What Can We Weave? Authority, Reconstructing, and Negotiating Heritages Through Archaeological Open-Air Museums

Abstract

The construction of heritage is an ongoing process, with numerous voices involved in it. Physical remains of the past frequently—though not always—play a significant role as focal points that heritage narratives attach to. As resources, these remains can be used to draw both domestic and foreign tourism, providing economic benefit to states and providing a platform from which heritage narratives may be told. Such narratives can be economically, socially, and politically powerful. They have been previously examined through the authorized heritage discourse, wherein only certain ‘pasts’ are explored, or as heritage brands. In a world of change in society and in tourism, the authority of archaeologist/historian/scholar, governing bodies, tourism agencies, passionate ‘non-specialists’, and multiple publics over heritages is one of contestation. Each is a weaver of heritage. This article examines the creation of archaeological open-air museums (AOAMs) as renewable resources for tourism within a fragmenting market. It explores the authorities and threads of heritage that result in different capacities to actively address visitor perceptions of the ‘past’ and present they are touring. This paper concludes with viewing the use of an AOAM as a location of contestation, as any other heritage property can become, though one more malleable to the changing needs of heritage weavers due to its existence in conflict with understandings of linear time.