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Heritage Futures

Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices

Rodney Harrison, Caitlin DeSilvey, Cornelius Holtorf, Sharon Macdonald, Nadia Bartolini, Esther Breithoff, Harald Fredheim, Antony Lyons, Sarah May, Jennie Morgan, and Sefryn Penrose

ISBN: 9781787356009

Publication: July 28, 2020

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Preservation of natural and cultural heritage is often said to be something that is done for the future, or on behalf of future generations, but the precise relationship of such practices to the future is rarely reflected upon. Heritage Futures draws on research undertaken over four years by an interdisciplinary, international team of 16 researchers and more than 25 partner organisations to explore the role of heritage and heritage-like practices in building future worlds.

Engaging broad themes such as diversity, transformation, profusion and uncertainty, Heritage Futures aims to understand how a range of conservation and preservation practices across a number of countries assemble and resource different kinds of futures, and the possibilities that emerge from such collaborative research for alternative approaches to heritage in the Anthropocene. Case studies include the cryopreservation of endangered DNA in frozen zoos, nuclear waste management, seed biobanking, landscape rewilding, social history collecting, space messaging, endangered language documentation, built and natural heritage management, domestic keeping and discarding practices, and world heritage site management.

Praise for Heritage Futures

'[A book] Likely [to] attract two main groups of readers. One consists of students, researchers, and heritage practitioners looking for inspiration or a gateway to understand current intersections between the fields of (critical) heritage studies and futurology. It will work well for this purpose, as it raises vital questions and points to avenues for collaboration that may help care for the future – not just for the remains of the past in the future. ...A second group would be researchers looking for advice on how to write up a big project. The book represents a successful example of how to weave together a large and highly diverse research programme into a single publication.'
Norwegian Archaeological Review

‘The book offers is a fresh perspective on heritage studies by turning the debate on its head and flipping the gaze from the past to the future’
International Journal of Heritage Studies

'I suspect this book will prove to be a revolutionary addition to the field of heritage studies, flipping the gaze from the past to the future. Heritage Futures reveals the deep uncertainties and precarities that shape both everyday and political life today: accumulation and waste, care and hope, the natural and the toxic. It represents a uniquely impressive intellectual and empirical roadmap for both anticipating and questioning future trajectories, and the strange, unfamiliar places heritage will take us.’
Tim Winter, University of Western Australia

Rodney Harrison is Professor of Heritage Studies at the UCL Institute of Archaeology.

Caitlin DeSilvey is Associate Professor of Cultural Geography at the University of Exeter.

Cornelius Holtorf is Professor of Archaeology and holds a UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden.

Sharon Macdonald is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) in the Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Nadia Bartolini is a consultant researcher who has worked as postdoctoral research associate on Arts and Humanities Research Council funded research projects based at the University of Exeter and at the Open University.

Esther Breithoff is Lecturer in Contemporary Archaeology and Heritage in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London, and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. She joined the department in 2019 after holding postdoctoral positions at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the UCL Institute of Archaeology. Her research spans the fields of Contemporary Archaeology and Critical Heritage Studies and has ranged across a number of different topics, including war, natural and cultural heritage, nuclear and petroleum industries, dictatorships and biobanking, but traces a common set of interests in the relationships between conflicts, resources, recycling and rights across the human/non-human divide in the Anthropocene.

Harald Fredheim is a researcher in the field of heritage studies, which he approaches from a background in archaeology, objects conservation and heritage site management.

Antony Lyons is an independent artist-researcher whose creative methods include film, photography, sonic works and intermedia installation.

Sarah May is Senior Lecturer in Public History and Heritage at Swansea University. She has previously worked as Senior Archaeologist for English Heritage and as an independent consultant.

Jennie Morgan is Lecturer in Heritage in the Division of History, Heritage and Politics at the University of Stirling.

Sefryn Penrose is a consultant researcher and archaeologist of the recent past.

List of figures

Notes on contributors

Preface

Acknowledgements

Part I: Heritage futures

1. ‘For ever, for everyone …’

Rodney Harrison, Caitlin DeSilvey, Cornelius Holtorf and

Sharon Macdonald

2. Heritage as future-making practices

Rodney Harrison

Part II: Diversity

3. Conserving diversity

Rodney Harrison, Esther Breithoff and Sefryn Penrose

4. Diverse fields: Ex-situ collecting practices

Sefryn Penrose, Rodney Harrison and Esther Breithoff

5. Repositories

Sefryn Penrose, Rodney Harrison and Esther Breithoff

6. Banking time: Trading in futures

Esther Breithoff and Rodney Harrison

7. Proxies

Esther Breithoff

8. Towards the total archive

Rodney Harrison and Esther Breithoff

Cross-theme knowledge-exchange event 1

9. The hundred-thousand-year question

Sefryn Penrose, Rodney Harrison, Cornelius Holtorf and

Sarah May

Part III Profusion

10. Too many things to keep for the future?

Sharon Macdonald, Jennie Morgan and Harald Fredheim

11. Curating museum profusion

Harald Fredheim, Sharon Macdonald and Jennie Morgan

12. Let’s talk!

Harald Fredheim

13. Curating domestic profusion

Jennie Morgan and Sharon Macdonald

14. The Human Bower

Jennie Morgan

15. Doomed?

Sharon Macdonald, Jennie Morgan and Harald Fredheim

Cross-theme knowledge-exchange event 2

16. Collections as techniques of worlding

Rodney Harrison and Sefryn Penrose

Part IV: Uncertainty

17. Uncertain futures

Sarah May and Cornelius Holtorf

18. A shepherd’s futures: Shepherds and World Heritage in the Lake District

Sarah May

19. Toxic heritage: Uncertain and unsafe

Gustav Wollentz, Sarah May, Cornelius Holtorf and

Anders Högberg

20. Micro-messaging/space messaging: A comparative

exploration of #GoodbyePhilae and #MessageToVoyager

Sarah May

21. The one-million-year time capsule

Antony Lyons and Cornelius Holtorf

22. Uncertainty, collaboration and emerging issues

Cornelius Holtorf and Sarah May

Cross-theme knowledge-exchange event 3

23. Transforming loss

Nadia Bartolini and Caitlin DeSilvey

Part V Transformation

24. Living with transformation

Caitlin DeSilvey, Nadia Bartolini and Antony Lyons

25. Fixing naturecultures: Spatial and temporal strategies

for managing heritage transformation and entanglement

Nadia Bartolini

26. Sensitive chaos: Geopoetic flows and wildings in the edgelands

Antony Lyons

27. Signifying transformation

Caitlin DeSilvey, Nadia Bartolini and Antony Lyons

28. Processing change

Caitlin DeSilvey, Nadia Bartolini and Antony Lyons

Part VI: Future heritages

29. Discussion and conclusions

Rodney Harrison, Caitlin DeSilvey, Cornelius Holtorf,

Sharon Macdonald, Nadia Bartolini, Esther Breithoff,

Harald Fredheim, Antony Lyons, Sarah May, Jennie

Morgan and Sefryn Penrose

References

Index

Norwegian Archaeological Review

‘The book offers is a fresh perspective on heritage studies by turning the debate on its head and flipping the gaze from the past to the future’
International Journal of Heritage Studies

Format: Open Access PDF

188 colour illustrations

ISBN: 9781787356009

Publication: July 28, 2020