Page - 239 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 3:2

239 | www.limina-graz.eu Chiara Zuanni | Heritage in a digital world The emergence and context of Critical Heritage Studies The idea of a cultural and a natural heritage culminated in the 1972 UNESCO Convention for the Protection of World Heritage. In the 1970s and 1980s, most scholarly focus was on the management and preservation of this heritage, as well as on the leisure industries associated with these heritage sites. However, since the 1980s, new theoretical frameworks, a renewed atten- tion on the public sphere, and parallel disciplinary developments led to the emergence of the broader research area of Critical Heritage Studies in the 2010s. The influence of post-modernism and post-colonialism theories became prevalent during the 1980s and had an in-depth impact on the develop- ment of archaeological and museological theories, as well as the emer- gence of public archaeology and heritage studies. Post-processualism broke from previous traditions which aimed to find an historical objective truth through archaeology and highlighted how meanings were not in- herent to material culture, but rather constructed in the present through the act of interpreting such material culture; as one of the key scholars of post-processualism, Tilley, emphasised: “The meaning of the past does not reside in the past, but belongs in the present” (Tilley 2001 [1989], 192). Therefore, it was argued that “[t]he process of writing the past in the pre- sent needs to become part of that which is to be understood in archaeol- ogy” (Tilley 2001 [1989], 192). Post-processual archaeologies introduced new theoretical frameworks in the study of material culture, which, it was argued, raised the same questions both towards past societies and our con- temporary ones: “The concern is to understand the conventions and operations by means of which material culture, conceived as a significative practice, produces meaning effects in relation to the social. We attempt to identify the effects significative meaning has on its observers and readers, both in the past and the present” (Tilley 1993, 5). Therefore, on one side, the connections between material culture and con- temporary archaeological practices became a focus of post-processual ar- Post-modernism and post-colonialism theories had an in-depth impact on the emergence of public archaeology and heritage studies.