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1: INTRODUCTION
they may be… It is not a process where the primary movement is that of
cultural values trickling down and affecting the parts, but a process where
the greater movement is that of parts soaring upwards” (Westin 2012:39). It
is not in the discourse about heritage that heritage itself is created, but it is
in the movement and networks of the smaller interconnecting parts,
whether objects, humans or customs on which the discourses about heritage
rests. In light of this I want to start at the things themselves and by looking
at how the materials have been used, and viewed, over time, including their
situation today, to get a better understanding of how a heritage can be
created, out of the things themselves on their journey to their appropriation
today. The discourse should have its grounding in the material we study. If
not, it is possible that the materials and the discussions we carry out end up
being out of phase, estranged and lost from each other or that generalisations
are made which are not based on a solid foundation. In my fieldwork
I have found Actor Network Theory (ANT) a useful inspiration in
that it is descriptive rather than explanatory and this helps to understand
how relations between different actors assemble (Latour 2005). By turning
to the materials themselves and in my fieldwork focussing on the networks
at work within the sites themselves, in the past and in the present, I attempt
to discuss how heritage has been created, or not created as the case may be,
in the study areas. Apart from the materials themselves these networks are
created out of the actions of many different actors who have created the
sites as they appear today as well as the attitudes people have towards them.
Although the material is my starting point other sources, such as memories
and stories, both oral and written, have been weaved together with the
material, inseparable as they are. I have looked to other disciplines such as
anthropology, history, art history, ethnology and human geography to assist
me in tackling a vast material. Often the line between the disciplines is
blurry and many points overlap. Harrison and Schofield suggest that studying
the recent past “is always going to be simultaneously archaeology and
anthropology, because it involves an archaeological approach while also
existing as a form of participant observation or ethnographic inquiry into
contemporary life” (Harrison and Schofield 2010:91). My starting point, as
well as my point of return has, however, been archaeological. It is in the
materials that have been left behind that I have started my investigations. By
using the materials as a starting point and seeing them as the smaller
building blocks that are, again in the words of Westin, “parts soaring
upwards” (Westin 2012:39) rather than saturated with the cultural values
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