Heritage Areas: Background, Proposals, and Current Issues
This report focuses on heritage areas designated by Congress and related issues and legislation. Over more than two decades, Congress has established 40 National Heritage Areas (NHAs) to commemorate, conserve, and promote areas that include important natural, scenic, historic, cultural, and recreational resources.
Advocacy Coalition for Historic Preservation in the U.S.: Changes in Motivations
As the policy discussions of historic preservation have become complicated in recent years, the advocacy for the use of heritage is now even more important, and the number of coalitions for promoting the economic value of heritage has been on the rise. This research provides a historical view of the development of advocacy coalition networks that actively pursue the benefits of heritage resources. Through this context, the article then examines a case study of the Wheeling National Heritage Area. The case exemplifies the framework of how coalition networks can provide the structure necessary to push preservation policy in government.
Inference and Evidence in Archaeology: A Discussion of the Conceptual Problems
Publisher Summary This chapter dicsusses the general features of scientific inference and explains the way inference has been discussed by archaeologists. It presents an explication of current problems in the various areas: (1) the justification of archaeological conclusions, (2) the concepts of archaeological evidence, and (3) the undeveloped relations between archaeological theory and archaeological evidence. The chapter defines these problems and explains the way to resolve them. To resolve many of the problems surrounding uncertain links between inference and evidence, archaeologists should develop a rigorous model that specifies the way information about the past is transmitted to the present via material remains. The chapter presents the structure of such a model. However, establishing relevant data to support conclusions about past phenomena is only part of the overall process of generating archaeological knowledge. Some of the processes responsible for producing the material remains that archaeologists manipulate in assembling evidence to support claims about past phenomena are described in the chapter.