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The Impact of Tourism on Historic Sites - Episode 34
115 Plays7 years ago
On today's episode, we will be discussing the impact tourism can have out sites including the good, the bad and the ugly. The discussion will include how tourism impacts sites, the surrounding areas, the broader public, and individuals.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to the Women in Archaeology Podcast. My name is Chelsea Slotin and today I'm joined by Emily Long and Kirsten Lopez. Ladies, thank you so much for joining me today. It's always lovely to have conversations with you. Yeah. Happy to be here.
Tourism's Dual Impact on Archaeology
00:00:23
Speaker
So on today's episode of the Women in Archaeology podcast, we're going to be talking a little bit about tourism, particularly the impact that tourism can have on archaeological sites and their surrounding areas. We're going to talk to them about the positives and the negatives or the sites for individuals
00:00:46
Speaker
themselves as well as some of the legislation and best practices surrounding tourism at archaeological sites.
Public Access: Education & Preservation
00:00:55
Speaker
But to start off, I think that we should have a little bit of a conversation about why tourism and allowing public access to archaeological sites
00:01:08
Speaker
is important in the first place. So Emily or Kirsten, you wanna kick us off? Sure, I can jump right in there. I think it's really easy as archeologists to just be like, everything should be closed off, everything should be protected. Nobody go to it, but what would be the point of that? And nobody would understand then why these places need to be protected, why they are important in the first place.
00:01:35
Speaker
So I think just at the most basic level having some access to some sites is incredibly important just as being a visual reminder in a place people can go to understand why we do what we do as archaeologists and why these places have a crucial role in
00:01:56
Speaker
showing what has happened in the past. That whole, you don't know what's gonna, you can't plan for your future if you don't know what happened in the past, you don't wanna repeat your mistakes, et cetera, et cetera.
Cultural Resource Management Laws
00:02:06
Speaker
And on top of that, in the United States, we have cultural resource management laws that actually state that we have to do public education, that it needs to be part of our programs, that if you receive federal funding, this is an aspect that we are supposed to be contributing to. So not only is it an important thing we should be doing in the first place so that people understand why we do what we do, it's actually mandated by the National Historic Preservation Act,
00:02:36
Speaker
where we're supposed to be doing some kind of outreach, some kind of educational outreach so that people can have a further grasp on the nation's heritage. And I think that goes internationally as well so that we can have an appreciation for heritage internationally. I would definitely agree.
Experiencing Heritage: Tangible Connections
00:02:57
Speaker
I would like to add as well the importance of tangibility, being able to visit some of these sites.
00:03:04
Speaker
especially ones that you hear of that are more famous, such as Lux or Stonehenge, the ability to walk in and have an embodied experience of heritage or of age or of anything, especially in this stage of digital connectivity or disconnectivity. There's so much emphasis on visual and auditory stimulus, and it's really hard to find people
00:03:34
Speaker
that are connected in a more visceral way to the outside world. I mean, that's one of the things as archaeologists, we really are lucky to be able to work outside or in the field or to go and to do and to touch and to physically
00:03:57
Speaker
interact with the world that we see and with the history. And most people, the majority of people don't get to
Respectful Interaction with Sites
00:04:05
Speaker
do that. I mean, most people, you know, nowadays work in offices or cubicles or behind a computer at home. And that sort of visceral interaction with history and one's heritage and
00:04:20
Speaker
These types of things are just as important, but under emphasized as the whole movement and discussion about the importance of nature for children. I mean, that that connection with what's real and what has been and was also real is something that I think we as a society have lost touch with. And I think it's important to be able to have
00:04:47
Speaker
representatives or or things that are easily to connect, easy to connect to as available. And then in the U.S., you know, I'd point out like Gettysburg or Chaco Canyon or the Grand Canyon, which is more of a natural place, but there's a lot of not a really cool archaeology there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of it's that that ability to connect
00:05:15
Speaker
However, as we'll discuss in a bit, that's, uh, not everyone connects as easily and nor do they know how to know respectfully. Yeah. They don't really know how to in a respectful, proper way. So the physical interactions can vary, but I think.
00:05:34
Speaker
It's important to have those, but also to teach people how to do it and how to experience these places without causing damage. Exactly.
Local Engagement with History
00:05:42
Speaker
Well, there's also that misperception too, like when I go into classrooms and talk about archaeology, there's always that idea that we don't really have the same level of
00:05:55
Speaker
archaeology, history, prehistory, etc. in the United States, like it's all Egypt. It's all Stonehenge. It's all abroad, you know, the joke where Eddie Izzard says, you know, I'm from England where history is, you know, those type of things. And I think, at least here in the United States, it's really great when we can actually get kids to archaeological sites. And of course, there are issues with that, but at least
00:06:21
Speaker
in some respects, getting them there so they understand that we have such an incredibly rich prehistory and history with just incredibly unique peoples that are still here today and showing that connection. I think it'd be incredibly meaningful for children and then growing into adults that then hopefully further appreciate
00:06:43
Speaker
what's going on in our past. And instead of being like, yeah, I'd much rather have this lovely highway. And they see you know, the highway is going to be destroying a whole like a mining camp, an old mining camp, it has a lot of cool cabins will be like, that doesn't seem cool. I'm gonna contact you know, the local federal agency, and then they'll cause a hubbub about it.
Fostering a Preservation Mindset
00:07:05
Speaker
And then the
00:07:05
Speaker
archaeologists at the agency would be like, yay, somebody else cares. And then that place will get protected, maybe, hopefully. And that highway might be rerouted. So we need to create a generation of people who care and keep the people who already care, keep them rolling and just trying to create a populace that actually
00:07:28
Speaker
cares even just the teeniest bit that like, you know, don't scratch on rock art or don't destroy things willy nilly. It's like it all stems from just realizing we have so much cool stuff here. I think a lot of people might know about that in an intellectual way. You've, you know, gone to school and sat through a history or social study class and learned about the history of the United States, which unfortunately
00:07:58
Speaker
oftentimes in classes is presenting starting in 1492 when Columbus shows up, which is, you know, wrong.
Community Role in Site Preservation
00:08:04
Speaker
Yeah. Vikings. Come on. Well, Viking and Native American populations, Native American indigenous populations were important. But as much as you can have a teacher talk to you about that in class or read a book about it or see news, you know, regarding
00:08:27
Speaker
these ancestral lands, it's not necessarily as real as being there and seeing it and experiencing it is. So if you can get your local populations engaged in their local history and local archaeology, they can help recognize when sites are in danger from climate change or construction or looting
00:08:56
Speaker
and they can let archaeologists with either this particular organization or with the local historic preservation board, they can let them know that something is happening and that helps preserve our history and our heritage and our archaeological sites for everyone, which is also important. I also think there's some very practical realities of why tourism
00:09:26
Speaker
can be good, both for the site itself as well as surrounding areas.
Tourism's Economic Benefits
00:09:34
Speaker
There are certainly towns that all they do is tourism. So it creates jobs for hundreds or potentially thousands of people from people who are working at the archaeological site to guides who are getting you there or hotels or the restaurant industry.
00:09:56
Speaker
So it can be really, really good for a community and can provide jobs and resources. And if sites are popular, money is often invested in them. It provides more jobs and can help to preserve sites. Pompeii is a really great example of this. You know, several years ago and up to today, periodically see news articles about Pompeii is crumbling.
00:10:24
Speaker
Some wall has fallen down or a building has fallen down.
Funding Challenges for Sites
00:10:28
Speaker
And one thing that these articles are quick to stress usually is that the portion of Pompeii that the tourists can to go to is perfectly safe and is in really good repair. And the places where is where there aren't tourists because money isn't necessarily being put there to do the kind of daily repairs to take care of.
00:10:53
Speaker
you know, old concrete that's been waterlogged or, you know, just that sort of, it's a site that's 2000 years old. Is it more of an outcry from archaeologists then saying the site's crumbling, even though the public may not actually see those parts of Pompeii? Yeah, so it's archaeologists. Some of my understanding was that sometimes you could see bits that were crumbling from the Taurus area, even if you couldn't
00:11:21
Speaker
like physically get to them. So some tourists could see areas where it's not in this great shape, but definitely archaeologists, historic preservation people who go see it, you know, UNESCO, you know, the it was in 2000,
00:11:51
Speaker
Ten portion of the Skola Amaturium, probably butchered that name, was collapsed, and a UNESCO team was sent to inspect the entirety of the site and write a report on it. But they got a lot of money because it was in such bad repair to make it better.
00:12:18
Speaker
Although, unfortunately, it sounds like, I mean, obviously, a topic we'll get into a lot of places don't receive that kind of funding. And it's like, what do you do? Yeah, it's it's Pompeii. Yeah, everybody wants to go to Pompeii. Yeah. And funding is definitely an issue.
00:12:37
Speaker
But building off of what you were talking about, how it can really help the local community, one thing that is interesting in places that didn't have quite the infrastructure, let's say, for large-scale tourism, it can be helpful for that community if you can involve them as much as possible in areas where maybe there's a large-scale excavation and then it will turn into a tourist spot.
00:13:04
Speaker
being able to involve the community, have them be part of the excavations. And there are a lot of great examples where that not only does it have educational value, revenue value for supporting the community, but it also helps the people in terms of keeping traditions going, showing the importance of that community and traditional beliefs at a larger scale.
00:13:33
Speaker
and just getting people involved can be incredibly helpful and like promoting the wishes and desires of what that community would want for what could be a huge, huge, huge tourist site. Perhaps then it can be the actual visiting side of it can be molded in a way that is respectful of traditions and so forth. So I think
00:13:56
Speaker
Tourism can be helpful in that sense, although I know there are issues on top of that in terms of how a lot of the burden is placed on local populations and how they don't always get the most benefits. But generally speaking, it seems that tourism can at least kickstart some local industries, support communities, and if you can get the community involved, it can help
00:14:21
Speaker
educate their children in terms of local beliefs and traditions, but also inform on a wider scale. Sure.
Community Involvement in Excavations
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah. And a great point that as with everything, you need to consider the wishes of the local community and make sure that everything is desired and respectful and archaeological tourism is not guaranteed to be wonderful.
00:14:49
Speaker
It can't be if it's done right, but it's not guaranteed to be wonderful. Well, and you'll always have those rotten eggs, which we'll discuss in a bit later, but that's just going to happen with any endeavor. And I know there is a something that pops up fairly often that I've noticed online. And I mean, this is something, you know, there's always people that
00:15:18
Speaker
cry wolf, there's always people that are like, well, this isn't working because someone's doing something bad. Well, there's always going to be someone doing something bad that want to root for the rest of them. But if you have one person out of, say, a thousand people visiting a site that's doing something bad, you can't necessarily, you know,
00:15:39
Speaker
And this is a discussion we'll get into later is does does that actually ruin it for everyone else? Some of it depends on what they're doing. Ticks me off regardless. So, you know, and what can be done to help prevent that one percent or less of people who want to destroy or want attention through destruction as they're videotaping whatever they're
00:16:07
Speaker
painting in a national park or inscribing next to the really ancient petroglyphs because they're cool like the Indians. I can go on and on, but there's just a whole other set of things that come with it. But remembering that
00:16:28
Speaker
these things and even just as a cause to fight for can knit communities together and create sort of that that bonding experience of a local community, even if a lot of the burden does end up falling on their shoulders. I think that the pluses of
00:16:42
Speaker
of having something to fight for, to fight about, to fight with is important. Oh, definitely. And even thinking in terms of knitting communities together on a national scale, one of it seems like the delightful outcomes of tourism and public shaming is that when people do something to a very popular tourist site and that's incredibly important collectively, like you were saying, painting in a national park or leaving tags, that kind of thing.
00:17:12
Speaker
Uh, the public shaming side of it, like people are capturing that while that happens and trying to put it up on media sites and then being helpful and trying to like give that information to Rangers. And so the more and more that happens, we can see like, oh, people are becoming more and more aware that that's wrong, that that shouldn't be happening. And it's like, Hey, that's a, that's a good benefit. It's bad that that.
00:17:35
Speaker
something, some kind of vandalism is occurring. But then there's a general populace around that saying, yeah, that's not cool. Let's videotape it and give it to a ranger. And then that person will get prosecuted who did the vandalism. It's like, yay, good job. Social media. Exactly. And in the more popular, the more well known a site is, the more often it's visited by tourists, the more likely it is to be protected by on Sears or the general populace will care.
00:18:04
Speaker
I mean, it wasn't until all of this discussion on whether or not to revisit or to look at national monument dedication. And that's a whole other like discussion on. Political power and yada yada, but just that that was going to be a discussion woke people up to being like, well, how many national monuments do we have? Do I have one near me? Is there one I care about? How big are these? Where are they? What's in them? Why are they?
00:18:34
Speaker
considered important. So just the number of people who, I mean, I don't know if the visitation went up, I'm guessing it may have, but just the research or the hits on Google just skyrocketed. Yeah, that does not surprise me at all. And going a little bit back to Emily's point, even for sites that don't have a lot of funding,
Educating Visitors Through Standards
00:19:01
Speaker
The public shaming around sites that have funding and are well known can benefit them because people learn about appropriate behavior at archaeological sites and they can transfer that knowledge that's gained talking about places like Pompeii or the pyramids or Machu Picchu or Gettysburg to other sites that that might not be as well known or have as much oversight, but they still know how to behave appropriately.
00:19:32
Speaker
Excellent. Yeah. So I think this actually brings us about to the end of our first 20 minute segment. And when we come back, we will talk a little bit about some of the negative impacts. You mean we'll rant about the negative impacts? Yes. Yes. There are lots of them.
00:20:01
Speaker
I'm Jessica Equinto, and I'm the host of the Heritage Voices podcast. Heritage Voices focuses on how CRM and heritage professionals, public employees, tribes, and descendant communities can best work together to protect their heritage through tribal consultation, collaborative ethnography, and indigenous archaeology. Now back to the show. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Women in Archaeology podcast.
00:20:30
Speaker
On today's episode, we have been discussing the impacts of tourism on archaeological sites. For the first 20 minutes, we talked a little bit about some of the positive impacts that tourism can have on archaeology from making people aware of their own history to providing a revenue stream. And in the next 20 minutes, we're going to jump into some of the negative aspects of
00:20:57
Speaker
um, the, the impact tourism can have on, on archeological sites. And I know that we all have so many fields about this. So, um, maybe Kirsten, do you want to kick us off since Emily kicked off the last section? Yeah, that sounds good. Um, so there's many places to start. I'm going to start with, um, something that I've spent a fair amount of time this summer at, um, a little site, um, in sort of a North central Idaho, um,
00:21:28
Speaker
not far from the Oregon border. In some ways it seems like a very remote location, but it's actually not super far from anything. The archaeological site I'd been working on, Cooper's Ferry, is open to the public. It's an active field school excavation until 2019. However, though we tend to have anywhere between 800 to 2,000 visitors per year,
00:21:58
Speaker
Occasionally you get the bad apple. Um, and while most of the local community is very supportive and loves having us there, uh, partly because, you know, you have anywhere from 10 to 30 students, uh, they bring all of, you know, they're spending money for, you know, food, and then you have all the visitors that come from all over the world. Um,
00:22:25
Speaker
and bringing revenue into the local area. So so those were some of the positives. But I think this year we had someone kind of randomly cut a bunch of rope to our shade, which was seemed really bizarre. They didn't take anything or do anything with it. They just wanted to cause a ruckus or something or thought they maybe a car drove by and like scared them out of their wits and they left.
00:22:50
Speaker
But there have been a few occasions to where that site has been vandalized and people have been caught, people have been persecuted. And that's something that is one of those things that it's like, you know, should you have excavations or should you have sites open to the public?
00:23:11
Speaker
As you said, lots of everyone has feels on it. But this is was one that that my advisor had decided to keep open to the public to educate and to kind of get people a better mental orientation of what an excavation looks like. You know, you're not walking into ancient Egypt or we're not doing a stonehenge. It's a lot more micro scale excavation. And as it's
00:23:39
Speaker
sort of a geoarchaeology base. It's not a lot of the big flashy stuff. So the nice part of that is, is people get it, you know, take a look and be like, Oh, okay, cool. There's, there's some stuff here, but it's not really worth, you know, destroying a bunch of this for, you know, what you're going to actually pull out of it if you were to try and loot the site. Um, and you know, that can go for, for pretty much anywhere. Um, doing a lot of survey, you see,
00:24:08
Speaker
archaeological sites that don't have such types of funding for public visitation that are they're just trying to be protected anywhere on federal or private land throughout the West in particular, kind of anywhere. But there's a lot of parts of the West where you have stuff sort of consistently at the surface. And it's a similar thing in the Southwest. And
00:24:36
Speaker
You have sites that are, say, they're fenced off. There's cave sites I know of that, you know, the BLM, bless their heart, where they put a fence in front of the cave that had been a cave that had been looted previously. And of course, you know, looters went back in and just pulled the fence down and looted behind it again. And this is
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's an it's an ongoing issue, the looting, and we have other episodes on that. But that is one of the bigger risks to the public access to it, because this particular site actually had because it had been looted previously. And one of their attempts at preventing looting was putting up a fence and a plaque like the informational sign.
00:25:25
Speaker
Mm hmm. And they're also telling people where it is. Exactly. Well, it's a very obvious it's right on a hiking trail. Mm hmm. So there's a lot of factors into the fact that it's, you know, at the mouth of it, a tiny it's a little tiny canyon. There's a gazillion canyons out out there, but there's and there's a hiking trail that goes through there and it's a very obvious cave. And so people naturally want to walk up to it. And so
00:25:56
Speaker
having had previous looting or even just looters looking for places, it's it's a very obvious one. So it was an attempt at trying to keep people out being like, hey, this is important to the people that are still here and hold this place sacred. Please don't, you know, dig at it. That would be great. But it didn't really do much prevention. And then there's the larger scale things like.
00:26:22
Speaker
when I did my internship in Malta, one of the things that I learned about that is, you know, there's a big tourist tourism market for their heritage. That is, Heritage Malta is a wonderful national museum to work for. And one of the things I, when I was working there, stumbled across is one of the local environmental groups are the hunters. They're the songbird hunters. So there is a whole,
00:26:52
Speaker
whenever they would get upset about something, they not all the time, but there were a couple occasions I remember where they would get upset about some policy or something that was going on and they would sort of write that and spray paint on the monuments. So it's like the the clashes of these different kinds of conservation groups kind of going at each other.
00:27:20
Speaker
in a not very nice way. And so it's interesting because it gave them an outlet to be heard because they're a group that isn't very highly respected in a lot of multi-society. But at the same time, yeah, they're destroying one of the things that kind of keeps them going, that keeps the money coming into the area.
00:27:48
Speaker
So those are some of my personal experiences that I've seen with the negatives is anywhere from spray paint vandalism looting and just straight up destruction of the infrastructure around the public portion of the site.
00:28:08
Speaker
I think that really what you're getting into, there's a definite difference between unintentional impacts and intentional impacts from people just visiting in itself. It's an unintentional impact. You're just wanting to visit these places. So your hikers going to that cave, they may want to explore it. And just their presence of being there is an unintentional impact to what you're saying with the spray paint, the looters, your massive intentional impacts.
00:28:36
Speaker
it's crazy how much you can have something that's an unintentional impact quickly turn to something that is quite intentional. And just in terms, for our listeners sake, the kinds of like unintentional things that we see at archaeological sites, at least here in the United States, and I'm sure internationally as well, especially as cultural resource managers or as just concerned citizens that
00:29:03
Speaker
You may see people at an archaeological site and they may be sitting, climbing, standing, et cetera, on structures or on middens on fragile soils. And if there's absolutely no signage and there's no education saying otherwise, they're not intending to be destroying maybe a wall or destabilizing something or churning up
00:29:26
Speaker
culturally sensitive soils, etc. Or there's been a number of archaeological sites that have had to be closed, like, is it Lascaux Cave or Cheveau Cave that has been completely closed off to the public?
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah, let's show. And just because, I mean, a person's just body heat and humidity can destroy cultural remains, which is crazy that can happen. Or just you have so many people packed into a small location that arms rubbing against the hieroglyphs of an Egyptian tomb or just having so many people at one location at Cliff House at Mesa Verde.
00:30:07
Speaker
can really be a destabilizing force. But then you can go zoom in right into intentional to people removing artifacts. And I do not care if people are like, I had no idea it's not okay to take things. Of course it's not okay to take things. I mean, would you go into somebody's house and be like, I like this lamp, I'm gonna take it, or go into a store and just be like, that looks cool. It's mine now. Or go to a museum and smash a museum case. Like I genuinely do not get people being like,
00:30:36
Speaker
I saw a shirt or an arrowhead. I'm just going to take it. It's like, no, it's not okay. That's not unintentional. It is so intentional. And I think people in their gut always know it's wrong.
00:30:48
Speaker
That's my soapbox. But then other things like not respecting signage that says don't sit on this wall and people sit on the wall or they leave trash at sites. Take off-road vehicles, let's say through Bears Ears National Monument and they're just zooming their ATVs all over Pueblos. And then, I think this is a big one, you may not be doing the looting, but then you're purchasing looted artifacts. That's a very intentional impact to sites. You may not be the one
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah, the shovel. But you're contributing to it. If there's no market, they won't do it. Exactly. So yeah, so anything important to think about those intentional and unintentional, but at the same time, at the end of the day, it's impacting. But sorry, please, it didn't mean to cut you off there. No, and like, you're right, the intentional versus the unintentional is it's a really, really important distinction to make. And some of the plaques and the signs that you can put up
00:31:45
Speaker
can really help with the unintentional damage that's happening. Whether it's a sign that says, please don't go into this cave.
00:31:57
Speaker
You know, it's important spiritually to the ancestors of the people who once used it. Or just says toxic waste just so people don't go in it. Or like restoration. That are full of bats. Right. But people, I find that people are generally pretty
00:32:16
Speaker
pretty good, and if you tell them not to do something, just to tell them not to do something, you might get some pushback, but if you give them a reason why so they understand, oh, that makes sense, I can get on board with that logic, and it can help with a lot of the unintentional negative impacts. The intentional negative impacts are much more difficult to deal with, for sure.
00:32:43
Speaker
You know, I mean, all of the stories of people who want to carve their initials into the Coliseum or the pyramids or who want to pick up a rock. My God, it's just a rock. It doesn't like everything here is made out of a rock. It's important to put it down. Yeah. And there's there's one million people that go through say Stonehenge every year. If everyone took even just a blade of grass.
00:33:07
Speaker
on the side, like you're going to end up plucking out half the lawn. Or thinking about a graffiti if everyone put their initials on. Oh, exactly. Right. Well, and that's that is an important point. I am I'm going to segue slightly into a museum story that I went with. It met, you know, someone at a at a barbecue said there's this really interesting museum exhibit. You want to go? And I said, sure. I'd never met the person before.
00:33:36
Speaker
And we were in this museum that had rails around statues and things, and some things were behind glass cases, but not everything was. And this individual looked around, waited for a guard to be gone, and then reached out and started fondling the statue. And I lost my ever-loving mind.
00:33:59
Speaker
And it was just like that's inappropriate and oh, well, no, like it's fine because not everyone does it because like most people pay attention to the signs and oh, I see conservatives do but like conservators have training and If if everyone did it there would be nothing left. Yeah Did you want to touch it and it's old and you think it's cool and like like no and and that kind of I'm special I'm exceptional if everyone felt that way and
00:34:27
Speaker
There would be nothing left. And I'm just gonna put this out there. Like, you're not special. You're not exceptional. Don't touch the old things. Yeah, see, I have no, and just, and that's the big thing too. It's like, fellow archeologists or concerned people have no shame. Yell at people, smack people's hands. Do it. Stop it. Yeah, just be like, don't do that. Smack. So I have two things to add to your story, Chelsea, or to emphasize some of the pieces.
00:34:56
Speaker
So if anyone has ever been to an old stone building, particularly if you go to I mean, I've seen this in everything from banks in the US, but you can go to it's it's it's really emphasized in some of the older parts of Europe. Any staircase, if you look, that stone has wear patterns like this, this bowl in the middle of the step where people walk. And that's not from the stone sinking.
00:35:26
Speaker
over years, that's rubbing away from your shoes, which are rubber. So they're not meant to like do a lot of rubbing. So like that's just to get an idea of the idea that the sense of erosion that can occur from touching things. And then I'm going the second thing is a friend of mine told me the story and I don't remember where it is. I want to say it's somewhere in Europe. It's a location that she was saying was like a
00:35:55
Speaker
where a relic of a saint was kept and people had been going to touch this particular like pillar for hundreds of years. That's OK. And like there's a handprint that sinks into the stone from so many. I don't even know how many people touching just the same spot.
00:36:22
Speaker
So if you are exceptional and there's one million people that are coming through a particular space to touch a statue or to look at a statue, if one out of 10 or even one out of 50, if those people touch that statue, you're going to get where? You're going to get erosion. You're going to get a polishing on that spot. And it's always going to be on whatever's closest, whatever's most touched or anything from like the site that I just described to the
00:36:51
Speaker
There's like the Blarney Stone. There's there's a lot of places where people where it's traditional to go and touch. And that's I think an an urge that we have as humans is to touch and to interact. And that's what I hinted at early on in the show, is that that that ability to physically and bodily interact with things.
00:37:15
Speaker
And sometimes touching is appropriate, but most of the time, unless it says touching is appropriate and there's obvious signs of like, you may touch this, like such areas, there's, it's not appropriate to touch. Let's just say there are ways that you can interact with the site. And I think, you know, giving,
00:37:40
Speaker
This is the same reason why teaching collections always have touchables. People want to physically interact. And that's where if you're walking through a place, stopping and touching the ground that you're on. If you're wanting to touch something. Taking stuff, I think, is a similar reaction. It's the thought of... Having that tangible physical thing from that place.
00:38:02
Speaker
Yes. And it's the same thing as like taking a photo. It's wanting to take a piece of that place and that feeling that you have when you're in that place home with you and being able to return to that feeling consistently. And I totally get that. But that is one of those. That's why there's gift shops.
00:38:19
Speaker
Yeah. Um, I have a quick story on that if you don't mind me sharing it real quick. Yeah. That just made me, just like as a personal story that it's just like made me so mad. Like even one of my friend's parents who knows I'm an archeologist, she's known me since I was like 10 knows my views on like protecting heritage, et cetera. They went to Israel, they went to Masada and she was like, Emily,
00:38:42
Speaker
guess what I picked up from Masada. And of course I was like, oh shit, oh shit, what did she get? And she's like, they had so many pieces of pottery up there. I was like, oh no, oh no, oh no. And she's like, I took one and I know you're gonna be really mad about it, but there were so many. And it's like, you knew that's gonna piss me off. Why are you telling me that?
00:39:06
Speaker
But even just it's like even people who know better still want that like Tangible fragment even and will tell Archaeologists like yeah, I just stole this cool thing even though I knew was wrong. It's like So so first thing but here's what you're saying. It's like people want that Tangible piece of the past might because it's exotic or different or just like it means I was there but I don't know take a picture
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, and a lot of gift shops will have replicas or even pieces that you can buy of fill in the blank. Like, you know, granted, this is a natural situation, not a cultural, but, you know, you can go to Mount St. Helens and buy things made of or like a little vial of Mount St. Helens Ash. Like there's stuff that there's
00:39:57
Speaker
obviously plenty of, you know, you may have one if you pay the right price. There's. But yeah, just taking stuff from the ground. I. It's illegal. It's it's illegal, like especially when you get to like places with really old cobblestone streets, do not take the stone cobbles out of the street. Yeah.
00:40:24
Speaker
That's one I've seen. And just because something's available in a gift store and Israel is a really interesting place to talk about because I know I have friends who've gone and done birthright there and as part of birthright went and worked on an archaeological dig and the kids who were there were all allowed to take
00:40:45
Speaker
a small one inch by one inch piece of pottery that had been looked at by an archaeologist and identified as not significant. Because they do have a lot of stuff. And if you have a million shards of the exact same thing, but there's a difference between something that's been identified by an archaeologist and you've been told that you can either have, because you participated in this archaeological dig with this program that has appropriate oversight,
00:41:13
Speaker
or that you can buy from a store. And that doesn't mean that everything you can just pick up off the ground because it hasn't been looked at. It might be significant, but you just don't. When in doubt. Yes. And gift shops being like the ones at the sites usually have been vetted. Antique shops, please do not buy old things from antique shops. I mean, there's antiques.
00:41:40
Speaker
is one thing, but like you can kind of tell when you have an archaeological artifact. And granted, this is probably a bias that I have, but it just infuriates me to no end. When I see. I mean, to me, it's very obvious when there's been a say a point that has been manufactured recently, which people are offered for sale. I'm like, you know, support the flit napper like, dude, buy that.
00:42:09
Speaker
but something that has any sort of patina on it or is irregular in shape is probably an actual artifact. Do not buy such things. Like we have ho-ho-ho bracelets at the Shell bracelets at your antique store. They were probably looted.
00:42:26
Speaker
Yeah, they were probably looted and even especially things anything with like a pipe, a bowl or beads are probably grave goods. So that's especially a big no, no. But even things like and this is one that always kind of drives me nuts or the the bottles, the historic bottles that have obviously been sitting in the sun, have a patina on them or still have dirt on them. I'm like, no. Yeah.
00:42:53
Speaker
And granted, it's legal in your own private property in some states to remove archaeological artifacts. But I still like to discourage that because it is not a good thing to do. And these are laws that need to be fixed, not like these are the better things. And I know there are other people who disagree with me on that, but that's my my soapbox. Fair enough. And I think that that is actually a really good point to end our second 20 minute section where we've talked about
00:43:24
Speaker
some of the negative impacts to sites that can occur as a result of tourism of archeology. I mean, we come back for the third section. We'll talk about maybe a couple of case studies that we've missed as well as some of the negative personal impacts that can occur to you if you, you know, loot and do things you shouldn't.
00:43:54
Speaker
Hey podcast fans, check out the Ark 365 podcast at www.arkpodnet.com forward slash ark365. That's A-R-C-H 365 for your daily dose of archeology. Each episode is less than 15 minutes long and we have some great guests recording about awesome archeology. We also try to throw in some definitions and basic archeological information. So check out the 365 days of archeology podcast only in 2017 at www.arkpodnet.com forward slash ark365 today.
00:44:23
Speaker
Light is also on iTunes, Stitcher Radio and Google Music by typing art 365 into the search. Now back to the show. Hi and welcome back to the Women in Archaeology podcast. So far in today's episode, we have been discussing the impact of tourism on archaeological sites. We've covered some of the positives and some of the negatives. And in this section, we are going to move into
00:44:53
Speaker
Some case studies that we may not have mentioned previously as well as personal impacts of doing things you shouldn't I'm gonna actually kick this off really quickly one of our Guests who occasionally comes on was unfortunately not able to join us today, but she really wanted to mention the archaeology that goes on at Montpelier at James Madison's house and at
00:45:23
Speaker
Monticello, and they both have archaeological digs that the public can sign up to participate in. And I think that that is another, for the most part, positive of archaeological tourism because you are training people to recognize archaeology and deal responsibly with it in their everyday life. We also all know that archaeologists are underpaid and there aren't a ton of us.
00:45:53
Speaker
So getting people to help excavate and be invested in these sites is really beneficial for studying and understanding them, as well as giving people a sense of connection to the past of this country and their past. So I had promised that I would throw those two sites in there, so I just wanted to make that quick mention before I forgot about it.
00:46:21
Speaker
as I did in the first 20 minutes. Sounds good. Yeah. And then maybe on a completely swinging to the opposite side of the spectrum, we spoke a lot about the potential impacts to archaeological sites from tourism and from bad tourism, but there are also some, can be some really intense personal impacts
00:46:51
Speaker
to doing things you shouldn't. One example that actually made a huge impact on me when I was a high school student, there was an article in 17 or Teen Vogue or Teen People or one of those clearly geared at high school students that was talking about a girl who was from the Midwest who had gone to, I remember it was the Coliseum or the Parthenon, but it was somewhere
00:47:18
Speaker
in the classical world and she had picked up a stone that she wanted to take home. She ended up getting arrested and being detained by the Italian police for, you know, a substantial period of time and it took some doing to get her kind of released and I unfortunately looked for that article online and it doesn't seem to be digitized and I certainly don't have
00:47:44
Speaker
You know, the hard copy of that magazine from. You didn't keep it forever. You know, I didn't imagine that. You know, but so you can end up being arrested and in jail. You can also end up with some pretty hefty fines. There was a guy at the. And what a dumb thing to be going to jail for. For aggravated damage.
00:48:14
Speaker
Um, is, is one of the common things is used in, in Italy. And even if you don't go to jail, there was, um, a Russian tourist in 2014 who carved his name on the Coliseum and was slapped with a $20,000 Euro fine, which is like a little bit over $21,000. Um,
00:48:40
Speaker
Which is a lot of money. And people are getting caught more often because other visitors are aware that this is wrong and they may take videos and give it to the visitor information desk or security or sometimes people are really stupid and they carve their initials in something and take a photo of it and put it on Facebook and somebody finds it and hands it to the appropriate people and you get caught.
00:49:06
Speaker
I have a great example of that real quick. It's pretty funny. Somebody nearby some prehistoric rock art carved their initials and their phone number. It's like, hmm, I wonder who did this? I'm so cool. Call me. Pretty much. It's like, you know it's what you're doing is wrong and then you'd go even that level further. You're like, you're really dumb.
00:49:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Please continue. More examples. If you're going to vandalize, keep doing that. Keep putting pictures online and make it easy for you to get caught. Oh, yeah. Well, Italy has a whole other level of they have like their heritage police separate from their regular police force. So that's a whole other level of in
00:50:02
Speaker
you know, safeguarding for you know, stuff. They're especially active along the coast, I guess, because fishermen are pulling stuff up all the time by accident. So that's something that they
00:50:18
Speaker
Most fishermen are pretty good about reporting stuff and where they found it and then the heritage police recover the items and then go back and clock in the location to try and find the site again or if it's not known, sometimes it is. But they're pretty active over there and I think similar laws also hold in Egypt but aren't
00:50:43
Speaker
I don't want to say aren't as well enforced. I have no idea because stuff in Egypt seems to be in so much flux the last few years. But I know they had some pretty strong heritage laws for some time until the government overthrew. And it's traveling abroad. You see that a lot more. Some of the articles
00:51:08
Speaker
that I read had to do with photos or video taken next to or in some of these heritage sites or archaeological sites that are
00:51:20
Speaker
representative of the country or the nation. And while that may be all cool in the US, to some extent, to do, you know, something raunchy in front of like, you know, Casa Grande, I wouldn't recommend it at all, but you're not going to get necessarily arrested for it in places like Thailand or Cambodia or Egypt or, you know, you're going to get detained.
00:51:46
Speaker
if as well as possibly find. But, you know, some people go to jail for some time. And I would probably throw a bet that China has similar laws as well. So it's hard to to really know what you're dealing with if you do decide to do one of these things that may seem fine and OK. But a lot of places have some really severe punishments that you aren't
00:52:14
Speaker
not going to be used to or think that you are going to have to encounter, but generally, yeah, just don't do it and then you don't have to think about that. One phenomena that I know has been talked about other park service staff members and when I'm having visited parks, and this must be a phenomena that must happen internationally too, is that as soon as people drive into a national park, it's like all common sense just goes out the window. You have people like
00:52:43
Speaker
stopping in the middle of the road to take a picture of a bear or people trying to put their child on top of a moose or a buffalo or just dumb things where you're kind of like, how is it you didn't know you shouldn't do that? And I've seen that with archaeological resources as well where
00:53:03
Speaker
kids were seen throwing rocks at rock art and the parents thought it was funny. But it's like, you know, that's not cool because there's signs right there saying protect heritage and blah, blah, blah, or kids drawing on things or adults sitting on puebloan walls. And it's just like this common sense seems to go out the window and that must happen kind of internationally as well. It's like, you know, anything goes.
00:53:29
Speaker
No, we have these things called laws that you're disrespecting and not following. And it's not just national park service. It's what I like to call vacation mentality. Yes, yes, yes. And like perfectly logical, reasonable human beings. I mean, I will admit when I'm on vacation, you know, I like to unplug a bit and maybe not think as much.
00:54:00
Speaker
But when I was at university, we did a fundraiser where we went and helped at a local amusement park for a really busy weekend. Not like running rides or anything, but standing at the front of lines and saying, you need to go put your bag in the locker before you.
00:54:20
Speaker
Do whatever and the amount of stupid that I saw in three days I mean like I had someone shotgun umbrella like a big long one at me javelin style when Park police were Literally two and a half feet for me and he like knew the Park police were there Right. Oh Yeah, yeah, yeah, so so like never never underestimate the effects of vacation brain hmm
00:54:49
Speaker
on people's so-called common sense, which doesn't necessarily seem to be very common. But that's another thing that we need to recognize and try and put up signs or have interpreters presence to deal with that, unfortunately.
00:55:12
Speaker
what it all comes down to is we need to try to strike a balance between public access and preservation and whether or not that's even possible seeing as there are a lot of places that maybe we want to close off to the public because they're getting loved to death but I mean I wouldn't want to close off Mesa Verde or Chaco Canyon or the
00:55:34
Speaker
hundreds of thousands of amazing sites in the United States and those even abroad to people because of dumb tourists, you know? There's a lot of stuff that's kind of...
00:55:44
Speaker
more out of our control that it's a lot harder to work with. But I mean, in terms of people, it's like, how can we balance that? And we can put these up on the website as well. But the Archaeological Institute of America, as well as UNESCO, put up guides, best practice
00:56:04
Speaker
practices manuals type of things for both heritage managers as well as tourists on how not only should you behave at a site, but also how to involve the community, what is necessary for tourists to do in order to help protect sites, what managers need to do, and includes things like understanding tourism cycles, maybe limiting group sizes, but for all of those,
00:56:33
Speaker
What it really seemed to boil down to is we need awareness? Funding?
00:56:41
Speaker
and education, and that takes so much time, but it's like, where's the money gonna come from, and how's the education gonna happen? And I think that those can be the hardest things to, they're so necessary, but the hardest things to come up with when there is no funding, and managers may not have the time to throw out as much education as possible at people to not be dumb at sites.
00:57:06
Speaker
So it really makes me think about what are some better ways we can make people more aware of their actions at sites, whether or not it's signage, websites, heck, podcasting.
00:57:22
Speaker
one of my favorite video series for visiting archaeological sites is this Friends of Cedar Mesa. It's the Visit with Respect videos. They're really, really good. And it's just like, should you bring your dog to a site? How do you visit with children?
00:57:42
Speaker
All of these different subjects, it's like if you see a tin can, what should you do? What's the difference between prehistoric and historic archaeology? And all of these different types of videos to make people more aware of their actions and how should they actually treat archaeological sites. So it's one of those like, no excuse, you learned. Don't touch the rock art.
00:58:07
Speaker
But yeah, I think there's so many potential forms of education, of awareness. It's just a matter of the funding or if we can, every single archaeologist in the world can do some kind of public awareness thing for free. I think there's a couple of things. One, I know that there's a lot of sites that have
00:58:34
Speaker
limited population entry now, like Machu Picchu, I know is one of them. They only accept so many thousands of visitors. So you have to get your ticket in advance, like many months in advance. And there's there's a lot of sites like that just due to the unintentional damage that we were discussing earlier with foot traffic. And the cost of restoration and maintenance kind of plays into some of these larger
00:59:04
Speaker
sites, visited sites. I think one opportunity that I haven't seen utilized much or I don't know if really at all would be transport to a lot of these areas, transport to a lot of these sites where, you know, you have a large percentage of people going to Peru wanting to go see Machu Picchu or other archaeological sites is on the plane ride. You don't have the national heritage, you know,
00:59:34
Speaker
group or a foundation or society put together a how can we preserve these for tomorrow sort of videos that are not super boring but can be like you know this is what we expect these are sort of the risks you may be tempted to do this but this is sort of the result stuff like that so that's I think that might be a good opportunity because I don't know if
01:00:04
Speaker
I'm sure you've all ridden in an airplane and you have that screen in front of you that won't shut off when you're in the safety. Yeah, something like that. I think that's a really good idea. And that's something I could be employed in many different ways, whether it's like you have to watch a video before at the visitor center before going out to something or there are a lot of really good options. Definitely.
01:00:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, if you had even in an airport, if you have a big waiting area, if you just have a video that kind of plays on loops that both highlights the amazing natural scenery that you're going to be seeing and the history and some of the archaeological sites. So it's not just like, here's an informational PSA, don't do these things.
01:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we played so many times, people be like, fine, I'll do it. It's like the late at the airport about taking off your shoes before getting into the TSA line type of thing. It's like, fine, I'll take off my shoes. Yeah. But another thing on on a less kind of grand scale, and I think your idea is phenomenal and something that, you know, people should work on doing.
01:01:18
Speaker
If you are an archaeologist, if you are a citizen who understands that carving your name into an ancient site is a bad idea, or touching archaeological objects is a bad idea, picking them up and taking them home with you is a bad idea, and you see someone engaging in that behavior, be that tourist. I'm that tourist who shows up and is like, yeah, nope, don't do that. Not OK. I will yell at you. I will point to a sign.
01:01:47
Speaker
Yeah. You know, because the signs are usually in six different languages, but if you see something, say something. Mm-hmm. Agreed. You know, it's not just a problem for the foundation or the site to manage, but we as individuals can also help make sure that this information and these sites are available for years to come.
01:02:14
Speaker
Yes, because some have obviously we stated some prior to that that closed down because it just there's too much damage. And we want to try and keep this connection continuing because. You know, people without. For a lot of people, I know the
01:02:39
Speaker
A challenge that I know Americans often have is that idea of the lack of heritage can be disembodying and can be challenging when it comes to creating community and having a feeling of belonging. And that's where some of the political issues we've been having the last 10 years have come from. There have been a few studies that have had discussed that phenomenon, and I think
01:03:07
Speaker
encouraging people to visit in a respectful way. A lot of these archaeological and heritage sites can really encourage people to embrace either a sense of belonging or a sense of
01:03:24
Speaker
Oh, what's the word that you used earlier, Chelsea? Like a stewardship. There we go. For the place that even if you don't have the deepest history there on a personal level, but you're from there or you call this place home and you want to help protect the history that is there, you don't have to have that specific heritage as your own to want and feel the obligation to protect it. And that's something I think that
01:03:54
Speaker
can be hard to understand for some people of like, well, it's not my history. Why should I care?
01:04:00
Speaker
Um, because I've heard that argument a few times and I'm like, well, but you live here. Yeah. And it's someone's history. Exactly. And it is someone's history. And we should all is, this kind of gets back to the, we're all human. We should all care about each other. Like we're in this together. If you want your own heritage and history to be respected, you have to reciprocate respect to others. So, um, that's my soapbox. Definitely. So we are actually approaching the end of our podcast. So.
01:04:30
Speaker
Um, that was great. I don't know, Christian, if you want to add anything more to that as final thoughts or Emily, if you have final thoughts on the conversation we've had today. Now is our time. It is time. Um, I would say that large science that are well known, such as say Stonehenge or Pompeii that get a lot of conservation dollars. Um,
01:05:00
Speaker
just because they're well known doesn't mean that they always know the best way to spend. They've been doing better in recent years, but historically, just because it's a large site doesn't mean that you don't have responsibility to help take care of it as a visitor. And that kind of goes into the whole, like,
01:05:23
Speaker
You know, if you are going to a large city and you litter, you're like, well, someone's going to pick that up later. It's like you just don't throw your gum wrapper on the ground or your gum, for that matter. So it's stuff like that. It's just to continue to be respectful and. Yeah. Emily, all I have to add to that is just
01:05:49
Speaker
Be a good tourist. Don't be a jerk. Read the signs. Don't take things. Just be a good person, people. Right. If it's something that you think you shouldn't be doing or that you need to hide that you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it and don't. Don't be sneaky. Don't be that I'm a one in a million.
01:06:17
Speaker
It's always better to err on the side of caution. I think that does bring us to the end of our podcast today. Ladies, thank you so much for joining me. It is lovely as always. It was wonderful chatting with you too. Definitely. Always. Yeah, it's one of the highlights of my pretty bi-weekly, but I always enjoy it.
01:06:47
Speaker
If anyone has comments or questions about this episode, we can always be reached at womenandarchaeology at gmail.com or on Twitter at womenarchies. We would love to hear from you and we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.
01:07:13
Speaker
We hope you have enjoyed the show. Please be sure to subscribe and rate our show wherever you listen. We are available on iTunes, Stitcher, and probably whatever your favorite podcasting app is. Remember to like and share. If you have questions or comments, you can post them in the comments section for the show at the Women in Archaeology page on the Archaeology Podcasting Network site, or email them to us at womeninarchaeologypodcast.com. This show is part of the Archaeology Podcasting Network.
01:07:41
Speaker
and is produced by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle. You can reach them at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Music for the show was Retro Future by Kevin MacLeod, available at Inkomtep and Royalty Free Music. Thanks for listening!
01:08:02
Speaker
This show is produced by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.