Heritage Studies

This report presents a critique of established cultural heritage practices in Western Australia, focusing on the control of the process by corporate proponents and its effects on rock art and stone arrangements. The moderating roles of scholarly societies in questions of ethics are reviewed, and the report concludes with a constructive proposal to end practices that have facilitated large-scale destruction of cultural heritage sites.

This paper examines alternatives to top-down approaches to heritage management and development. One of the key issues facing communities around the globe today is the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD)--the determination of heritage values by “experts” and government officials on behalf of the people. It is all too common to find local people alienated by such practices and searching for ways in which they can take ownership of their own heritage. Community-based research that shares power and is participatory is one avenue that is quickly developing in many regions around the globe. In Africa, a number of villages and other small communities have taken the initiative to preserve and develop their heritage, free of outside control. Important lessons may be drawn from these experiences, particularly the use of discourse-based research that captures how the people define and live out their heritages through everyday practice.

The following article is an excerpt from a chapter of our forthcoming book: The Shpoler Zeida – The Life, Legends, and Descendants of the Grandfather of Shpola. The chapter is entitled: "Mysteries of the Shpoler Zeida Family." This article focuses on the Beletsky family (including the Bell, Bruskin, Gellard, Goldberg, and Polis branches), who claims descent from the Shpoler Zeida. The mystery involves how their earliest known Beletsky ancestor, Leiba Biletsky (1782–1846), and his wife, Risya (1789–bef. 1848), are connected to the Shpoler Zeida.  We present what is known about the Beletsky family’s lineage and reconstruct their line of descent to the extent possible, in the hope that making this information more widely available will result in a key piece of evidence being discovered which will help bridge the gap in their line of descent from the Shpoler Zeida.

This article examines the Marian shrines of Walsingham (England) and Meryem Ana (Turkey). Walsingham was a popular pilgrimage site until the Reformation, when Catholic sacred places were disestablished or destroyed by Protestants. Meryem Ana is linked to Walsingham, in that both shrines feature healing springs and devotion to the cult of the ‘holy house’ of the Virgin Mary. Walsingham is a now home to multi-faith pilgrimages, New Age seekers, and secular tourists. Meryem Ana is a rare Christian shrine in Islamic Turkey, where mass tourists rub shoulders with devout Christians supporting the small Greek Catholic community in residence. This article emerged from the experience of walking the Walsingham Way, a modern route based on the medieval pilgrimage in 2013, and visiting Meryem Ana in 2015 while making a different pilgrimage, that of an Australian attending the centenary of the Gallipoli landings. Both shrines are marketed through strategies of history and heritage, making visiting them more than simply tourism. Both sites offer a constructed experience that references the Middle Ages and Christianity, bringing modern tourism in an increasingly secular world into conversation with ancient and medieval pilgrimage and the religious past.

Die (österreichische) archäologische Denkmalpflege befindet sich in einer schweren Krise: das ursprünglich 1923 erstmals erlassene und seither nur unwesentlich novellierte Denkmalschutzgesetz (DMSG) ist hochgradig veraltet und genügt modernen denkmalpflegerischen und wissenschaftlich-archäologischen Erfordernissen nicht mehr. Als reaktives Gesetz beruht das DMSG in erster Linie auf dem traditionellen Schutzlistenprinzip; im Bereich der archäologischen Denkmalpflege ergänzt um eine Meldepflicht für Zufallsfunde und damit verbundene, kurzfristige Arbeitseinstellungspflichten bei der zufälligen Entdeckung sogenannter "Bodendenkmale". Das war 1923, als selbst Baugruben noch mehrheitlich von Arbeitern händisch mit der Spitzhacke und Schaufel ausgehoben wurden, durchaus adäquat, weil allfällig durch Bauarbeiten betroffene archäologische Denkmale dabei unweigerlich auffielen und daher - als Zufallsfunde - geschützt waren. Heute hingegen sind Bau-, Land- und Forstwirtschaft durchgehend maschinisiert und industrialisiert und Zufallsfunde archäologischer Denkmale kommen daher bei bodenverändernden Arbeiten so gut wie gar nicht mehr vor, weil allfällig vorhandene archäologische Denkmale von den Arbeitern einfach nicht bemerkt werden. Es bedarf daher heute eines präventiven archäologischen Denkmalschutzes, bei dem vorausschauend vor bodenverändernden Arbeiten nach archäologischen Überresten gesucht und diese erforderlichenfalls vor Beginn der Erdarbeiten wissenschaftlich erforscht (d.h. ausgegraben) werden. Das DMSG und insbesondere seine Auslegung durch die für seinen Vollzug verantwortliche Behörde, das Bundesdenkmalamt, behindern eine derartige, moderne präventive archäologische Denkmalpflege massiv. Stattdessen versucht die Behörde mittels des inzwischen untauglichen Gesetzes einen totalen Denkmalschutz zu erreichen, der dem explizit ausgedrückten Willen des Gesetzgebers diametral widerspricht und betreibt somit rechtswidrige Denkmalpflege.

Na década de 1980, técnicos do Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Na-cional (Iphan) passaram a utilizar argumentos do campo disciplinar da história para justificar a seleção do patrimônio para além dos cânones da excepcionalidade. Mobilizando autores e conceitos da Escola dos Annales, justificavam tombamentos de conjuntos urbanos cujas car-acterísticas não se enquadravam nas narrativas de identidade nacional via colonial praticadas nas primeiras décadas da Instituição. Laguna/SC, Cuiabá/MS, Morro da Conceição e Praça XV de Novembro no Rio de Janeiro, por exemplo, serão preservados não somente pelo valor histórico das suas edificações, mas também pela sua potencialidade como fonte histórica. Elab-oram-se, então, argumentos de preservação de bens imóveis que buscavam driblar os conceitos do aporte legal do Decreto-lei no 25/37, buscando proteger sítios e lugares por seu valor documental. O artigo discute as relações entre escrita da história e preservação do patrimônio cultural, tendo como foco o caso de Laguna/SC. Pretende-se compreender de que maneira a proteção legal foi justificada a partir do inédito entendimento da cidade como documento por meio do estudo do processo de tombamento, seus estudos técnicos e as mobilizações teóricas do campo da história social e de autores como Marc Bloch e Jacques Le Goff. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Laguna/SC. Escola dos Annales. Cidade como documento. Iphan.

ABSTRACT: In the 1980s, technicians from the Institute for National Artistic and Historical Heritage (Iphan) began to look to the academic discipline of History for arguments to support the selection of heritage assets that went beyond the grandiose. Engaging actors and concepts from France's historiography they justified listing buildings and urban ensembles with characteristics that did not fit into the colonial-based national identity narratives used by the institution in its early decades. During this time, sites such as Laguna (in Santa Catarina State), Cuiabá (in Mato Grosso State), Morro da Conceição and XV de Novembro Square (in the City of Rio de Janeiro), among others, were preserved not only for the historical value of their buildings, but also for their potential as a source of history. New preservation rationales for immovable assets were developed; these sought to circumvent the concepts set out in the provisions of Decree-Law No.

Actas de las XIII Jornadas Museológicas Chilenas realizadas en Valdivia en el año 2016.
Organizadores: ICOM-Chile y Dirección Museológica de la Universidad Austral de Chile.
Coordinador general: Simón Urbina.
Comité editorial: Luis Alegría, Gabriela Alt, Marcelo Godoy, Leonardo Mellado, Ricardo Mendoza, Simón Urbina, Valeria Vera, Fernando Vergara y Karin Weil.
Edición: César Altermatt.
Diseño: Milka Marinov.
Maquetación: Alejandra Rosas.
Traducción de conferencias magistrales: Valentina Pires A. / VPA Communications.

Este libro describe el trabajo realizado en el sitio arqueológico que se ubica detrás de la Casa de Gobierno, en donde funcionó entre los años 1857 y 1894 la Aduana Nueva, más conocida como Aduana Taylor, la cual constituyó el primer edificio público de gran envergadura y de características monumentales que tuvo la ciudad de Buenos Aires.
Una investigación histórica y documental exhaustiva al inicio del texto permite conocer que sucedió en el lugar donde primeramente funcionó el Fuerte de Buenos Aires y parte del cual fue reutilizado en la construcción de esta Aduana del siglo XIX, cuya estructura aún puede observarse hoy día.
Toda  su construcción, funcionamiento y demolición llegando hasta el momento actual en el que se erige allí el Museo de Casa Rosada, está narrado con la finalidad de contextualizar y poder comprender el trabajo arqueológico efectuado en el lugar entre los años 2009 y 2011, así como los hallazgos arqueológicos descubiertos. El piso original que tenía el patio de maniobras, los restos de un sistema de movilidad de mercaderías - desconocido por las fuentes históricas de la época y posteriores - junto con fragmentos y objetos de diferentes materiales, que son descriptos y analizados particularmente (lozas, gres, vidrio, metal, piedras para chispas, restos óseos, entre otros) constituyen solo algunos de los restos arqueológicos recuperados.
Estas páginas muestran asimismo como profesionales de la arqueología trabajan dentro de una obra de construcción moderna, de forma multidisciplinaria, teniendo un carácter de rescate pero con un fuerte componente de investigación. Dentro de la Arqueología Urbana Argentina se espera constituya un trabajo de referencia para todos aquellos que se abocan a esta especialidad, así como también para el público en general interesado en este tipo de información y relato.

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

In the past forty years the relationship between culture, economy and society has changed beyond recognition. Culture has grown beyond its original socialisation role to become the oil of the new economy and a vital reservoir of symbolic resources that feeds tourism production and consumption. Heritage has emerged as a force for urban and rural renewal and preservation, become a global industry in its own right.
More recently the growth of the creative economy has been marked by the increasing intangibilisation of culture and heritage, as they have become vital markers of symbolic value. In the field of tourism, this change has been marked by the continued growth of cultural tourism, and the recent fragmentation of cultural tourism into a number of sub-fields, including film tourism, gastronomic tourism, festival tourism, etc. (Richards, 2001; Hjalager and Richards, 2002).
The growing importance of creativity and intangible heritage in tourism has also been marked by the development of a specific sub-field of ‘creative tourism’ (Richards and Raymond, 2000). Creative tourism arguably represents a departure from traditional models of cultural and heritage tourism, moving away from tangible heritage as the key asset towards creative and symbolic capital.
This paper examines the development of creative tourism in recent years, tracing its trajectory from a sub-field of cultural tourism towards an emerging field and philosophy of tourism.

Over the past 5 years, archaeologists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have made several short-term trips to South Eleuthera to research the history of this portion of the island. Our main interests have been in understanding how the landscape has changed over the past 150 years, and especially in the past few decades as tourism has fallen off in the south. Through a combination of ethnographic research and pedestrian survey of the South Eleuthera landscape, we have gained a clearer understanding of the history of this region, and of contemporary life today. This report offers a summary of findings in response to our research questions on memory, history, and landscape in South Eleuthera, as well as some suggested next steps in studying the cultural resources of the region.

The concept of authenticity, as defined in international circles between the 1960s and the 1994 Nara Conference on Heritage, has been one of the main instruments used to define policies aiming at heritage protection during the last few decades. The concept also became more than an instrument: it shaped entire approaches to the question of the built heritage and to the process – social and political – aiming at its conservation and restoration. For this reason, it has been the object of intense discussions, with scholars and activists denouncing some of its founding ambiguities as being tied to static and sometimes culturalist conceptions of history, to colonial visions, and to policies of social segregation. The object of this chapter is to reflect on such debates around the case of the city of Aleppo, and particularly around the way its medieval and Ottoman built heritage was dealt with in the period of the Ottoman reforms of the second half of the 19th century, the period of French colonial occupation, and the various phases of independence up to its present- day tragic destruction.

Many qiaoxiang in southern Fujian and Guangdong appear derelict, but from documenting the material heritage and interviewing people about its social significance, another image surfaces. The homeland of Overseas Chinese was not only found to be significant to the diaspora, but serve as an enduring reminder of a grassroots-based modernity in rural China. The qiaoxiang effectively became a transnational legacy of migration from southern China that has undergone the following stages of transformation: exodus-led emergence of a remittance landscape, sudden abandonment, and sometimes revival. Today, it has become a “repository” or “living museum” where tourists and scholars alike can visit and ponder about how humans adapted to post-rural life.

Review of heritage places in the old Victorian gold town of Walhalla
The heritage review has included the following, as included in this attachment:
 Preparation of an illustrated database including all identified individual places and areas (1984, 1999 reports), most of which are include in the heritage overlay;
 Brief site check if these places remain as identified on the ground, revealing a number that have been removed or altered;
 Brief review of the data used to assess these places in 1984 (the extra places listed in the 1999 report had no documentation) with reference to online primary sources and recent publications on Walhalla where available;
 Revision of the Statement of Significance of each contributory or significant place (Heritage Victoria format);
 Brief review of related heritage documents referred to elsewhere in this report, including the latest heritage review undertaken by Context P/L where it relates to Walhalla;
 Site visit for potential heritage places for future assessment; and
 Recommendations for the heritage management of each identified place or area.

With articles by Noémie Drouguet, Areti Adamopoulou, Esther Solomon, Jonathan Paquette, Christopher Gunter, Éric Giroux, and Karen Worcman.
------ See also follow up article "Museums Without (Scholar-)Curators: Exhibition-Making in Times of Managerial Curatorship" published in Museum International (2016):

https://www.academia.edu/33024164/Museums_Without_Scholar-_Curators_Exhibition-Making_in_Times_of_Managerial_Curatorship

This dissertation examines the formation of commodity landscapes that manifested between 1870 and 1930 at the Mann-Simons site, a collection of commercial and domestic spaces in downtown Columbia, South Carolina, owned and operated by the same African American family from the mid-nineteenth century to 1970.  Primary data comes from archaeological excavations at the site.  Through a lens of commodities production and consumption during the period when our current culture of consumption developed, I tell three stories of the family and property using a variety of theoretical tools, including ideas of discourse materialized, hybridity, object mediation, and thick description.  By considering, in turn, the same set of archaeologically-recovered objects from three distinct vantage points – consumption, production, and heritage – the Mann-Simons site illuminates how commodity landscapes shaped, and were shaped by, discourses at myriad scales and how these landscapes mediated practice and knowledges.  The first story is one of production, and tells a story of the social lives of things understood independently of the practices of the family.  I demonstrate how discourses of health and sanitation link objects as diverse as linoleum and brightly-colored walls; how home electrification influenced the materials of which buttons were made; and how the application of the predictive commodity flow model is useful for understanding market access and alternative market interactions.  The second story, one of consumption, is a story of object biographies.  I demonstrate that through an understanding of object mediation and ideas of technology, the Mann-Simons family at the turn of the twentieth century was using the emerging world of commodities to tie themselves into a desired future trajectory, one that would become mainstream by the 1930s: commodities as the path to modernity.  The final story is one of heritage.  I suggest that museums are social-material hybrids that mediate visitors' conceptions of authenticity, knowledge, and history.  At the Mann-Simons site, this hybridity shaped the meaning and significance of this site-turned-house museum over the past forty-years.  I further examine the role of archaeology within and for various publics and present a framework for integrating critical and empirical archaeologies.  I conclude with an examination of my meta-question: what is the value of archaeologies of the recent past?

This chapter introduces the concept of heritage and examines its various uses in contemporary society. It then provides a background to the development of critical heritage studies as an area of academic interest, and in particular the way in which heritage studies has developed in response to various critiques of contemporary politics and culture in the context of deindustrialisation, globalisation and transnationalism. Drawing on a case study in the official documentation surrounding the Harry S. Truman Historic Site in Missouri, USA, it describes the concept of authorised heritage discourses (AHD) in so far as they are seen to operate in official, state-sanctioned heritage initiatives. Where the other chapters in the book contain substantial case studies as part of the discussion of the different aspects of the politics of heritage, this chapter focuses instead on key concepts, definitions and ideas central to understanding what heritage is, and on heritage studies as a field of inquiry. The chapter suggests that critical heritage studies should be concerned with these officially sanctioned heritage discourses and the relationships of power they facilitate on the one hand, and the ways in which heritage operates at the local level in community and identity building on the other. It provides a number of explicit ideas and reference points to which the authors of the other chapters will return through the course of the book.

Cities have become creative spaces of total consumption, which constantly refuel the theoretical and practical bases of our consumer society. It is a further stage of the “fantasy city” (Hannigan): McDonaldization (Ritzer) and Disneyization (Bryman) have been largely metabolized and so-called “non-lieux” (Augé) have often become the most significant spaces and have helped to build new glocal identities. In such a context, theming – and particularly historical theming – has become a powerful and effective tool, since it gives a robust structure to the multiple and dynamic processes of mingling that characterize our liquid society (Bauman, 2000). Theming merges past and present, culture and leisure, originals and copies, as well as tourism and shopping, and gives an effective framework to this mingling, which is, at the same time, material and immaterial, visual and emotional, sensorial and experiential.
The relationship with the past is particularly interesting. The central archaeological area of Rome has become a sort of theme park, owing to the huge flows of tourists that it receives and the process of Disneyization that it has undergone, though – unlike many other Italian heritage towns, such as Venice and Florence – Rome still preserves a significant local identity and an urban life that goes far beyond tourism. The theming is present in its urban context owing partly to tourism and partly to the usual culturalization of consumption (hotels with Roman names, restaurants with Roman menus, resin souvenirs of the Colosseum, T-shirts with gladiators and legionaries etc.). We can single out the theming even in some of its most iconic places. The area of the Colosseum and forums, together with Via dei Fori Imperiali, which crosses and unites them, appears as an invisible and diffused theme park: a specialized district for leisure and cultural consumption where archaeological heritage acts as an attraction. It is not a leisure space themed to archaeology, but an archaeological space used as a theme park. Legionaries and gladiators for pictures and re-enactors act as living attractions.
Other spaces contribute to this process. Cinecittà, the dream machine of a boundless park, has helped to build the image of Rome and to theme the city. Its studios host film sets, which are at the same time a themed environment, an unusual archaeological site and a place where the myth of Rome is continually reshaped. Though distant from the main archaeological area, these studios are tied to it by an invisible thread, since they play an important role in the definition of its image. Outside the city, but inside its territory, there is also a small themed district formed by a Roman-themed outlet, “Castel Romano,” and an amusement park, “Cinecittà World”, themed to the studios that nurtured the golden age of Italian cinema.
Similarly, north of Rome, near Civitavecchia, where giant cruise ships bring huge tourist flows, a group of businessmen is trying to create “Roma Vetus”, a pharaonic theme park with reconstructions of many Roman monuments. In line with the current trends of experiential and sensory tourism, visitors would be allowed to relax in Roman baths, mint coins and grind grain. Groups of re-enactors would give life to the park, but visitors themselves would be enabled to rent costumes of gladiators, centurions and senators. We are clearly in the world of entertainment, far away from the open-air archaeological museums with their reconstructions and living-history activities. Its creators maintain that “Roma Vetus” will be used at the same time as theme park and a set for films and TV series. This park is probably destined to remain the dream of a minor group of daring speculators, but it clearly represents the dynamics at work in our liquid world.

This Chapter (Part III, 6) addresses the flexible nature of oral performance texts, like those found in the solo dance form Bharata Natyam.  An alternative hermeneutics unsettles the Western approaches to text analysis, interpretation and edition.  Central target of analysis is the Tamil dance text  'Mohamana' following the indigenous modes of interpretation as followed in traditional performance.

As far as archaeology deals with the past in the present, it is already a public endeavour; especially so in southern Europe, where contemporary identities are drawn from ancient cultures, such as the Greek and Roman. In Greece, the political role of the discipline marked antiquities as goods of the people and archaeology as a highly popular discourse. This led to the creation of a state mechanism to manage antiquities for the benefit, but ironically at the exclusion, of the people, in an authoritative top-down approach. In defiance, various actors participate in the public discourse about the past, cultural heritage and its roles today. This paper will review the state of the field by bringing together research in public archaeology in Greece but also non-academic initiatives, such as NGOs and citizen movements. It is argued that public engagement, primarily through museum exhibitionsthe most formal and controlled interface between archaeology and non-archaeologistsand cultural events in archaeological sites, is the primary aspect of public archaeology. While public archaeological discourse is overabundant and expansive though, critical research and analysis are lagging and conventional narratives remain broadly unchallenged.

Even though research on heritage interpretation has been conducted steadily since the mid-20th century, the actual concept of such interpretation has not been clear. In The ICOMOS Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites, which is a leading international standard of heritage management, the definition of heritage interpretation is still vague. Also, defining its concept is tricky because it is based on the 'situation,' which could change at any moment. Therefore it seems that previous research has focused only on the social function of heritage interpretation. Since socio-philosophy research has become increasingly crucial in heritage studies, the concept of heritage interpretation needs to be precise. Therefore, this paper looks at research history chronologically, divides its social role into two different branches, and finally reifies the definition of the
concept.

Two social values of heritage interpretation can be distinguished as 'modern heritage interpretation,' and 'inclusive interpretation.' Modern heritage interpretation directs studies into conveying heritage's value to the public as measured by a few experts. It is an educational and communicative role. Inclusive heritage interpretation focuses on seeking comprehensive recognition of diverse values and finds ways to promote reconciliation among multiple stakeholders of heritage. Even though these two functions have developed in different social backgrounds, it is apparent that both have been generated in an unclear, overlapping, and complicated context.

The concept of heritage interpretation is too complex to simplify as 'interpretation' itself. This paper defines such interpretation as 'all activities involved in the process of value creation of heritage.' Two social values relate to the concept of 'interpretation': they all have a common recognition of fundamental characteristics of heritage. This is used to establish a collective identity in society. However, it is more appropriate to conceptualize inclusive heritage interpretation as 're-interpretation' because it denies modern heritage interpretation and identifies new negotiated value.

Technology has become a transformative medium for the transmission of information within the indigenous, post-colonial Native Hawaiian land control movement.  The movement has harnessed the power of the Internet to convey traditional knowledge and heritage values, and to disseminate information on Native Hawaiian political movements for self-determination and land control of heritage sites.  Previous efforts to develop coordinated and effective movements were impacted by geographic distances in this Pacific Island state.  The volcanic island landscapes posed difficulties in the dissemination of information and the ability of communities to respond in a timely manner to threats to heritage sites.  However, with the introduction of advanced communication networks and technologies these difficulties have been overcome.  Communication among community members is now instantaneous as technological developments, such as cell phones, computers and other personal technologies have become the primary means of communication.  Information for community involvement in Native Hawaiian land control efforts to encourage, protect and preserve threatened heritage sites and practices now reaches not only the Native Hawaiian community on the eight major islands of Hawai'i, but also extends to Hawaiian diaspora enclaves within the continental United States, and indigenous communities throughout the world.  Local concerns are now global discussions, with potential political impacts on Native Hawaiian heritage issues from communities of interest throughout the world.

This contribution discusses the emergent field of Intergenerational Justice (IJ) with an aim to drawing new light upon issues in conservation. Several key issues in IJ are discussed that allow heritage conservation to be contextualised. Methods and debates from IJ are described and related to conservation practice. The paper is not an exhaustive review, but identifies links to pertinent issues in conservation.

In diesem Buch finden sich die Tagungsberichte des jahrlichen Kongresses fur Altorientalistik. In dieser Folge, mit dem Thema »Text und Bild«, fallt die ungewohnlich hohe Anzahl von Farbbildern ins Auge. Ausnahmsweise wurde die Rencontre von zwei Universitaten organisiert: Bern und Geneva.

Apart from wars, other contexts of social conflict have recently become a setting in which archaeologists are faced with acute, sometimes armed, violence. On the African continent, a region often overlooked in discussions of “archaeology in conflict”, rapid economic development has led to several such scenes. The paper discusses a particularly poignant example from the Middle Nile valley in Sudan, where large dam projects have been met with various levels of opposition by affected populations. Local communities opposing the construction of further planned dams on the Nile are increasingly stressing ‘cultural survival’ and fear of ‘developmental genocide’ as two of their major motivations for fighting these projects. Assuming a close link between the developer and archaeological salvage missions, affected people have started to use the expulsion of salvage teams from their territory as a strategy of resistance—posing an ethical dilemma for the archaeologists who struggle to find a position in the increasingly violent controversies accompanying these contested development projects.

I remain wary of the academic industry that continues
to flourish around Palmyra. Yes, the archaeological adventurism and opportunism of the
early 20th century have been refashioned into new forms of international technocratic expertise.
But in fetishizing the arch, and indeed its copies, we also risk participating in the same discourses
that are being critiqued. More sobering still is that the topics that scholars formulate (and seek to
have funded) have simply been recalibrated to the insidious practice of ‘crisis chasing’ (Cabot
2019). The crisis is about salvage, albeit our own, since what is unfolding in Syria and Iraq
has inevitably saved and spawned myriad institutions, foundations, digital start-ups, initiatives
and research, with a new mission and moral charge. Perhaps now we should be considering
whether we are creating ever more hostages to fortune.

Architecture  and  urbanism  have  been  developed  in  Mexico  during millennia  as  demonstrated  by  the  archaeological  record.  During  colonial times,  such  constructive  tradition  was  enriched  by  colonial  contributions. As a result, a great number of new foundations appeared over an almost 2
million square km territory. This way, great capitals such as Mexico City, Puebla, Monterrey and Guadalajara arose. Smaller urban centres and towns also appeared, frequently associated to specific economic activities such as mining or agriculture.