Unruly Heritage

Exploring the current clash between the prevailing conceptions of heritage as, on the one hand, something valued and thus worth saving and, on the other, a haunting and unwanted legacy, this book urges a radical reconsideration of our understanding of heritage in line with the notion of an unruly legacy. The fundamental argument is based on a less anthropocentric and more ecologically focussed perspective, where case studies are presented on the following countries: Canada, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the United States. More specifically, the multidisciplinary approach of the contributions, ranging from archaeology and heritage studies to philosophy and environmental politics, explores a wide range of topics in the contemporary world such as industrialisation and technology; material profusion; modernist architectural material; coastal reclamations; and naval mines. The result is a volume that challenges our idea of the archaeology of the Anthropocene and offers a rethinking of the traditional understanding of heritage as an exclusive field devoid of negative issues.