

Archaeology has an authority beyond the jurisdiction of the state as Smith’s Authorised Heritage Discourse propounds. For postcolonial societies, the power of archaeology lies in the narrative template that has defined what heritage is and how it should be preserved. These heritage narratives are set in stone and privileges one knowledge system over all others. These archaeological and heritage narratives have been used to create the heritage systems used today to preserve sacred sites of indigenous peoples in Africa, the Americas, Australia and other parts of the world. This paper examines how archaeology and heritage as disciplines with origins in the west have created a global heritage template that fails to understand other ways of knowing.