20th January 2007, 08:14 AM
Dear UnitOf1,
if you wish to start a thread about farming subsidies and EH, you are free to do so. Otherwise, please keep on-topic or keep silent. It's sometimes hard to tell, but you appear to have entirely missed the point of this thread.
Troll, m300572, thanks for the interesting responses.
I'm primarily interested in how heritage can shore up the status of social groups and sub-groups. Consider, for example, the excitement whenever a medieval Mikvah (?sp.) is found in England (material evidence of early English Judaism). Where I grew up around Kingston we were taught about Caesar Picton, a Senegalese freed slave who was quite an important gentleman in the late 18th/early 19th. Then there's the environmental evidence of human occupation in Australia going back 50K years, which (as far as I am aware) remains unsubstantiated by material culture. How about community mapping projects in Borneo, demonstrating that people have occupied the forest despite not having a bit of paper with a deed on it? I could go on.
There are also much more practical issues, like those raised by m30572: jobs, government cash, tourism etc.
These are all positive examples, and to be honest they generally have their downsides too. I would welcome any examples from those working in public archaeology (in Britain or abroad) about how they have tried to 'help people' and what the successes, failures and pitfalls were.
Cheers all,
Tom
PS if Ian Blair, Bruce Watson or anyone from MoLAS is reading, whatever happened to the London Mikvah? Did it get re-erected in a synagogue, or is it still in packing crates?
'In the busy market there are fortunes to be won and lost, but in the cherry orchard there is peace'.
Chinese proverb
if you wish to start a thread about farming subsidies and EH, you are free to do so. Otherwise, please keep on-topic or keep silent. It's sometimes hard to tell, but you appear to have entirely missed the point of this thread.
Troll, m300572, thanks for the interesting responses.
I'm primarily interested in how heritage can shore up the status of social groups and sub-groups. Consider, for example, the excitement whenever a medieval Mikvah (?sp.) is found in England (material evidence of early English Judaism). Where I grew up around Kingston we were taught about Caesar Picton, a Senegalese freed slave who was quite an important gentleman in the late 18th/early 19th. Then there's the environmental evidence of human occupation in Australia going back 50K years, which (as far as I am aware) remains unsubstantiated by material culture. How about community mapping projects in Borneo, demonstrating that people have occupied the forest despite not having a bit of paper with a deed on it? I could go on.
There are also much more practical issues, like those raised by m30572: jobs, government cash, tourism etc.
These are all positive examples, and to be honest they generally have their downsides too. I would welcome any examples from those working in public archaeology (in Britain or abroad) about how they have tried to 'help people' and what the successes, failures and pitfalls were.
Cheers all,
Tom
PS if Ian Blair, Bruce Watson or anyone from MoLAS is reading, whatever happened to the London Mikvah? Did it get re-erected in a synagogue, or is it still in packing crates?
'In the busy market there are fortunes to be won and lost, but in the cherry orchard there is peace'.
Chinese proverb