Look, it's stones in a field!

What is it about?

This is a debate in response to a paper by Brit Solli the abstract of which states: Are we now living in a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene? Geo-scientists discuss whether there is a need for a new concept covering the last 250 years' immense human impact on the earth. How are we going to understand and define ‘heritage’ and archaeology in a rapidly changing global environment? The ‘linguistic turn’ in humanities and social sciences has had a huge impact on both archaeology and heritage studies since c. 1980. A critique is raised against the anti-essentialist view that heritage is constructed, not discovered. Furthermore, the paper discusses the legacy of ‘the linguistic turn’, post-processualism and environmental archaeology. Smith's contribution questions the arguments Solli makes about the essential nature of material heritage and argues against the idea of the intrinsic values and meanings of heritage.

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