The concept of intangible heritage can have significant implications for museums in the areas of collecting, making exhibitions and working with communities. Drawing on the model of the ‘post-museum' envisioned by Hooper-Greenhill (2000), some of the ways in which the concept of intangible heritage can affect museum practice are examined. The limitations and concerns around the...
This paper discusses the constitution and mechanics of the ‘scales’ of heritage: local heritage, national heritage and World Heritage, and draws attention to the differences between the ways in which these scales relate to one another in theory and in practice. A case study from Australia is used to illustrate the tension and interaction between the three heritage scales...
This paper presents some results from my doctoral research into the evolution of bow-arrow technology using archaeological data from the south Scandinavian Mesolithic (Edinborough 2004). A quantitative approach is used to describe the morphological variation found in samples taken from over 3600 armatures from nine Danish and Swedish lithic assemblages. A linked series of...
Public archaeology is concerned with the external image of archaeology, which is often seen as an elitist niche subject. Yet the future of archaeology lies in ensuring support for the subject and training future archaeologists. The demise of archaeology GCSE and the Government’s further education policies threaten to make archaeology yet more elitist. If we are to engage the...
This paper discusses the concept of ‘the public’ as used in public archaeology, and by doing so, considers the aims of public archaeology and their specific application to a Roman villa in Somma Vesuviana, Italy. Public archaeology emerged in the 1970s, departing from the traditional view of archaeology by looking outside the academic discipline and the social framework and...
It is suggested that the size of a population to some extent defines the limits of its social complexity. State level societies tend to have relatively large populations, and egalitarian communities tend to be relatively small. Since the 1960s, anthropologists have tried to describe and explain this relationship between population size and social complexity, suggesting a causal...
Although metal objects have been used as evidence in different interpretations of the socioeconomic changes identified in Prepalatial Crete (c.3100-1900 BC), they constitute an understudied category of material. This paper argues that metal objects on Crete were subject to complex processes regarding the creation of meaning; a more comprehensive appraisal of metal objects on the...