The Nature of Heritage (eBook)

Lynn Meskell is Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University (USA) and Honorary Professor at the Rock Art Research Institute in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). She is the founder and editor of the Journal of Social Archaeology, and the author and editor of several books, including A Companion to Social Archaeology (Wiley-Blackwell), Archaeologies of Materiality (Wiley-Blackwell), and Cosmopolitan Archaeologies.

Acknowledgments viii

Abbreviations xiii

Introduction: Past Mastering in the New South Africa 1

1 Naturalizing Cultural Heritage 13

2 Making Heritage Pay in the Rainbow Nation 37

3 It's Mine, It's Yours: Excavating Park Histories 63

4 Why Biodiversity Trumps Culture 98

5 Archaeologies of Failure 125

6 Thulamela: The Donors, the Archaeologist, his Gold, and the
Flood 149

7 Kruger is a Gold Rock: Parastatal and Private Visions of the
Good 176

Conclusions: Future Perfect 203

References 217

Index 248

"Lynn Meskell's book is carefully researched and
engagingly written, and is essential reading for anyone interested
in archaeology and heritage in South Africa." (South
African Archaeological Bulletin, 1 October 2013)

"With a rhetoric of diversity, sustainability, and
conservation, neoliberal forces typecast entire societies as both
money-spinning tourist fodder and evil destroyers of pristine
nature. Meskell incisively exposes the resulting structural
violence of conservation in South Africa, showing how managerial
simplification of the country's painful historical experience
and complex archaeological record perpetuates past oppressions and
exclusions. The Nature of Heritage gives timely shape and
heft to concern for the future of the past - and the future
of humanity."

- Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University



"In one sense this is a book about the loss of innocence
- of how the dream of cultural heritage in a new South Africa
has been swamped by narrower interests and the tourism
market. But it also a reassertion of the value and
significance of archaeological ethnography, of showing how
'past-mastering' is invariably the outcome of
compromises, and imbued with politics."

- Martin Hall, University of Salford