Feasible Management Of Archaeological Heritage Sites Open To Tourism

Archaeological sites opened to the public, and especially those highly photogenic sites that have achieved iconic status, are often major tourist attractions. By opening an archaeological site to tourism, threats and opportunities will emerge.The threats are to the archaeological record, the pre-historic or historic materials in context at the site that can provide facts about human history and the human relationship to the environment. The opportunities are to share what can be learned at archaeological sites and how it can be learned. The latter is important because doing so can build a public constituency for archaeology that appreciates and will support the potential of archaeology to contribute to conversations about contemporary issues, such as the root causes and possible solutions to conflict among humans and the social implications of environmental degradation. In this volume we will consider factors that render effective management of archaeological sites open to the public feasible, and therefore sustainable. We approach this in two ways: The first is by presenting some promising ways to assess and enhance the feasibility of establishing effective management. Assessing feasibility involves examining tourism potential, which must consider the demographic sectors from which visitors to the site are drawn or might be in the future, identifying preservation issues associated with hosting visitors from the various demographic sectors, and the possibility and means by which local communities might be engaged in identifying issues and generating long-term support for effective management. The second part of the book will provide brief case studies of places and ways in which the feasibility of sustainable management has been improved.

Once visited only by the cognoscenti of the ancient world, over the last decade Petra has drawn almost a million visitors in some years. Petra burst into popular consciousness with the release of enormously popular motion picture Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981. Moviegoers all over the world were introduced to some of the spectacular scenic wonders of Petra: the Siq, a narrow chasm with colorful, towering sandstone walls, and Al-Khazna, the exquisitely carved tomb for a Nabataean king. For centuries, the Nabataeans controlled the trade in precious commodities across the Arabian Peninsula, bring spices from Southeast Asia, incense from present-day Yemen, gold and ivory from Africa, and silk from the Far East across the Empty Quarter to ports on the western Mediterranean. In 1985, Petra was included on the list of World Heritage Sites. Since then, low cost jet travel and a fast highway from the capital city of Amman have made the site increasingly accessible. The Jordanian government has made attracting tourists to Jordan a top priority. For all of the attention that Petra has received, it is still surprisingly poorly understood. A widely accepted chronology of the city, even the dates of major tombs and monuments, has yet to be established. Even the mystery of why and how Arab nomads adopted a sedentary lifestyle and built a great city has yet to be fully explained. Will Petra’s popularity as a tourism destination overshadow the importance of addressing these questions, and, more importantly, will tourism damage the archaeological remains there in ways that make answers more difficult or even impossible to find?

Carefully examining the challenges of meeting fast-developing consumer demands and preferences, this enlightening Handbook captures the difficulties involved in providing optimal service experiences. It provides invaluable theoretical guidance while emphasising the evolutionary nature of experience science.

World Heritage Sites are some of the recognised locations around the world. This work covers the management issues encountered at cultural and natural UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It considers various aspects in arriving at solutions for site management principles. It covers issues such as WHS designation, marketing, visitor management, and more.

This book examines the relationship between archaeological tourism and professional archaeology. To do so, it explores the connection – most visibly through nationalism and global capitalism - from its origins in the early modern period to World War II. How separate is the development of archaeological tourism from that of the formation of archaeology as a discipline? And do the fields operate in two different worlds? Scholarly discussions have largely treated them as distinct fields with no connection, while histories of archaeology, in particular, have focused on aspects such as the history of archaeological discoveries, archaeological thought and, more recently, the political relationship between archaeology and nationalism and other ideologies. Largely missing from all these accounts has been an examination of how archaeology has been incorporated into society, for example through something that all humans enjoy – leisure – in the form of archaeological tourism. Moreover, just as histories of archaeology have largely ignored the connection between archaeology and tourism, so too has tourism in the reverse direction. Recent studies on tourism have centered on topics such as economy (sustainable and recession tourism) and new types of tourism (including ecotourism and medical tourism).

World Heritage: Concepts, Management and Conservation presents an insight into discussions and debates surrounding the UNESCO World Heritage List, and the properties on it. Since its creation 50 years ago, the World Heritage Convention has been lauded as one of the most successful international expressions of cooperation, whilst at the same time being widely criticised as producing an overly commercialised and globalised sense of heritage. Offering an in-depth discussion of both sides of the debate, this book explores these issues by discussing the following topics: • How the World Heritage Convention was conceived and how it is operationalised; • How the World Heritage concept is currently being used and misused; • The benefits of inscription – perceived and actual existential threats faced by World Heritage Site managers including climate change, urban development, overtourism, military action and natural disaster; • The future of World Heritage as an instrument for conservation and economic development. Case studies from a global range of World Heritage Sites are included throughout, to showcase some of the successes and also missuses of World Heritage status. This book will be of pivotal interest to students and scholars in the fields of tourism, heritage, archaeology, natural resource management and development studies.

The management of cultural heritage and public real-estate assets is one of the most crucial challenges concerning the sustainable use of these resources, involving dynamic methods to stimulate preservation, development, renewal, and transmission to future generations of these essential assets. The contributions presented in this book provide a rich and varied panorama of research experiences and innovative tools, capable of promoting the re-use of cultural heritage in European cities and cultural landscapes, using a circular economy logic as a model of sustainable development. From this point of view, cultural capital becomes the driver of a regeneration process on the local, urban, and metropolitan scales, in which the transversal interconnections between the production cycles of the adaptive re-use of the available heritage, both in the adaptation and in the management phase, configure a circular process of multidimensional production of value. Therefore, future territorial redevelopment projects can base their idea strength on an open system of appropriately selected social attractors, whose enhancement and use have the objective of triggering widespread regeneration effects on the whole territory of influence, receiving inducement and resources to progress.

This book provides a global and thematic examination of the relationships between archaeology and tourism, and a critical analysis of thinking in the area of archaeology-based tourism. It focuses on the differences and similarities between archaeology-based tourism and heritage tourism and highlights the interdependence and dissonance between tourism and archaeology and archaeological traditions. The volume offers a systematic investigation of current issues and implications in the relationship between tourism and archaeology from both tourism and archaeological perspectives. It is a key academic resource for students, researchers and practitioners in tourism, archaeology, cultural heritage management and anthropology.