2012/05/01 by Thomas J T Williams · 8 citations
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Psychology · #Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation #Archaeological Research and Protection #Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration #Narrative #Construct (python library) #Value (mathematics) #Cultural heritage #Sociology #History #Law #Environmental ethics #Political science #Literature #Art #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1179/1465518712z.0000000006
published in Public Archaeology 11(2), 59-72 (Taylor & Francis)
openalex publication_date 2012/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This paper focuses on an act that can be seen to typify what heritage organizations might confidently describe as a ‘crime against culture’: the deliberate destruction by fire of a twelfth-century wooden stave church at Fantoft in Norway in 1992. This paper uses the case study of Fantoft to challenge the ways in which heritage organizations (in this case Norway’s Directorate of Cultural Heritage) establish and protect mono-cultural narratives and push interpretative agendas predicated on an uncritical concept of universal ‘value’ and its equation with material authenticity. It also examines how distinct minority communities construct new meanings, values, and traditions without reference to institutional narratives, a process that, whilst arguably initiating a more meaningful dialogue with the past, brings in train a new set of problems.