November 2010 Anthropology News I N F O C U S

7
C O MME N T A R Y
Archaeotourism and the Crux of Development
R.hii F Gii.iuo
UCBiiiiiix
Bi.xi W Poi1ii
UCBiiiiiix
Archaeotourism, or tourism to sites
of archaeological value, is not a new
phenomenon. People interested in
interacting with a material past and
its aura have long sought out archaeo-
logical ruins and artifacts around the
world, such as Greek ruins, Egyptian
pyramids and Maya temples. Tourists
who are nostalgic for the past, desire
the thrill of exploration, or just want to
understand more about different soci-
eties seek authentic encounters with
the past through visits to archaeo-
logical sites, interpretive centers and
museums. As tourists begin arriving
at sites of archaeological value and
hospitality infrastructure expands,
these places often become embedded
within local and regional political
economies. What is a newer phenom-
enon, though, is the intensity with
which archaeotourism is being used
for economic development around the
world.
Archaeologists are not always
actively involved in the development
of archaeotourism sites. When field
research projects are completed, site
management duties are often handed
over to the respective state agencies
that may or may not choose to develop
sites for visitors. However, archaeol-
ogists are increasingly becoming
more aware of their incidental role
in the production of tourism destina-
tions through excavation, site inter-
pretation and publishing, all of which
contribute to an archaeological sites
credibility by verifying its authen-
ticity. Archaeologists backstage role in
archaeotourism development impli-
cates them in the global political and
economic processescapitalism,
neoliberalism and developmentthat
anthropology has long placed under
scrutiny.
Tsodilo Hills
In southern Africa, archaeological and
other cultural resources are unabash-
edly utilized for their perceived
economic benefits through tourism
development. Although many
of the countries in this region are
rich in mineral resources, a sizeable
proportion of the population lives in
poverty, and governments and inter-
national agencies pursue tourism as
an industry that potentially permits
a broader distribution of economic
benefits. In Botswana, the Tsodilo
Hills possess evidence of a nearly
continuous archaeological occupa-
tion dating to the Middle Stone Age,
and the site has one of the highest
concentrations of rock art in the
world. During the 1990s, archaeolo-
gists conducting research there partic-
ipated in the nomination process for
Tsodilo to be designated as UNESCO
World Heritage, an honor the site
received in 2001. However, these
archaeologists are also partly respon-
sible for the displacement of
the community members
living at Tsodilo in prepa-
ration for its new conserva-
tion status. Tsodilo, a sacred
site to local communities,
was fenced off and zoned
for tourism, and community
members were relocated
from the hills. Following its
World Heritage designation,
the government of Botswana
teamed with a regional
NGO to produce a tourism-
as-development initiative for
the community members.
This plan is clearly a conso-
lation because, combined
with losing their traditional
livelihood strategies (ie, hunting-and-
gathering and agriculture) due to state
policies that infringe on minority
ethnic groups rights, local commu-
nity members must now increasingly
rely on tourism to support themselves.
Most archaeologists now recognize
they do not work in a vacuum, and
they further acknowledge that their
disciplinary practices potentially have
negative effects on local and descen-
dent communities, such as those
living near the Tsodilo Hills. Their
awareness is in part due to ethical
debates in the discipline over the past
two decades, which also led to the
promotion of participatory research
approaches. Community archaeology,
for example, encourages collaboration
between archaeologists and local and
descendent community members in
research design and data interpreta-
tion. These approaches are also meant
to help reverse the ambivalent or nega-
tive relationships that many commu-
nities have with archaeologists. Yet a
review of the community archaeology
literature reveals a default position
that is either uncomfortable with, even
critical of, economic development or
ignores the issue altogether. When
community members want to profit
economically from archaeological
resources through tourism, archae-
ologists must reflect on their role in
local and regional political econo-
mies as their practices are utilized for
development. Ultimately archaeolo-
gists find themselves caught between
communities needs to build sustain-
able economies around locally avail-
able resources and the ethical entan-
glement of participating in the global
tourism economy that they might
disparage.
Such is the case in Jordan, where
rural communities are eager to see
nearby archaeological sites devel-
oped for tourism. The Middle Eastern
kingdom considers tourism, particu-
larly archaeotourism, one of its major
industries. Many important archaeo-
logical sites were developed in the last
20 years, such as Petra and Jerash, and
several archaeological museums were
refurbished. Once established, archae-
otourism projects stimulate the back-
ward development of local econo-
mies, that is, the development of asso-
ciated private industries such as hotels,
restaurants and tour-guiding busi-
nesses that create hospitality infra-
structure around archaeological sites.
These opportunities create spaces in
which small private enterprises might
generate wealth for rural communi-
ties. But as Waleed Hazbun demon-
strates in Beaches, Ruins, Resorts: The
Politics of Tourism in the Arab World
(2008), such efforts at Petra in the mid-
1990s led to the overdevelopment of
the hospitality industry and a boom-
and-bust economic cycle. Despite this
legacy, rural communities are still
willing to see archaeological resources
near them developed for tourism.
In recent years, foreign archaeolo-
gists began collaborating with rural
communities and the Jordanian
government to raise funds, offer guide
training and prepare design plans. So
far, rural communities in Jordan show
more interest in economic develop-
ment than participiating in site inter-
pretation. These priorities are symp-
tomatic not only of a need for revenue
but also the limited extent to which
the communities believe these sites
to be a part of their cultural heritage.
Although still in their infancy, these
projects must proceed carefully and
remain wary of overdevelopment that
could repeat mistakes made in past
decades.
Income Generation
As our respective research in
southern Africa and the Middle East
shows, some of the most problem-
atic examples of archaeotourism as a
development process occur in devel-
oping countries where local govern-
ments, NGOs, and international
organizations encourage sustainable
development through tourism. In
these instances, state and develop-
ment agencies want to boost tourism
revenue and certain archaeological
sites make intriguing locales ready for
exploitation. Archaeotourism offers
community members living near sites
of archaeological value the opportu-
nity to generate an income through
tour guiding, the production and sale
of tourist crafts and site maintenance,
as well as through employment at
restaurants, hotels and other hospi-
tality establishments. The potential
of tourism development can trans-
form archaeological sites into places
of cultural consumption. Popular
archaeological sites might be fenced
off and have parking lots or even
boast ticket booths for site entrance.
However not all archaeotourism is
collaborative and sometimes, like in
the case of the Tsodilo Hills, it masks
stark imbalances of power under the
guise of development. Yet commu-
nities in underdeveloped regions,
such as in rural Jordan, that are more
aware of the possible pitfalls of archae-
otourism continue to pursue it for
potential economic benefits.
Future studies of archaeotourism
are necessary for many good reasons.
First, as archaeotourism continues to
See Archaeotourism on page 8
Community members living near archaeological
sites produce and sell crafts to tourists to
supplement their incomes. These girls wait by
the gate to the Tsodilo Hills to market their crafts
to arriving tourists. Photo courtesy Rachel F Giraudo
Anthropology News November 2010 I N F O C U S
8
Mih.ii A Di Gio\ii
U Chi.oo
Heritage tourism is considered a
means of economic development,
employment and poverty allevia-
tion, but also of neo-colonialism,
inauthenticity and museumifica-
tion. For UNESCO, it seems to be
employed for a far more ambitious
goal: to produce peace in the minds of
men. This conten-
tion rests not in
tired reiterations of
multicultural ism
discourses but
rather in analyses
of the phenomeno-
logical attributes of
tourism, heritage
and globalization.
Phenomenologically, tourism is a
voluntary, temporary and perspec-
tival interaction with place. Nelson
Graburn drew on Victor Turners
understanding of pilgrimage and
ritual to contend that it is undertaken
to experience a formative change
from the everyday. Tourisms circular,
return-oriented movement provides
a particular ritual structure; it can be
considered not only a rite of passage
but a rite of intensification, a cyclical
rite renewing the social order after
periods of anomie, and may even create
a sense of communitasa sensation of
human unity that transcends socio-
political boundaries. Tourism is also
perspectival; John Urry points out that
the meaning of a touristic encounter
is created through the tourist gaze, a
socially organized process of seeing a
place that decontextualizes a site from
its social-spatial milieu and imposes a
narrative claim upon it, like a museum
does to the objects it displays.
Heritage sites efficacy in moving
people rests on the perspectival
nature of their encounter. Rather than
being passive or inanimate symbols,
these structures are perceived as
active mediators, binding a soci-
etys members in a discrete imagined
community. Heritage sites are thus
often integral to a communitys place-
making strategy, a social and material
process mediated by memory, which
creates emotional attachments among
those who see themselves as part of its
environment. A collectively compre-
hendible narrative claim is created,
linking the individual interactant with
society through the selective employ-
ment of the monuments own life
storya claim often built around arbi-
trary yet clearly demarcated bound-
aries that gain precision when defined
in binary opposition to each other;
this often ignites protracted conflicts
among disparate groups vying for
physical and ideological possession of
the place.
Angkor Archaeological Park
One example is the Angkor
Archaeological Park, a 400-square-
kilometer World Heritage site
containing the archaeological remains
of roughly 600 years of the Khmer
empire. Articulating claims that his
capital was the cosmological center
of the world, the Vaishnavite king
Suryavarman II created Angkor Wat
as a metonym for Mount Meru. The
rival Shivite kingdom of Champa
staged a devastating attack on Angkor
shortly thereafter but was pushed
out 15 years later by the Mahayana-
Buddhist Jayavarman VII. Arguably
the most powerful Khmer ruler,
Jayavarman sacked Champas capital
and undertook an ambitious religious
and urban revitalization program
by commissioning Buddhist monas-
teries, hospitals, rest-houses and an
impressive network of laterite road-
ways stretching from present-day
Thailand to Vietnam. But such an
exposition of power caused an icon-
oclastic backlash, and in the 15th
century the armies of Ayutthaya
captured Angkor for the exposition of
their own political and material claims
as the preeminent force in Southeast
Asia. Performing their annexation of
Khmer power, the Thais carried to
their capital the linga that Jayavarman
had pillaged from Champa, erected
replicas of Angkor Wat and
constructed a new narrative claiming
Angkor was created by the first
Ayutthayan kingwhich still causes
controversy today. Likewise, after
the French naturalist Henri Mouhot
discovered the temples in 1860, the
French also employed the monuments
to produce Orientalist narratives
positing Western Europeans as heirs
toand protectors ofthe luminous
torch of civilization. Like Jayavarman,
they carried off monumental symbols
to be displayed in their own nascent
nationalistic templesmuseums and
Worlds Fairgroundsto mediate
between individuals in France and the
colonial experience in Indochine.
The Heritage-scape
UNESCOs World Heritage program
reappropriates these sites for their
own global placemaking endeavor,
creating a worldwide imagined
community that I call the heritage-
scape. Positing in its constitution
that peoples identities are problem-
atically based on traditional territorial
conceptions that are constructed and
diffused through these emotionally
charged monuments, UNESCOs goal
of creating lasting peace includes a
fundamental reworking of the geopo-
litical system not through conquest,
but by reordering individuals sense of
place. By simultaneously celebrating
the differences that create conflict,
expand as a niche leisure tourism
market, pertinent issues will require
more discussion, such as the commod-
ification of the past and the privatiza-
tion of heritage management. These
issues are relevant to anthropolo-
gists and archaeologists engaged in a
critique of archaeotourism as hege-
monic development, as well as those
interested in the economic opportu-
nities that archaeotourism potentially
provides communities. Second, future
studies should both inform archaeol-
ogists of their role within local and
regional economies and also outline
ways to generate more collaborative
archaeological practices that incor-
porate this awareness. Participatory
research approaches in archaeology
do have important contributions to
make to disciplinary research ethics,
but its practitioners need to become
better informed of the main themes of
development studies
literature before
adopting a disap-
proving position
against attempts to
link archaeotourism
with economic
sustainability. One
possibility is to find
a place for develop-
ment studies in grad-
uate-level training
in archaeology and
in archaeological
research design.
No matter what
side archaeologists
find themselves
on these debates,
familiarity with the
possibilities and
pitfalls of sustainable development
will help them make smart and crit-
ical contributions to the crux that
is the ever-growing phenomenon of
archaeotourism.
Rachel F Giraudo is a PhD candidate
in anthropology at University of
CaliforniaBerkeley. Her research
focuses on cultural heritage, tourism
and development in southern Africa.
Her dissertation, based on fieldwork
at the Tsodilo World Heritage Site,
investigates heritage tourism as a
means of sustainable development for
Botswanas ethnic minorities.
Benjamin W Porter is assistant
professor of Near Eastern archaeology
at University of CaliforniaBerkeley.
He is also co-director of the Dhiban
Excavation and Development Project,
an international project based in Jordan
that is designing an archaeological site
for domestic and international visitors
in collaboration with local community
and government agencies.
Archaeotourism
continued from page 7
World Heritage Tourism
UNESCOs Vehicle for Peace?
C O MME N T A R Y
One development initiative at the Tsodilo Hills was the
creation of a curio shop for community members to sell
their crafts to tourists to supplement their incomes.
In this photo, development workers aid community
members in balancing their financial accounting books.
Photo courtesy Rachel F Giraudo