On August 24, 2021 the edited volume Heritage Ecologies was published on Routledge in the series Archaeological Orientations. Heritage Ecologies is the result of a broad ecological and non-anthropocentric rethinking of heritage and memory in the Anthropocene and it features 22 contributions from brilliant scholars in critical heritage studies and beyond. Editors are Torgeir Rinke Bangstad (UiT) and Þóra Pétursdóttir (UiO) and the volume is available in hardcover, paperback and as an e-book at routledge.com
Recognizing the entangled nature-cultures of heritage is essential in the Anthropocene era, where uncertainty and rapid environmental change force us to recast common conceptions of inheritance and to envision new strategies for preservation. Heritage sites are meant to be open and shared spaces, and a recurring argument in the cases presented in this book is that this openness inevitably also overrides our selections, orders and appreciations. Through a diverse range of case studies, the chapters collected in this book aim to explore the affects and memories engendered by diverse heritage ecologies where humans are neither the sole makers nor the only inheritors. The common call is that the experiential, perceptive and informational plenitude enabled through contributions of other-than-human actors is key to an ecological rethinking of heritage in the twenty-first century.
Heritage Ecologies has four thematic sessions dealing with the Anthropocene, Affect, Memory and Entanglements respectively and chapters by Rodney Harrison, Anna Storm, Levi Bryant, Laurent Olivier, Esther Breithoff, Colin Sterling, Marzia Varutti, Tim Flohr Sørensen, Janice Baker, Helge Jordheim, Timothy LeCain, Torgeir Rinke Bangstad, Alfredo González-Ruibal, Ingar Figenschau, Caitlin DeSilvey, Christina Fredengren, Stein Farstadvoll, Rui Gomes Coelho, Suvi Tuominen, Marko Marila, Timothy Morton and Þóra Pétursdóttir.