Heritage is not the same thing as inheritance, but it touches on a sense of what has come down to us from the past that we value and wish to pass on to the future. ‘Objects of heritage’ are the things we pay attention to because they are still meaningful to us, not because they tell great stories about the past but because we use them to tell stories about ourselves. ‘Practices of heritage’ are customs and habits which, although intangible, also inform who we are as collectives, and help to create our collective social memory.
We use objects of heritage (artefacts, buildings, sites, landscapes) and practices of heritage (languages, music, community celebrations) to shape our ideas about who we are. For example, Stonehenge is an object of heritage, not because of its importance to archaeologists for evidence about prehistory, but because it is currently used as a compelling symbol that connects us with feelings about deep time, ideas about Britishness, alternative knowledge, lost communities. Officially it is a World Heritage Site, because it fulfils the global criteria for being an outstanding example of past activity that experts want to keep for the future. Unofficially, it attracts millions of global visitors who want their own experience and find their own meanings at the site. It is this unofficial ‘cultural work’ that goes on around the idea of Stonehenge that makes it such a powerful object of heritage
