Archaeological tourism and social values, a case study in China

Summary

Today the increasing commercialization of cultural heritage draws archaeology and tourism into ever-closer contact. With the fast development of tourism, archaeological sites are utilized for their multiple potentials as revenue generators, public education providers, national identity promoters, and many other roles. It should be noted that these potentials are defined by the various values that a society attributes to its archaeological heritage. That is to say the values of archaeological heritage, once considered to be intrinsic, are now believed to be produced out of the interaction between the heritage itself and its historical, social and economic contexts. The social values of archaeological sites, firstly recognized in the Burra Charter of 1979, have become increasingly emphasized in legislation and guidelines for the management of archaeological sites at a global level. In China, the social values of archaeological sites are also progressively recognized in recent years. However, there is rarely a full account of the impact of tourism on a society’s perception of such values. This paper employs ethnographic approaches to scrutinize the social values attributed by local communities to archaeological sites in China under the influence of tourism development, using the Daming Palace archaeological site as a case study.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

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