Open AccessPreserving Different Pasts: The American National Monuments, by Hal Rothman, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1989
Author(s) -
Terry A. Barnhart
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
bulletin of the history of archaeology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2047-6930
pISSN - 1062-4740
DOI - 10.5334/bha.02209
Subject(s) - national monument , historiography , scholarship , national heritage , history , romance , value (mathematics) , consciousness , historic site , culture of the united states , national consciousness , public history , natural (archaeology) , archaeology , anthropology , sociology , law , ethnology , art , political science , politics , literature , philosophy , epistemology , machine learning , computer science
The national monuments that exist today within our national parksare often perceived as icons of a romantic or even a mythic past Seldom, however, dovery personal crusades that were waged to preserve these natural and culture resourcesintrude upon the public consciousness? Even less frequently are the preservation effortsof the past valued for what they tell us about American culture and how the values ofthat culture have changed over time. But the archaeological, historic, and naturalhistory sites that comprise our national monuments have layered meanings. Quite apartfrom their intrinsic value as heritage sites, our effort to preserve perceptions of thepast. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that scholarship on the national monumentsproper remained an historiographical backwater. This situation has been rectified,however, with the publication of Hal Rothman's Preserving Different Pasts: The AmericanNational Monuments. These national treasurers have at last found an able historian totell their story