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Reaching across disciplines and national boundaries, this volume examines cultural heritage work within the context of both democratic institutions and democratic practices, including participatory, deliberative, and direct democratic practices. Case studies highlight how democratic politics and cultural heritage impact and depend upon one another.

Michèle Hayeur Smith uses Viking textiles as evidence for the little-known work of women in the Norse colonies that expanded from Scandinavia across the North Atlantic in the 9th century AD.

In Eating in the Side Room, Mark Warner uses the archaeological data of food remains recovered from excavations in Annapolis, Maryland, and the Chesapeake to show how African Americans established identity in the face of pervasive racism and marginalization.

';Maher explores the development of the Frontier Complex as he deconstructs the frontier myth in the context of manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, and white male privilege. A very significant contribution to our understanding of how and why heritage sites reinforce privilege.' Frederick H. Smith, author of The Archaeology of Alcohol and Drinking ';Peels back the layer of dime westerns and True Grit films to show how their mythologies are made material. You'll never experience a ';heritage site' the same way again.'Christine Bold, author of The Frontier Club: Popular Westerns and Cultural Power, 18801924 The history of the Wild West has long been fictionalized in novels, films, and television shows. Catering to these popular representations, towns across America have created tourist sites connecting such tales with historical monuments. Yet these attractions stray from known histories in favor of the embellished past visitors expect to see and serve to craft a cultural memory that reinforces contemporary ideologies. In Mythic Frontiers, Daniel Maher illustrates how aggrandized versions of the past, especially those of the ';American frontier,' have been used to turn a profit. These imagined historical sites have effectively silenced the violent, oppressive, colonizing forces of manifest destiny and elevated principal architects of it to mythic heights. Examining the frontier complex in Fort Smith, Arkansaswhere visitors are greeted at a restored brothel and the reconstructed courtroom and gallows of ';Hanging Judge' Isaac Parker feature prominentlyMaher warns that creating a popular tourist narrative and disconnecting cultural heritage tourism from history minimizes the devastating consequences of imperialism, racism, and sexism and relegitimizes the privilege bestowed upon white men.

Focusing on three communities in North, Central, and South America, Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage layers archaeological research with local knowledge in its interpretations of these cultural landscapes. Using the perspective of Earth Politics, Christie demonstrates a way of reconciling the tension between Western scientific approaches to history and the more intangible heritage derived from Indigenous oral narratives and social memories. Jessica Christie presents case studies from Canyon de Chelly National Monument on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, United States; the Yucatec Maya village of Coba in Quintana Roo, Mexico; and the Aymara town of Copacabana on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. Each of these places is home to a longstanding community located near ancient archaeological sites, and in each case residents relate to the ruins and the land in ways that anchor their histories, memories, identities, and daily lives. Christie's dual approach shows how these ancestral groups have confronted colonial power structures over time, as well as how the Christian religion has impacted traditional lifeways at each site.Based on extensive field experiences, Christie's discussions offer productive strategies for scientific and Indigenous wisdoms to work in parallel directions rather than in conflict. The insights in this book will serve as building blocks for shaping a regenerative future-not only for these important heritage sites but also for many others across the globe. A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

Despite the contributions of enslaved African Americans to our country's economy, culture, and history, records of their existence are all but expunged from plantation sites, which are reluctant to show and interpret the homes and lives of the enslaved. One such site is Mount Clare near Baltimore, Maryland, where Teresa Moyer's work examines the lives of the plantation's enslaved and investigates the issues keeping these findings from being publicly presented.In this balanced discussion of racialized practice at historic site museums, Moyer presents a rich and contextualized study of the inextricably entangled lives of the enslaved, free blacks, and white landowners. She demonstrates that inclusive interpretation of plantation and other historic house museum sites can be done. Moyer argues that the inclusion of enslaved persons in the history of these sites would honor those "e;ancestors of worthy note,"e; make the social good of public history available to African Americans, and address systemic racism in America.

Exploring museums and cultural centers in New England that hold important meanings for Native American communities today, this illuminating book offers a much-needed critique of the collaborative work being done to preserve and promote the cultural heritage of the region. Siobhan Hart examines the narratives told by and about Native American communities at heritage sites of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe on Martha's Vineyard, the Pocumtuck in Deerfield, Massachusetts, the Mashantucket Pequot reservation in Connecticut, and Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts. She looks at interpretive signage, exhibits, events, and visitor engagement strategies that try to reverse the common idea that Native peoples no longer exist in these landscapes and asks whether the messages of these sites really do help break apart the power structures of colonialism. She finds that in many cases whiteness is still presented to visitors as the cultural norm and that the burden of decolonizing often falls on indigenous curators, interpreters, and collaborators. Hart's analysis spotlights the persistence of racialization and structural inequalities in these landscapes, as well as the negative effects of these problems on current Native American sovereignty. The broader goal of decolonization, she argues, remains unrealized. This book presents startling evidence of the ways even well-intentioned multiperspective approaches to heritage presentations can undermine the social justice they seek. A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

Southern Anthropological Society James Mooney Award - Honorable MentionDrawing on new methods and theories, Edward Gonzlez-Tennant uncovers important elements of the forgotten history of Rosewood. He uses a mix of techniques such as geospatial analysis, interpretation of remotely sensed data, analysis of census data and property records, oral history, and the excavation and interpretation of artifacts from the site to reconstruct the local landscape. Gonzlez-Tennant interprets these and other data through an intersectional framework, acknowledging the complex ways class, race, gender, and other identities compound discrimination. This allows him to explore the local circumstances and broader sociopolitical power structures that led to the massacre, showing how the event was a microcosm of the oppression and terror suffered by African Americans and other minorities in the United States. Gonzlez-Tennant connects these historic forms of racial violence to present-day social and racial inequality and argues that such continuities demonstrate the need to make events like the Rosewood massacre public knowledge.A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

This book explores the sociopolitical contexts of heritage landscapes and the many issues that emerge when different interest groups attempt to gain control over them. Based on career-spanning case studies undertaken by the author, this book looks at sites with deep indigenous histories. Melissa Baird pays special attention to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park and the Burrup Peninsula along the Pilbara Coast in Australia, the Altai Mountains of northwestern Mongolia, and Prince William Sound in Alaska. For many communities, landscapes such as these have long been associated with cultural identity and memories of important and difficult events, as well as with political struggles related to nation-state boundaries, sovereignty, and knowledge claims.Drawing on the emerging field of critical heritage theory and the concept of "e;resource frontiers,"e; Baird shows how these landscapes are sites of power and control and are increasingly used to promote development and extractive agendas. As a result, heritage landscapes face social and ecological crises such as environmental degradation, ecological disasters, and structural violence. She describes how heritage experts, industries, government representatives, and descendant groups negotiate the contours and boundaries of these contested sites and recommends ways such conversations can better incorporate a critical engagement with indigenous knowledge and agency.A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

The role of cultural heritage and museums in constructing national identity in postcolonial CubaCuban Cultural Heritage explores the role that cultural heritage and museums played in the construction of a national identity in postcolonial Cuba. Starting with independence from Spain in 1898 and moving through Cuban-American rapprochement in 2014, Pablo Alonso Gonzlez illustrates how political and ideological shifts have influenced ideas about heritage and how, in turn, heritage has been used by different social actors to reiterate their status, spread new ideologies, and consolidate political regimes.Unveiling the connections between heritage, power, and ideology, Alonso Gonzalez delves into the intricacies of Cuban history, covering key issues such as Cubas cultural and political relationships with Spain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and so-called Third World countries; the complexities of Cubas status as a postcolonial state; and the potential future paths of the Revolution in the years to come. This volume offers a detailed look at the function and place of cultural heritage under socialist states.A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. ShackelPublication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The museum and heritage sector has been shaken by debates over how to address colonialism, migration, Islamophobia, LGBTI+ and multiple other forms of difference. This major multi-researcher ethnography of museums and heritage in Berlin provides new insight into how >diversity< is understood and put into action in museums and heritage. Exploring new initiatives and approaches, the book shows how these work - or do not - in practice. By doing so, it highlights ways forward - for research and action - for the future. The fieldwork locations on which this book is based include the Humboldt Forum, the Museum of Islamic Art, the Museum für Naturkunde, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, as well as Berlin streets and protests.

Through an innovative approach that combines years of ethnographic research with British imperial archival sources, this book reveals how cultural heritage has been negotiated by colonial, independent state, and community actors in Belize from the late nineteenth century to the present. Alicia McGill explores the heritage of two African-descendant Kriol communities as seen in the contexts of archaeology and formal education. McGill demonstrates that in both spheres, Belizean institutions have constructed and used heritage places and ideologies to manage difference, govern subjects and citizens, and reinforce development agendas. In the communities studied here, ancient Maya cities and legacies have been prized while Kriol histories have been marginalized, and racial and ethnic inequalities have endured. Yet McGill shows that at the same time, Belizean teachers and children resist, maintaining their Kriol identity through storytelling, subsistence practices, and other engagements with ecological resources. They also creatively identify connections between themselves and the ancient cultures that once lived in their regions. Exploring heritage as a social construct, McGill provides examples of the many ways people construct values, meanings, and customs related to it. Negotiating Heritage through Education and Archaeology is a richly informed study that emphasizes the importance of community-based engagement in public history and heritage studies.A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

In this compelling study, Maria Theresia Starzmann and John Roby bring together an international cast of experts who move beyond the traditional framework of the "constructed past" to look at not only how the past is remembered but also who remembers it. They convincingly argue that memory is a complex process, shaped by remembering and forgetting, inscription and erasure, presence and absence.

Investigates the 1923 massacre that devastated the predominantly African American community of Rosewood, Florida. The town was burned to the ground by neighbouring whites, and its citizens fled for their lives. None of the perpetrators were convicted. Very little documentation of the event and the ensuing court hearings survives today.

Examines how the past is mediated by social engagements in the present and the consequences of those encounters. This book considers how concepts of nationalism, identity politics, and cultural production affect how the past is shaped by archaeology.