29th January 2007, 01:50 PM
I was enjoying the discussion Unitof1 (may I call you Unit to save typing time or is that a touch informal?)
One of the big issues in heritage interpretation (as a subset of heritage management) is ensuring that one interpretation is taken as the be all and end all, and one of the hardest things to achieve is to send the visitor away with a positive message but one that does not preclude other interpretations. Freeman Tilden,(the originator of 'interpretation'in the sense of explaining a site), David Lowenthal, David Uzzell and assorted others have written at great length on this. The site you quote is an extremely simplistic viewpoint from one direction, as you say there are other equally valid viewpoints (the whole of the southern part of Africa appears to be a mass of contradictory viewpoints as far as I can make out from what little I know of its history)
One of the big issues in heritage interpretation (as a subset of heritage management) is ensuring that one interpretation is taken as the be all and end all, and one of the hardest things to achieve is to send the visitor away with a positive message but one that does not preclude other interpretations. Freeman Tilden,(the originator of 'interpretation'in the sense of explaining a site), David Lowenthal, David Uzzell and assorted others have written at great length on this. The site you quote is an extremely simplistic viewpoint from one direction, as you say there are other equally valid viewpoints (the whole of the southern part of Africa appears to be a mass of contradictory viewpoints as far as I can make out from what little I know of its history)